Ugggghhhhhhhhhh cont.

If I could assail the proverbial source with an entire postman's truck (and more) of hate mail right now, I'd so be spending the rest of the night writing passionate, angry letters, irrespective of the fact that I have to wake up early for an interview tomorrow. The problem is I just don't know who I'd send it to. Hugo Chavez for ruining lives? Manuel Zelaya for being an incapable idiot? Hurricane Mitch for undoing 50 years of progress way back in 1998 and causing a continued landslide of regression? The desperate for whom dirty money is just arguably money? Injustice for...existing?

I admit part of me is just really bitter because my family is beginning to cut painstaking ties out of sheer necessity. Logistical preparations for the next two years have begun to make family history nothing more than history and cherished memories of good times past. Because of the imminent end of an era, I was determined to max out. Alas, messy politics intervene and override again to my extreme dismay. No December trip it is. Boohoo. It's not even summer 2010 and much of me is dying already.

But another, hopefully not so whiny, part of me is upset because, well, how does one go about fixing shit like this? Where do you even begin to hope for change much less think about how to take action? As of August, Honduras has joined the ranks of countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Dominica, Nicaragua, and Cuba (!!! and those are not positive exclamation marks) as an officially recognized member of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), an alliance of leftist Latin American leaders with socialist tendencies. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya says a lack of international support to tackle chronic poverty forced him to seek such aid.

It's unfair that some countries are stuck in a rut of perpetual poverty, economic woes, political quagmire, and severe inequality among many other tragic problems that all combine to create a cyclical, inescapable mess of a situation. (Especially one in which it is generally the poor who suffer most direly.) How does someone like me with heartfelt ties and little influential power, or really anyone for that matter, change a seemingly hopeless downward spiral of a nation that always had it coming?

Sending remittances comfortably from America to areas or organizations it appears to be needed, working with street children one at a time, or even reforming entire orphanages despite the best intentions will not change the plight and direction of the country. Not to be a Pessimistic Patty, but sometimes simply statically standing by and watching numbly seems unfortunately not just the only option but the most effective (and this is applicable to too many other situations all over the world).

Argghhhh.