Cartoon 25: Inspiration



Sardinal, Costa Rica.  This man is from a community in Costa Rica where a big transnational company came in about ten years ago and tried to buy up the land for access to the crystalline waters there.  I´ve learned that this is done all the time in the places that I´ve visited of Mexico and Central America by big transnational companies like CocaCola. Yikes. It´s ugly.  The company promised that they wanted to put in a piping system to make water more accessible to residents so some sold their land. The company began to build and as the project advanced it became terribly obvious that the water would not be accessible to the community, it would be used for foreign interests.  The community came together and with sticks and stones and their bodies and protest and perserverance they sent the transnational hiking.  The company was 70% finished with building and they fought brutally to maintain the project but eventually they were forced to leave.  The community had no one funding their efforts, no academic strategists choreographing their actions.  They had necessity and unity.

So now whenever I feel too small, overwhelmed by the injustices committed by those with financial or social power way more complex and established than mine, I have these people to think of. Whenever I feel like I could never have an effect inside of a broken system that has such momentum, I can think of them, a direct connection to the love, fire and determination and that it takes to risk everything for what you and your community know is just. They are a true inspiration for all my life.