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Roll Over George Orwell

By Susan Cheever
Posted Monday, Nov. 9, 1998, at 2:48 PM ET

The idea of a breakfast table strikes me as quaint anyway. As I stumble into the living room with the dogs milling hungrily around me I glance at the Times. With one hand I'm getting Q.'s homework into his backpack while I pour coffee with the other. What should I write about? The Democrats; nice but boring. Pinochet: the world just isn't safe for dictators anymore. Gingrich: Have you noticed that he's gotten fat? The Times, I notice, has solved its own dilemma with a big story about--ta da--last week's weather! Hurricane Mitch was big, Hurricane Mitch was beautiful, Hurricane Mitch was very, very bad. The news itself seems to float above reality like a thin film of oil, and then my relationship to the news is also about one molecule deep. Still, Hurricane Mitch? Some old guy who has lost everything saying that Honduras is being punished by God?

RSS

I think about the extreme poverty in Central America--certainly one of the reasons this hurricane was so devastating. When I was in Belize three years ago I went over to Guatemala just to see it--and to buy cheap silver--and the contrast between the two countries amazed me. In Belize, which had been a British colony until the 1980's, everything was plain but bearable. As soon as we crossed the border--a checkpoint manned by fast talking guards in dusty uniforms--everything changed. Whole families seemed to have just given up by the side of the road. Children lay there covered with dust and flies. The few farm animals limped along on ancient bowlegs. In the stores where they sell the silver, I felt like a creature from outer space. I had the impression I could buy the whole thing--woven backpacks, wooden masks, silver and all--for the contents of my glossy American wallet.

Are governments so powerful that people living on either side of a border in the same landscape can have completely different lives? Belize with its high literacy rate and good medical services made me think colonialism might have been a good thing. My computer tells me I have been idle too long. With software like this, who needs a superego? How are things in Pleasantville this morning?