The Peace Corps of the seventies can not be understood without taking into account its relationship with ACTION, the super agency created by the Nixon administration. Much of the turmoil at PC/W during those years - there’s always turmoil at PC/W - was directly caused by its forced marriage to ACTION. There was considerable rejoicing in the Peace Corps world when the relationship ended in the early eighties, but I have never read an account of why it failed. I’ll give my version of the answer in this post.
ACTION was designed early in Nixon’s first term to bring under one umbrella all of the federally funded volunteer programs then spread out through several federal departments, or standing on their own as independent government agencies like the Peace Corps. ACTION was to be a showcase that would demonstrate the administration’s ability to streamline government, reduce overhead, and achieve synergies by linking ‘like’ organizations. My guess is that the existing volunteer programs were selected for the first of several planned reorganizations because the stakes would not be very high, and in a worst case scenario nothing important would have been lost should the scheme not work out.
When I arrived for interviews in April 1971 Joe Blatchford, then Peace Corps Director, was so busy ‘creating’ ACTION that I only got to shake his hand in the hallway. There was a tremendous amount of energy devoted to this reorganization task since it required congressional approval, the passage of appropriate legislation, and salving the egos of all those big wigs about to lose cherished titles. (Who would willingly accept the title ‘Associate Director, International Operations, ACTION’ in place of ‘Director, Peace Corps’?) In the end, with widespread support from many sources, Peace Corps, VISTA, SCORE (the Service Corps of Retired Executives), ACE (the Active Corps of Executives), Foster Grandparents, and RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) became one under the ACTION umbrella.
The disastrous results of the marriage are best demonstrated by the overwhelming sense of relief that was present when it finally ended in 1981. People like Richard Celeste, John Dellenback, Loret Ruppe (and others with influence in the Congress and two separate administrations) had labored long and hard to regain independence for the Peace Corps. And eventually they achieved it. But the question remains: Why had this seemingly good idea been so awful?
In my mind there are two parts to the answer. The first - and this is just possibly a bum rap - is the refusal of the Peace Corps to accept guidance from anyone. The Peace Corps as an institution has always had a highly elevated opinion of itself. The purity of its mission, methods and participants has been for many of us a self-evident truth. Just ask any USAID field officer working alongside the Peace Corps and having to endure repeated snide remarks about the soft life they led in contrast to the rigors and nobility of Peace Corps life.
When the ACTION folks, many of whom had never owned a passport, tried to put their stamp on the Peace Corps they were often simply ignored. When that happened, ACTION responded with an even more assertive attempt to get control, and began to point out areas in which it considered Peace Corps to be deficient. Peace Corps bashing is a favorite sport within the agency, but woe to anyone from the outside who tries to do the same. The result was predictable: constant bickering at all levels and a case of revolving doors at the helm. During my five years, there were five Peace Corps directors and one acting director, although they were all encouraged by ACTION officials to use that title only outside the United States.
The turmoil continued during the Carter administration and the struggle between ACTION Director Sam Brown and Peace Corps Director Carolyn Payton is the stuff of legend. Once again egos were involved, but there were also matters of substance and that leads to the second reason the marriage failed.
ACTION was organized around the principlef ‘volunteerism.’ The one common thread among all of the constituent parts was that each relied on volunteers to do its work. It was assumed that this thread was sufficiently strong to achieve the benefits of consolidation that ACTION promised. Unfortunately, the benefits were more apparent than real. There were such major differences in the respective missions of the component parts that they eclipsed any possible merit from a consolidation. Nowhere was this more so than in ACTION’s two largest units: the Peace Corps and VISTA.
The Peace Corps in the field does two things: it provides social and economic development assistance to host countries, and creates mutual understanding and friendships between Americans and the people of the host-country. When the work of the Peace Corps is successful, the entire community benefits from the results. The poor in the Third World are not neglected, downtrodden, or despised; they are the vast majority. These people often have vibrant cultures, significant levels of happiness, and admirable value systems despite their relative lack of material possessions. The Peace Corps works in close consultation with existing institutions to set and achieve goals. The existence of an ‘us versus them’ climate is carefully avoided. Cooperation is emphasized; not confrontation. Throw in differences in language, weather, health concerns, and an absence of familiar support structures and one finds the Peace Corps facing a unique challenge.
VISTA, on the other hand, was devoted to anti-poverty work in the United States, work done primarily among minority populations (minority in the sense of numbers, not necessarily in terms of race, gender, or ethnicity). These segments of the American population live in a land of plenty, but don’t participate in it. They face barriers, often invisible ones, that sentence generation after generation to the same fate. Existing power structures are their enemy, not the ones with whom they work closely. The poor of the VISTA world are indeed neglected, downtrodden, and despised. A sociologist with whom I once studied tried to explain the differences she saw between ordinary Malaysians and the poor of Appalachia. Neither had much in the way of material goods or access to adequate social services yet the Malaysians had much joy in their lives while the poor of Appalachia did not. She explained that social, familial, and cultural factors are often more important that material ones; to have limited material goods in Malaysia is very different from being poor in America.
There are vast differences in the way one goes about addressing the differing needs of the Third World and the poor in America. And, these differences showed in the way Peace Corps and VISTA went about their respective businesses. It was not a question of one being the more important, or the more difficult, or even the more worthy; they were just different. During the seventies days and weeks could go by without meaningful contact between Peace Corps and VISTA. When Sam Brown tried to force his anti-poverty agenda and methodologies on the Peace Corps all hell broke loose, in the end costing Carolyn Payton her job as Peace Corps Director.
The challenges each organization faced were so very different that it never really entered anyone’s mind that the other had a helpful solution. In hindsight it is astonishing that ACTION management failed to see that such a state of affairs indicated something was seriously amiss with its own organizing principle. It wasn’t until 1981 that the divorce finally came through. Remarkably, ACTION continued on as a government agency until 1993 when it was submerged into another federal agency.
In summary, the forced marriage between Peace Corps and ACTION was destined to fail partly because of Peace Corps’ own rather exclusionary underpinnings, but more so because Peace Corps had very little in common with the domestic side of ACTION. There is something unique about the Peace Corps, and it doesn’t mix well with others. Let’s keep it that way.
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I should add that I’m a bit uncertain about the exact timing and sequence of events that led to regained independence. I think Richard Celeste won some sort of informal independence for the Peace Corps within ACTION late in the Carter years. This was followed up in the early Reagan years - with much help from Loret Ruppe, John Dellenback, and Peace Corps friends in the congress - by the passage of legislation which formalized the independence, maybe in 1981 or ‘82. If anyone can fill-in the blanks I would appreciate it.
Dave, Could you give some examples of the following:
“When the ACTION folks, many of whom had never owned a passport, tried to put their stamp on the Peace Corps they were often simply ignored. When that happened, ACTION responded with an even more assertive attempt to get control, and began to point out areas in which it considered Peace Corps to be deficient. ”
Thank you.
I suppose the best example is the way overseas posts hardly ever acknowledged to their host countries the existence of ACTION. No one changed their letterhead that I know of. Even in PC/W very few said they were employees of ACTION rather than Peace Corps. The atmosphere of ‘we don’t need/like ACTION’ could not be missed.
Among ACTION’s complaints were: (1) overseas posts are over-staffed and wasting money; (2) Peace Corps ignores even its own guidelines when it comes to the use of gov’t owned vehicles; (3) ACTION directives are regularly NOT sent out to the posts; (4) Peace Corps puts an unnecessary burden on recruiting by asking for such high skills; (5) PC/W does an inadequate job maintaining discipline in the field (i. e., Country Directors have too much freedom to do as they like); (6) Peace Corps doesn’t seem to understand that it is part of the Nixon/Ford administration; and (7) Peace Corps doesn’t follow ‘must-place’ guidelines.
And, unsaid but deeply felt (this is my guess) was the ACTION feeling that “We get no respect!”
I can appreciate how the “brand name” Peace Corps had to be maintained overseas, since it had established HC relationships based on that. What did ACTION directors do to “assert even more control?” Were Peace Corps Directors still appointed by the President or were the directors appointed by the head of ACTION??
You may find this hard to believe but I wasn’t really privy to what happened in the White House, but I can make some guesses.
Blatchford was, of course appointed by Nixon to both the PC and the ACTION directorships. Once Blatchford was confirmed as head of ACTION, he appointed (probably with an OK from the WH) Kevin O’donnell to be PC Director. In fact Kevin had already been acting in that capacity while Blatchford created ACTION.
O’Donnell rather soon thereafter left his position to (I think) run for office in OHIO. Blatchford selected Don Hess, former CD in Korea to replace O’Donnell. I’m reasonably certain this was Blatchford’s doing but again with an OK from the WH.
At the start of Nixon’s second term Blachford left government (to run for office in CA?) and Mike Balzano was appointed head of ACTION. Rather quickly Balzano sent Hess packing and put one of his ‘chosen ones’ into the PC position, Nick Craw. Nick had been running a signifcant piece of ACTION prior to that time. In short order, Nick became a real Peace Corps ‘loyalist’ and earned Balzano’s ire. He was dumped without ceremony in less than a year.
While Balzano tried to get a person of his own choosing into the PC position Alfredo Perez (formerly Latin America Reg’l Director) became the Acting PC Director for many months. By this time Ford had replaced Nixon and Balzano had lost his strong WH support.
In 1974 John Dellenback, a close colleague of Ford in the House, lost his seat. In early 1975, Ford appointed him to the PC Director job, probably over Balzano’s objections. The two - Balzano and Dellenback - were not meant for each other but Dellenback, gentlman that he was, tried mightily to keep things civil. Balzano did not. They worked together for two years, but the strain showed every day.
I should mention that I was briefly one of Balzano’s ‘chosen,’ but it didn’t last. In the end Balzano tried to block my appointment to the Nat’l Endowment for the Arts, but Dellenback stepped in and used his greater influence at the WH to get me approved.
And then Carter was elected and the whole cast of characters (at least the political appointees) changed. Someone else will have to tell that story
The remarkable thing is that while all this turmoil was messing up PC/W, the Peace Corps in the field did just fine, thank you!!
David, Nixon issued an Executive Order #11603 in 1971 placing Peace Corps within ACTION. I am still looking for that Order to see exactly what management controls the Director of Action had in regard to Peace Corps. Carter’s Execiutive Order #12137 in 1979 (available on Wikipedia/Peace Corps) gave very specific authority to the Peace Corps Director over a variety of program decisions; ie. the amount of living allowance incountry. What I would like to know and what is not very clear is if Peace Corps Directors were routinely replaced by ACTION directors, under Nixon/Ford, because of what appears to be insubordination.
You call it the “marriage of Peace Corps and ACTION,” and I would disagree. As I have said before, Peace Corps is “qualquieras”…anybody’s. When the ship of state sails in, Peace Corps is waiting at the dock. Those liaisons don’t result in marriage!
In the case of ACTION, I think Nixon had some political objectives which he accomplished.
First of all, he did take the “brand name” away from Peace Corps by placing it within ACTION as “overseas operations.” I think it was payback to the Kennedy people. Far more importantly, he needed to bring Peace Corps under some kind of control because of the political climate. He was engaged in Vietnam: RPCVs and PCVs had been actively anti-war. No president could tolerate that kind of oppostion from American institutions overseas. I think that Nixon was too smart to openly engage Peace Corps, he buried it bureacratically. The constant turnover of staff and directors may just have been part of a deliberate strategy to reduce the influence of PC/W.
I think you have it right when you suggest that from ACTION’s point of view the attitude of the PC/W staff was pretty close to insubordination. From PC/W’s standpoint, however, it was a matter of protecting the crown jewels. This difference is what makes writing history so fascinating, and never ending.
There is no doubt that the short reigns of Hess, Craw, and Perez reflected Balzano’s frustration in not getting the respect and obedience he felt was his due.
I doubt that the Nixon/Ford administrations gave much thought to the Peace Corps, let alone conspire to denigrate or destroy this last vestage of Camelot. Haldeman records a couple of mentions in his diaries but they don’t seem very consequential. In the big scheme of things Peace Corps just didn’t (doesn’t ?) matter except to a handful of loyalists.
You might have more success in understanding ACTION by looking for the enabling legislation, perhaps passed in 1972, rather than Nixon’s Executive Order. The legislation would be much more comprehensive. (I remember Dellenback saying he voted for it, but later was one of the leaders in the fight to remove Peace Corps from it.)
I arrived in Honduras as a Peace Corps Trainee under President Ford. During my working life as a Volunteer, President Carter was inaugurated. I vaguely remember some mumbling about the ACTION designation. However, my family and friends only wished me the best and hoped that I would come home safe and sound. Those Hondurans whom I served seemed to hope that I would not get in the way. Washington power charts had no bearing on my life.
My contact with D.C. was limited to a protracted application process during which I basically pushed and shoved my way in over the objections of D.C. bureaucrats. Interestingly enough, the creepiest American bean counter in Honduras, a former volunteer, was a trainer. He eventually went to D.C. which undermined any hope I might have had that D.C. was manned by these Greek godlike heros described by so many.
As a volunteer in Brazil (1969-71), I am glad that we got our service in just before the creation of ACTION as described above. We had enough trouble trying to get small grants from USAID for the projects that we were sent to Brazil to undertake. More bureaucratic red tape would have almost made our work impossible. As a side note, our second state director was, I believe, the first “non-American” (he was Brazillian) to hold such a post. He was able to accomplish a great deal by being more concerned with the jobs being done than with Washington mandates. Most of the volunteers that I worked with, could not understand why Washington spent so much time and money to train us and send us to Brazil, only to constantly put roadblocks in our path to success. We could have had fishing cooperatives up and running six months earlier if there had not been so much red tape. We also had to wait at least a month for some USAID official to show up in a chauffeur-driven limo to present the grant check and a plaque! God only knows where that plaque is now.
Lorenzo & Brian
Thanks for the comments. As I’ve often said (and say in my book) no one can find the Peace Corps by looking at PC/W. Many of the books written about the Peace Corps (other than personal accounts of service) make this mistake. I only hope that the guy doing the 50 year history doesn’t do the same. Anyone want to take the other side of a bet that he will make that mistake?
My book is titled “South of the Frontera; a Peace Corps Memoir.” There are no power charts, just high adventure.
David, I wanted to ask you more about this statement:
“The poor in the Third World are not neglected, downtrodden, or despised; they are the vast majority. These people often have vibrant cultures, significant levels of happiness, and admirable value systems despite their relative lack of material possessions. ”
This does not reflect my experience. My question for you is:
Is this your opinion or was it the official position of Peace Corps/Nixon-Ford?
And my comment to David, lorenzo and Brian. As far as I can determine, the history of the Peace Corps is the record of PC/Washington, because that is the history which is accessible and available. I wish that were not true.
Joey
This is my opinion. I doubt that the Nixon/Ford administrations ever gave such matters a moment’s thought, and I don’t recall any discussion about it at Peace Corps either.
It does reflect my experience, especially in the Philippines, where family, community, religious, and national identity values are shared and very strong. These values enable the inhabitants to rise above their economic situations (which Americans would consider deplorable) and live lives that are ‘rich,’ although not in material terms.
I contrast this with my experience in eastern Kentucky’s Appalachian region (about which I wrote a book) where the poor lead lives of desperation, addiction, anger, violence and early deaths.
The two groups - those in the Third World without adequate resources and the poor in America - are two very different sets of people. How one works with and for each differs greatly. And, that is why I say VISTA and Peace Corps had little in common.
In the mid- 60s and early 70s (when I started doing graduate work in History) there was a groundswell of enthusiasm for ‘history written from the bottom up’ which changed the practice of writing history. It said we don’t have to do the ‘Great man’ stuff any more, we don’t have to concentrate on the ‘movers and shakers,’ we can write the peoples’ history. It meant re-thinking source material and finding new ways to explore the past. The staid old academics called it ‘revisonist’ the rest of us called it ‘liberating.’ One day some one will do it for Peace Corps.
David, I am glad to see you qualify your statement by saying it is merely your opinion. But you know that you are taking your personal opinion and generalizing it to the entire Third World. Now, I have another question and that is for this statement:
“These values enable the inhabitants to rise above their economic situations (which Americans would consider deplorable) and live lives that are ‘rich,’ although not in material terms.”
How do you know this?
What in hell do you mean ‘merely’ my opinion? You really annoy me when you consistently go ‘ad hominem’ in your replies rather than discussing the issues.
And, if we don’t take specific experiences and use them as a bases for understanding the larger world, how can we ever come to conclusions that are relevant to more than a single event, person, or situation?
I ‘know’ the description is ‘true’ because I experienced it; many volunteers who provided material for my PC book said the same; and the training material we provided volunteers in the Philippines (written and prepared by Filipino sociologists, community activists, and PC trainers) explained Filipino culture this way.
I agree with Joey that the most available resources about the Peace Corps are the books funded by the U.S. government and a few commerically published books. The great majority of these describe the Peace Corps from the top down which is valuable.
It is amazing that hundreds of former volunteers have been compelled to write about their experience. These books have a different sort of value. They are first-person accounts, called primary sources by historians. Usually when writing history, you begin with these. Unfortunately, 90% of these books have been self-published which means that they are not generally available, often not stocked by libraries and generally disappear after a first limited printing.
Concerned about this, I have been writing to politicians requesting that they support the ceation of a “Peace Corps Experience Special Collection” at the Library of Congress. The books could be donated by former volunteers and staff. Heck, I have more than fifty on the shelf behind me. The idea is simple: to conserve as much history as possible for our children and grandchildren. If you are also concerned, please join me by writing to your representatives. As the 50th anniversary approachs, this would be a great moment to begin such an undertaking.
Why the Library of Congress? Congress passed the Peace Corps Act and funds the agency each year. It’s library also contains the work of another President’s experiment- Thomas Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery which was led by Lewis and Clark.
I wholly support the creation of a Peace Corps library which would house possibly hundreds of Peace Corps memoirs and thousands of other ‘original source’ materials. The Library of Congress would be great but so would any other place with sufficient resources. (Unfortunately my Kentucky Senators and Congressman couldn’t care less so I won’t waste stamps on them.)
But real historians don’t wait for someone else to get their material; the best of them go get it themselves. In this case it would be all of those little known and self-published stories and memoirs where the complete story awaits ‘synthesizing’ in one volume. (I believe that is the correct academic term for writing a history based on many separate parts.) I am hoping that the fellow who is doing the 50-year history has spent some of his advance money on doing just that. Otherwise, we’ll just get a couple more decades of the same stories we have had too many of in the past.
David, Ad hominem means to attack the person. I have not attacked you; I have confronted you. I have questioned your assumptions. I wonder if that happens to you very much. Let me clear. I think your book describing your years as Country Director in the Phillippines is a valuable historic document. Indeed, I recommended it to a PC/W staff member and I believe it has been ordered. But, I certainly don’t defer to you. And I don’t know what issues we could possibly discuss.
This is the assertion you made which I questioned:
“The poor in the Third World are not neglected, downtrodden, or despised; they are the vast majority. These people often have vibrant cultures, significant levels of happiness, and admirable value systems despite their relative lack of material possessions. ”
Let me quote from “The Peace Corps Experience” pp 108.
“At this point to add a word of caution concerning stereotypes, oversimplification, and exaggerated cultural differences. Any attempt to define the culture of forty million Filipinos who speak different languages and live under widely varying circumstance is a hazardous undertaking. No one set of generalizations can speak acccurately for everyone.”….P. David Searles.
I rest my case.
Some synonyms for ‘confront’ (according to Roget’s): ‘accost,’ ‘affront,’ ‘oppose’, ‘repel,’ ’scorn,’ and ‘tell off,’ among others. That doesn’t sound to me like ‘discussing the issues’ even if you were willing to discuss ideas and such with me.
The quotation from my book is taken a bit out of context. It follows a whole series of generalizations about Filipinos -generalizations that most Filipinos would accept as generally accurate. (I took them out of literature written by Filipinos for Filipinos.) But, we need to be reminded about the limitations of stereotypes and leave room for indiviual exceptions.
I do have trouble with people questioning my assumptions here in KY since I am a ‘progressive/liberal/pinko’ surrounded by ’seven-day-creationists’ and ‘tea party goers.’ However, when I’m on the east or west coast I’m considered a pretty ‘with it’ kind of guy.
Anyway, keep up the good work pushing my book!
Unfortunately, many books sold in the 1960’s and 1970’s are no longer even available. I have spoken with several people who have mentioned libraries, yet no university has begun such a project. The existing library projects emphasze private papers.
I have no inside information about the new “History of the Peace Corps” book. My guess is that it will deal with structure, politics, a bit of intrigue and some numbers. The observation that most books have described the Peace Corps from the top down is probably correct. Most books about the military are like that too. If anyone objects, they should sit down and write a different sort of book. Even for those who were never volunteers, he or she could begin by interviewing former volunteers.
For those who served, write a memoir! The more the merrier. Once published, my only suggestion is to get it into as many libraries as possible (not an easy assignment if it is self-published). The Kennedy Library is accepting such material for its closed stacks. Speak to the librarian at your local library and your almamater.
Government programs that inspire our citizens are rare. In the first half of the 20th century only two did- the WPA and the CCC. Yet, when you go to a library you will find very few first hand accounts just numbers games and more top to bottom commentaries. Well, in the second half of the 20th century NASA and the Peace Corps also inspired. Members of NASA are very limited by contract. We are not. We never signed any Non-Disclosure Agreements. So, what are you waiting for?
llorenzo,
The Library of Congress is conducting an oral history project with the GIs of WWII. But that is in addition to what the military collected and perserved. The military maintains incredibly detailed histories of operations. For example, my father was career military. He was in Korea during the first days of that war. About ten years ago, an investigative reporter charged that a war crime had been committed at a place called NoGunRi. The claim was that an order had been given to shoot civilians. My father had been in that vicinity and was assigned to G3, from where the order was alleged to have been issued. The military conducted its own investigation, and concluded that civilians had been killed but there had been no order, hence no war crime.
My father was deceased when this happened. My senator secured a copy of the military investigation for my family. In more than 350 pages, it reconstructed the first horrible days of the Korean War, from documents created during those opeations. In that collection was a memo written by my father describing in honest detail how the 1st Cav was managing the stream of civilian refugees and the process which was being used to identify North Korean soldiers hiding in civilian clothes within the stream. That memo was part of the findings that civilians had been killed, but not by direct order. That record exonerated my father and made me an amateur historian.
So, when a very popular movie in Colombia, titled “El Rey” claiming Peace Corps Volunteers in Colombia had been instrumental in developing cocaine processing, I tried to find out what the Peace Corps records would show from 1965-67. Evelyn Reed, an evaluator from Charlie Peters office was in Colombia for several months aduring that time she described over 12,000 site and program reports written by serving PCVs in the field, which were scattered and not properly maintained. I did a FOIA request to see what happened to those documents. PC/W-Bush-Obama finally responded after a year and said they had no record of what ever happened to those reports and/or any other such reports.
When there is no public document created at the time of the government activity, there there is no real history. Memoirs, oral histories, fiction are incredibly important. But, they are recollections, not documentation. But for the history of what Volunteers actually did, they are basically all we have.
Since my service in Colombia, my real interest has been in what happens when we move cross-culturally with our technology. What are the unintended consequences; what works and what does not; and, increasingly, what are the cultural filters we use to interpret what happened.
I apologize for the long length of this. I do want you to know. lorenzo, I finally did contact my Congressional delegation about your progect. I will let you know what response I received.
I certainly agree that ‘official’ documentation is very important to the writing of history.
However, I am totally convinced that good history (maybe even better history) comes about when the historian relies on a whole bunch of research including but hardly restricted to ‘official’ sources.
Examples: Our current understanding of Thomas Jefferson would never have come from ‘official’ sources. The Viet Nam War would not be understood without all of the personal accounts that flowed from the event. The Depression could never be understood only on the basis of gov’t data; one needs the personal accounts (and even fiction like the Grapes of Wrath) to get the real story. And, concentrating on the turmoil in PC/W during ACTION days does little to tell the story of the real Peace Corps during the 70s.
So, I am not pessimistic about the possibility of someone, some day writing a truly good history of the Peace Corps even in the abscence of an ‘official’ library. Maybe next year we will actually have it.
Now, since I need to prove my ‘bona fides’ I will note that I did my Masters degree in History at Yale, and my Ph D in the History and Education departments at the University of Kentucky.
David, There are two books which I would like to recommend you read.
One is by Robert Textor, an anthropologist, who worked with PC/Johnson and his book was published in 1966 and is a collection of essays. The title is: “Cultural Frontiers of the Peace Corps.” Textor is the author of the memo suggesting the “In, Up, and Out” policy. I am grateful to John Coyne for giving me this reference.
The other book is the classic “Green Fire” by Marnie Mueller. It is a fictional account of a PCV woman in Ecuador, and an example of how truth can be found in fiction. I would hope that it would be required reading for all trainees. So of much of she writes is universal.
My bona fides: I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia South America from 1963 to 1965. My project description was Health Education/Rural Community Development. I worked with indigenous midwives.
Based upon the long discussions here, I have no idea if the Peace Corps has actually saved much of its records. During my own research, I was was surprised to find bits like a puzzle with missing pieces. One should also be cogniscent that official government records will focus upon budgets, number and type of personnel, personnel records of illness, job performance reports, etc. They would not include many details about the country per se.
While revising and expanding my own memoir, I was curious about how the country I served in might have changed. I could only find one other memoir published by a former volunteer but I did find interesting material on internet blogs from more recent volunteers. Unlike books however, electronic blogs and web pages appear and disappear like wisps of smoke.
If one were researching the Peace Corps’ program to introduce fish farms, for instance, it would probably begin with U.N. reports about protein consumption in the under-developed world. It might reference the Peace Corps’ goals, number of years instituted, number of countries where the program was used. First-hand accounts would be a great compliment. This is also true when trying to tell other stories related to the Peace Corps. I was a member of the Community Development contingent which included architects, engineers, surveyors and urban planners. It seems to be a forgotten element today. Part of my own expanded memoir (South of the Frontera) describes my work in more detail than previously.
While working in a small isolated town in Bush Alaska, I participated in historical review for two reasons; to nominate buildings for the National Register of Historic Places and also to update the General Plan. I edited technical reports, supported professional historians by interviewing older citizens, reviewed government reports, analyzed special boxed library collections (like those in the Kennedy Library) and also read the only two memoirs I could find. One was handwritten and unpublished, the other self-published. All of this information was useful but the memoirs (with all their weaknesses and faults) were the most helpful in framing a historical picture.
Based upon the four dozen or so Peace Corps memoirs I have read, there are some common denominators; the struggles to maintain good health, to adapt to an alien culture and language, lonliness and a deep appreciation for the opportunity to work aboard. There is an on-going discussion about a memoir’s literary worth. While true that style and even content vary widely, their worth is as a historical document- a primary source. The authors offer unusual details that will not be found in govenrment reports. Since volunteers have served in some countries for decades, their observations offer an interesting contrast of changing living conditions as well as changing mores.
I fully agree with you about the value of the personal memoire for the historian, or really anyone who wants to understand an event, time period, or another person. I would add one further benefit of doing a memoire and that is its value to the author. I won’t go as far as Plato (”The unexamined life isn’t worth living”) but I will say that doing a memoire is wonderfully enriching experience, as I bet your writing one was.
You mention, perhaps by chance, a Peace Corps fisheries program. I’m going out on a limb and say that program (which was part of many countries’ program) might have been the best effort in the Peace Corps’ 50 years. At one time a RPCV fisheries volunteer headed LSU’s fisheries department. Another was hired by USAID to teach AID’s field workers how to do it. Yet another wrote FAO’s fisheries manual. We all know the PCV side of the story from ‘The Fish Ponds of Kalambayi.’
In the next few days I’m going to propose a collaborative effort to put together a ‘key events’ list of the Peace Corps’ first 50 years. I hope you will join in.
Certainly, David. Just contact John to get my e-mail.
Joey
Doing my research I came across the Textor book and probably read parts of it (although that was 17 years ago and I’m not sure). For whatever reason I don’t have a copy of it , and it is not listed in the bibliography. But I do have ‘Anthropology and the Peace Corps’ which cites the Textor book often.
‘Green Fire’ escaped my radar entirely.
I am off on a 2-3 week road trip but will check my local library when I get back. I like the sound of ‘Green Fire.’ Textor sounds a bit heavy for summer time reading, but maybe I can get it done.