I wrote a friend in Venezuela who is coordinating the School of Americas Watch (SOA Watch) delegation to Guatemala how, as a non-shopper, I found in my last trip to Guatemala (See Buried in Guatemala) a third world craft and clothing heaven. She wrote back calling shopping in Guatemala “solidarity shopping.” I like that term.

Solidarity shopping is what I do when I go to Goodwill stores to purchase clothing, shoes and odds and end. I have gotten some nice clothes, even designer type clothes, at low price there. I even exempt myself from the ban on buying products “Made in China” rule where I shop there. I figure that the clothes being second handed are exempt from refusal to buy “made in China” whenever I go or can.

Buying anything not made in China or sweatshops anywhere in the world is very difficult. Seldom do you see a “Made in USA” on any clothing product these days. Even shopping in the grocery store I need to be careful and check the label not only for terrible things like “high fructose corn syrup” but for “Made in China” labels on food products.

Solidarity shopping is hard to do in electronic products like my Apple I Phone. Although Apple proudly points out their products are designed in the USA they are made in China as many other electronic products. The last TV I purchased was a Magnavox, an American name TV. I asked the store clerk who owned Magnavox and he said it was Philips a company based in Finland. When I got home and was taking it out of the box I noticed that it was put together in China.

What makes shopping in Guatemala true solidarity shopping is that in the market places the sellers of the goods are usually the makers of the good. Indigenous people of Guatemala still make their own clothes and crafts and sell directly to the people in the market place. This is not true for other Latin American countries I have visited.

So it will be time for some new, not slightly used clothing, when I visited Guatemala. The purpose of our SOA Watch delegation is not to do solidarity shopping. Our presence there is to show solidarity with the people struggling for human rights in the country and try to persuade the government officials not to send their soldiers to the US Army School of Americas, (SOA), now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, (WHINSEC), for military training. This USA military school at Fort Benning, Ga. is a training ground for terrorist in Central and South America. After many years of marches and protest we cannot get the US government to close this ‘school of assassins’ but have achieved persuading a number of countries in Central and South America from sending soldiers there to train.

So being in solidarity with poor, oppressed, marginalized has some fringe benefits as well as blessings. One major benefit is ‘solidarity shopping.’

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