After nine months of travelling through 17 countries, mostly in Latin America, I have seen and heard countless things you’d barely believe. I have also learned a lot about Ireland and how unusual a country we are. Sometimes you need to go far away to get perspective on your home.
It quickly became clear that Ireland is an unusual European country, as we not only never had an empire but were also a colony ourselves. The struggles facing many of the communities that we ― which is to say to Fiadh Ní Dhonnchadha, my partner, and I — met on our travels were eerily familiar from Ireland’s history. The poverty, political oppression, violence, emigration, and language and cultural suppression that all seriously affected Ireland linger in Latin America.
We are a first-world country with a third-world memory, as Mary McAleese once said. Long may we remember that, be compassionate and try to be an example for other former colonies
We are a first-world country with a third-world memory, as Mary McAleese, our former president, once said so eloquently. Long may we remember that, be compassionate and try to be an example for other former colonies.
Ireland is also, thankfully, very safe and stable by global standards. I don’t want to overstate the danger of some of the places we’ve been, as almost everyone we’ve met has been decent, friendly and very helpful, but it did hit home for us in Honduras when we heard gunfire close to our accommodation several days in a row.
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We also needed to stay well clear of the man-made humanitarian disaster that is Venezuela, which was completely off limits for us. We saw thousands of starving, homeless Venezuelan refugees on streets all over South America. Although they are safe to visit now if you’re careful, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru and Colombia have all had horrific civil wars within living memory. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.
The sheer scale of the bloodshed engulfing Mexico is hard to believe, with 30,000 homicides a year, 10 women murdered each day and the number of missing people topping 100,000 last May. Tourist areas are generally quite safe, but there are sections of Mexico and Colombia that their governments do not control. They were also off limits for us.
Even in areas where it was safe, in several countries we could not travel between towns after dark for security reasons. All of this is unthinkable in Ireland. We also don’t have to worry about tropical diseases, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis or hurricanes.
It is cocaine use in the United States and Europe that is funding truly evil men to commit extreme violence in Latin America. There was a surprising exception to this. On 127 bus journeys, not once did we experience the antisocial behaviour that is common on public transport and elsewhere in Ireland — maybe because the consequences for crossing the wrong person are so much higher, or maybe because of a cultural difference.
Having travelled more than 10,000km by bus, I can say that nearly all the countries we visited, even Colombia, have transport systems that provide more frequent services and are better connected than ours — although Irish bus drivers are far safer
It is obvious to me now that such behaviour will be common in Ireland until the consequences are higher and/or action is taken to change the culture and underlying environmental and social factors that foster it.
Even by developing-world standards, Ireland’s public-transport system is poor. Having travelled more than 10,000km by bus, I can say that nearly all the countries we visited have transport systems that provide more frequent services and are better connected than ours — although Irish bus drivers are far safer. We did many long journeys by bus that would be impossible in Ireland. Even the city of Medellín, in Colombia, has a public-transport system light-years ahead of anything we have.
Ireland’s biodiversity is also poor. Ireland may have plenty of green grass for cattle, but it is not a “green” country. Compared to national parks we visited in countries like Costa Rica and Ecuador, our national parks are barely worthy of the name.
I have been hiking around Co Wicklow for 25 years, yet I saw less wildlife in all those years combined than in a single day in Corcovado National Park, in Costa Rica.
We have almost no native forestry left, yet we have the cheek to lecture poorer countries about deforestation. Costa Rica is now making lots of money from ecotourism because of its conservation work. Ireland’s Government and tourism sector could learn from its example.
But Ireland’s global cultural impact is astounding. When people heard we were Irish they so often greeted us with smiles, excitement and an expectation that we were bringing the craic with us. The positive sentiment of the people of the world towards Ireland is immense.
It was surreal to arrive in Ushuaia, in Argentina — the most southerly city on Earth and gateway to Antarctica — and walk into a packed bar named Dublin, which was covered in Tricolours but without anyone else there from Ireland. We take the existence of such pubs, and our wider cultural influence around the world, for granted, but there is nothing ordinary about it.
Long may we keep our unique culture and our friendliness, humour and sense of decency — and not lose it due to embracing the materialistic aspects of US culture too enthusiastically.
Cónán Ó Broin, who is from Clondalkin, in Dublin, was political director of the Labour Party and, before that, a spokesman for the Central Bank of Ireland. Fiadh Ní Dhonnchadha, who is from Maynooth, in Co Kildare, is a cartographer for Jacobs Engineering, making maps for new infrastructure projects in Ireland and abroad
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