Interview with Rubén Rolón, March 25, 2022
Project: Peace Corps: Host Country National Oral History Project
Interview Summary
Paraguay;1990 to 2007; Bee Keeping, Small Business/Cooperatives, and Municipal Development Ruben Rolon was a project manager for Peace Corps Paraguay. He received a degree from the University of Wyoming in agricultural economics. He met classmates and a Peace Corps recruiter who had been Volunteers while at the university and who introduced him to the Peace Corps. For 17 years he supervised Volunteers starting with beekeeping, small business and cooperative development, and finally municipal management. He took promising practices from Peace Corps Costa Rica (housing improvement) and Chile (municipal management) and adapted them to the Paraguayan reality. After the fall of the General Stroessner dictatorship, there was an opportunity to introduce and implement new ideas to enhance the quality of life in Paraguay. Ruben saw himself as a link between two cultures having studied in the U.S. and being native to Paraguay. He recognized discrimination that occurred in a country that thought of itself as homogeneous. He put people first over politics in development practice!Interview Accession
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Paraguay staff host country national project manager (APCD) beekeeping, small business, cooperatives municipal management University of Wyoming agricultural economics Ministry of Agriculture planning surveys coup small project assistance grant (SPA) homey market survey Peace Corps Ronald Reagan police cooperatives saving and loans policies drugs motorcycles Costa Rica house improvement Consejo de la Vivienda Housing Counsel grant dictatorship cultural link discrimination immigrants U.S. movies Volunteers of color anti-racist training recruitment orientation politics development context ICCO NGO Dutch InterAmerican Foundation (IAF)Interview Rights
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Rolón, Rubén Interview by Randolph A. Adams. 25 Mar. 2022. Lexington, KY: Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.
Rolón, R. (2022, March 25). Interview by R. A. Adams. Peace Corps: Host Country National Oral History Project. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington.
Rolón, Rubén, interview by Randolph A. Adams. March 25, 2022, Peace Corps: Host Country National Oral History Project, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.
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