Has anyone heard about this 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico that covers 8500 square kilometers (~3300 square miles) off of the coast of Texas and Louisiana?
For the latest article in Spanish, read here: http://mx.noticias.yahoo.com/zona-muerta-golfo-méxico-décadas-224500153.html
For the latest article in English, read here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110718141618.htm
And for those who want my expert summary, here it is:
Apparently this 'dead zone has been monitored for the past 25 years. It occurs in the spring and summer of every year and averages 5800 square miles. This year, it is predicted to grow as large as 9400 square miles. The dead zone occurs because of a state of hypoxia, which is a state of extremely low oxygen levels. The reason for the extremely low nitrogen levels? - a drastic increase in the levels of nitrogen, which results in algal blooms which extract the majority of the oxygen from the water, leaving little to none for any other living organisms. The increase in nitrogen levels in this part of the Gulf of Mexico has been attributed to the high levels of fertilizer runoff from the large farms in the Mid East of the United States, which empty into the Mississippi river and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.
I remember reading about this phenomenon once in an Ecology class in college. At that time (too long ago for most of you to remember), we were learning about atrophic lakes and streams, that, because of the fertilizer runoff from use of chemical fertilizers, cleared forests for cattle pasture (trees soak up nutrients from the soil - without them, these elements run off into the nearest water sources), and manure runoff from cattle grazing, were slowly diminishing in size because of the rapid growth of oxygen absorbing plants in those rivers and lakes.
So what discussions does this topic bring about?
Well, according to a 2009 Environmental Protection Agency (a government agency) article (http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html), of the over 285 million people living in the United States, only 1% claim farming as their occupation. Compare this to just 100 years ago, when over 30% of the US labor force was comprised of farmers. And yet, without giving y'all any specific numbers, despite the drastic decrease in the percentage of farmers, there has been an increase in the US population and obviously an increase in the production of food. How has this miracle occurred? Ah, the beauty of modern science (ahem, Monsanto) and clever (I mean really rich) big farm industries (Archer Daniel Midland, to name one). Thanks to government subsidized farmers who are given chemical fertilizer and pesticides, and human-replacing machines at cheap prices, we now have the ability to harvest massive quantities of food with very little human resource input. What does this mean for the earth? Apparently not much to many people in Somalia and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa who are now living in an officially declared famine (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/20/somalia-childrens-famine-media). Apparently not much for the small to mid-level Mexican farmers, who thanks to the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) cannot compete with the large US subsidized farms and so have lost their livelihoods (I'm talking about the sale of corn, a staple in the Mexican diet, and for millennia grown locally in Latin America, now being imported to those countries because it can be sold CHEAPER). Apparently not much for the rest of the world, who is seeing some of the highest food prices the world has seen. Apparently not much for the fisherman off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, who thanks to the nitrogen runoff coming from the Mississippi river (and a little oil spill in the same Gulf) cannot get a catch from an area the size of Delaware and Rhode Island. Apparently not much for the fish and crustacean species who used to make that patch of sea their home. Apparently not much for the small U.S. farmers who cannot pay their debts and are jailed for wind-blown genetically modified seeds that fall into their land). And (I would say finally here, but I'm sure I've left out some thankful recipients of big-farm) apparently not much for the 700,000 to 1.6 million homeless men, women and children living in the streets of one of the world's wealthiest countries, who, if those big farms would actually just let some people work the land instead of super cool machines, would not be so homeless...
So, where does that leave us? I guess we should just start capitalizing off the algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. I have seen amazing jewelry made out of dried and heated algae here in San Cristobal.
Ooooooor... Go to a local farmer's market. Buy some organic food. Make a really nutritious meal for you, your family, and your friends. In so doing, support small farmers in the United States. Support fish in the Gulf of Mexico. Support indigenous peasants in Mexico. Support fisherman in the southern United States. Support homeless people who will be employed to use their hand to work the land. Support yourselves by eating something that is nutritious. Support the rest of the world by reducing the power that an inflated, government supported farming industry has to control the world price of food.
Yes. I know organic food is expensive. But for those that have the money, buy it. Your consumer purchasing power affects what the market sells. And for those who don't have the money to buy organic food (and for those people that do have the money as well), march, sing, protest and petition your local government, and state legislators and state senators to support local, organic farming. There is no reason a cheesburger at McDonalds should be cheaper than a head of lettuce.
And I close.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Sustainable Development or Passive Assimilation?
The headline of one of today’s Associated Press articles provides an excellent introduction to this blog’s theme: “UN chief says sustainable development top priority.” Ban Ki-moon, who was unanimously elected to a second five-year term (beginning January 1, 2012) by the U.N. General Assembly, addressed an audience during a conference hosted by the World Trade Organization on the subject of aid for the trade process, which was launched by the WTO in 2005 to help poorer countries build trade-facilitating infrastructure. Ban’s remarks that “’the United Nations’ top priority for this year and many years beyond will have to be sustainable development’ – lifting people out of poverty while working on environmental concerns” was his only comment that veered off the topic of helping countries expand their trade.
Keeping in mind now the theme of sustainable development, I continue with another episode from my life. Setting: the colonial city of San Cristobal, situated in the highlands of the heart of the state of Chiapas, country of Mexico.
It was a brisk rainy night, as most have been since I arrived here in late May. I walked the four blocks down the cobblestone streets to Kinoki, a local café and independent movie theater house. On occasion, in one of their three small movie salons, they have nights of ‘Cine Debate’- debate film. On these occasions, it usually passes that a local or national NGO (from Mexico) will show a recently produced documentary, or the beginnings of one anyway, that highlights some event or series of happenings in Mexico that pertains to themes of human rights, development, or human security. More often than not (at least since I have been attending), the films document some struggle that various indigenous groups, located all throughout Mexico, have had trying to retain rights to ancestral land, protest a mega-development project, or continue existing in some traditional, sustainable form. After the films, the floor is opened up to the 10-30 people crammed inside a small room or rooftop tent who wish to speak their mind and heart about that matter. From what I have experienced, the people present at these debate films almost always side with the indigenous and their struggle for rights to their culture and land, and denounce the capitalist globalistic system that the government of Mexico and its constituent actors mandate that these cultures assimilate to.
Tonight’s film was about the ‘Ciudad Rural Sustentable’ (CRS), or Rural Sustainable City, of Nuevo Juan del Grijalva, whose construction was completed in 2009 in the northern municipality of Ostuacan, near the state of Tabasco. The CRS was initiated by the governor of Chiapas, Juan Sabinas, and backed by Mexican president Felipe Calderon and the federal government of Chiapas as a response to a devastating landslide caused by heavy rains in 2007 in the states of Yucatan and Chiapas in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. On November 5, 2007, the heavy rains caused a landslide that fell into the Rio Grijalva, causing a mini-tsunami that completey destroyed the village of Juan Grijalva, destroying at least 100 houses and burying at least 30 people underneath the sediment. The remaining villagers and surrounding communities rushed to higher lands to wait out the effects of this natural disaster. The government saw the rural sustainable city, the first of its kind in the world, as a way to help the communities whose residents’ lives were disrupted by this natural disaster and also as a way to fulfill the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim to cure the world of all its ailments, essentially.
The film was actually a series of three short films. The first was a promotional video produced by the government in 2009 soon after the 49 families from the 11 displaced communities had been relocated to this new town. The film showed spectacular footage of beautiful cookie-cut houses, paved streets, grand factories, and courtyards filled with kids playing basketball and soccer. The interviews it broadcast showed kids happy to be in school, parents happy to have a hospital with medicine within walking distance, adults and youth alike happy to have jobs, paved roads, and basketball courts. The promotional film boasted these things about the CRS: equality for women (as now they were offered jobs, whereas before they stayed in the home), reforestation projects in the areas surrounding the city, drains connected to a sewer in every house, a potable water processing station, one teacher per subject, a hospital with medicine, etc. The list of the glories of this El Dorado continued on for some time and the people that appeared in the interviews would really have made you believe that it was everything it boasted.
The next clip was from 2011. It was a news story about eight farmers from Grijalva who had manifested themselves in a protest, demanding compensation and commitments that the government had promised the people after the disaster in 2007. These men had been arrested and imprisoned by state authorities for interfering with the project that was taking place on their old land. The clip showed the families of the detained men protesting in the streets of their new city, demanding their husbands, fathers and sons be released from jail for trying to claim what they had been promised. The news clip ended with a state authority trying to pacify the emotional crowd, giving some excuse as to why these men could not be immediately released. Finally, after three months imprisoned for their protest, the eight farmers were released on June 22, 2011. The clip provided a brief glimpse into the criminalization of the indigenous populations that is occurring in Mexico and all throughout Central and South America, all for the desire to protect and retain authority of what was once theirs.
The next clip, again from 2011, provided video footage of Nuevo Juan del Grijalva, this time from a hill outside of the gates of the city. This time, the footage showed empty streets, empty factories, and empty sport courts. Over the course of several audio interviews while the video spanned what appeared to be this deserted city, the audience heard the accounts of residents from the city, two years after its founding. It turns out the residents aren’t so happy about their new sustainable city. Sure there are factories, but what do these coffee and cacao farmers know about fixing bicycles and growing roses in a greenhouse? The jobs provided are not really providing jobs. Point one: the planners of this new Eden did not consult the recipients of the project. The government put in factories and jobs that (a) the residents did not know how to do, (b) the residents did not want to do, and (c) was completely immersed in an economic system that these rural indigenous folk were not a part of and definitely do not want to be a part of. The residents were now living in houses with bathrooms inside the same walls where they slept, in places where they needed to pay for water and electricity, and there was no land to have their ‘milpa’ where they could grow their corn and beans - instead they had to buy food from the supermarket. The lack of flow of money, due to the lack or work, has made it so that people cannot pay for their electricity and cannot buy their essentials. Point two: this development project attempted to give these peasants a good life and cure them of their poverty by giving them a hefty push into a foreign culture that relies on consumption to drive an economic system that is really not whatsoever sustainable. And who knows what will become of their old land – mined for minerals? Damned for electricity or water?
Context: Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico. In Chiapas alone there are over 14,000 communities with less than 100 people. For a government trying to rid poverty (or trying to exploit the country’s most natural-resource rich state), what are your options? For the 400,000,000 pesos (40 million U.S. buckaroos) that it cost to build this rural sustainable city, one wonders how many clinics could have been built centralized around those 14,000 communities, how many secondary schools or high schools could have built (if that’s really what the people want), how many nurses’ or doctors’ salaries could have been paid, or how many potable water systems could have been constructed. But no, instead we end up with a Rural Sustainable City.
The comments from the audience afterward focused on several debates. Debate one: bad planning on the part of the government. The government should have provided more capacity building so that the people would know what to do with a greenhouse of roses and bicycle workshop. That way, they could actually work and get the money they need to buy their essentials. Argument: None of the people in the town have bicycles or want roses. The town is so isolated that they have no market to sell these to anyone else. What was it really bad planning on the part of the government? Or was it actually a well-planned attempt to capitalize on a natural disaster and rapidly attempt to assimilate 11 indigenous communities into a capitalistic economic system based on consumption?
Debate two: What is really sustainable about a system based on consumption anyway? The way the consumptive world runs now, the United States alone needs 5 Earths to satisfy its appetite for all things shiny and new. The environment, that little system that economists refuse to believe that the economy lies within, simply cannot support this consumptive society. Un-renewable resources, such as oil, minerals, water, and air, are being depleted to the point we don’t have more to use or contaminated to the point that consuming them is detrimental to our health. Renewable resources, such as forests, animals, humans and all the rich biodiversity that lies atop the earth’s crust and under the oceans and rivers are being mistreated and unsustainably harvested to the point that forests are disappearing and species are going extinct. In short, the audience was very credulous as to whether or not putting these indigenous people into this economic system was really a ‘sustainable’ solution.
I left the showing room a bit early, my mind already full with thought. On the walk back home I stopped by the plaza in front of the main cathedral, where the night before I had played guitar with several indigenous youth which happened to be in the plaza as well. That night I learned briefly that Santiago, one of the youth, was camping out in the plaza indefinitely because he, his family, and four other families were displaced. Thus I returned to the plaza the next night, after the cine debate, to the little encampment in front of the central cathedral in San Cristobal’s main square, filled with tourists and locals alike, to find out more about this group of indigenous.
After finding one man who could speak Spanish, I soon learned the story of these five families, totaling 33 people, including 23 children, who had been displaced for the third time since the year 2000. This last displacement occurred before dawn on the morning of July 4th, just 16 days ago in the community of Las Conchitas, in the municipality of Salto de Agua, bordering the municipality of Palenque, famous for its millenia-old Mayan ruins. From their description, ten local paramilitaries armed with rifles entered their little village and began beating and torturing the residents. With nothing to fight back with and nowhere to go, all five families fled for their lives. With the help of the Frente Nacional de la Lucha por el Socialismo (National Front for the FIght for Socialism), of which these families are members, they made their way to San Cristobal and set up camp atop a stage that the municipal authorities were erecting for some other event.
Although they have been harassed by the local police to vacate the area, I do not believe the state government wants to overtly throw another wrench in their lives. According to the people of Las Conchitas, the paramilitaries that forced them to flee their village were given arms and fully supported by the state government. So there they camp, in the central plaza, encouraging the thousands of passersby to help demand justice and land from the government. The argue that there is plenty of land in Chiapas, and it is the government's responsibility to provide them with what it can. They hand out flyers describing the incident that forced them to flee their houses, and asking people for support of any kind, whether it be a tent or some food.
I finally returned home after promising to bring them some soup the next night, my mind that much fuller and my heart that much heavier. The two events of the night, the debate film and my talk with the displaced indigenous, seemed very much connected. In the former case, I see a failed development project initiated by the government that essentially tried to passively push 11 indigenous communities into a western economic system by masking it in disaster relief and alleviation of poverty. In the latter case, I see a forceful displacement of 1 community covertly supported by the government trying to criminalize the indigenous fight a human right to land.
The plight of the people whose interviews I saw in the film and whose voices and faces I heard in the plaza stayed with me all night. It was a sleepless night, and all the images and thoughts of development and economy and conflict and poverty mulled over and over in my head. I tried to count sheep jumping over a fence, but the pasture they jumped to was either flooded and destroyed or their owners were beaten and displaced. I thought often of the people sleeping in the plaza underneath a tarp, trying to find cover from the cold and rain of these summer months in the highlands of Chiapas. I finally fell asleep as I saw the fist light of dawn creep underneath my curtain, which falls two inches too short to cover the entire window…
I open the floor to discussion. I would love to hear new perspectives, different points of view, a way to move forward… How do you solve ‘poverty’ in Chiapas in 14,000 communities of less than 100 people? How does a country incorporate an indigenous way of life, a different way of life, into its borders? Does indicating ‘poverty’ by measurements of salary per head automatically place these indigenous in a losing battle for their existence? Who has the right to own the land of the Earth? Is it the responsibility of those who have to share with those who have not? If not, what responsibility has a government to provide for its country's inhabitants?
Keeping in mind now the theme of sustainable development, I continue with another episode from my life. Setting: the colonial city of San Cristobal, situated in the highlands of the heart of the state of Chiapas, country of Mexico.
It was a brisk rainy night, as most have been since I arrived here in late May. I walked the four blocks down the cobblestone streets to Kinoki, a local café and independent movie theater house. On occasion, in one of their three small movie salons, they have nights of ‘Cine Debate’- debate film. On these occasions, it usually passes that a local or national NGO (from Mexico) will show a recently produced documentary, or the beginnings of one anyway, that highlights some event or series of happenings in Mexico that pertains to themes of human rights, development, or human security. More often than not (at least since I have been attending), the films document some struggle that various indigenous groups, located all throughout Mexico, have had trying to retain rights to ancestral land, protest a mega-development project, or continue existing in some traditional, sustainable form. After the films, the floor is opened up to the 10-30 people crammed inside a small room or rooftop tent who wish to speak their mind and heart about that matter. From what I have experienced, the people present at these debate films almost always side with the indigenous and their struggle for rights to their culture and land, and denounce the capitalist globalistic system that the government of Mexico and its constituent actors mandate that these cultures assimilate to.
Tonight’s film was about the ‘Ciudad Rural Sustentable’ (CRS), or Rural Sustainable City, of Nuevo Juan del Grijalva, whose construction was completed in 2009 in the northern municipality of Ostuacan, near the state of Tabasco. The CRS was initiated by the governor of Chiapas, Juan Sabinas, and backed by Mexican president Felipe Calderon and the federal government of Chiapas as a response to a devastating landslide caused by heavy rains in 2007 in the states of Yucatan and Chiapas in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. On November 5, 2007, the heavy rains caused a landslide that fell into the Rio Grijalva, causing a mini-tsunami that completey destroyed the village of Juan Grijalva, destroying at least 100 houses and burying at least 30 people underneath the sediment. The remaining villagers and surrounding communities rushed to higher lands to wait out the effects of this natural disaster. The government saw the rural sustainable city, the first of its kind in the world, as a way to help the communities whose residents’ lives were disrupted by this natural disaster and also as a way to fulfill the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim to cure the world of all its ailments, essentially.
The film was actually a series of three short films. The first was a promotional video produced by the government in 2009 soon after the 49 families from the 11 displaced communities had been relocated to this new town. The film showed spectacular footage of beautiful cookie-cut houses, paved streets, grand factories, and courtyards filled with kids playing basketball and soccer. The interviews it broadcast showed kids happy to be in school, parents happy to have a hospital with medicine within walking distance, adults and youth alike happy to have jobs, paved roads, and basketball courts. The promotional film boasted these things about the CRS: equality for women (as now they were offered jobs, whereas before they stayed in the home), reforestation projects in the areas surrounding the city, drains connected to a sewer in every house, a potable water processing station, one teacher per subject, a hospital with medicine, etc. The list of the glories of this El Dorado continued on for some time and the people that appeared in the interviews would really have made you believe that it was everything it boasted.
The next clip was from 2011. It was a news story about eight farmers from Grijalva who had manifested themselves in a protest, demanding compensation and commitments that the government had promised the people after the disaster in 2007. These men had been arrested and imprisoned by state authorities for interfering with the project that was taking place on their old land. The clip showed the families of the detained men protesting in the streets of their new city, demanding their husbands, fathers and sons be released from jail for trying to claim what they had been promised. The news clip ended with a state authority trying to pacify the emotional crowd, giving some excuse as to why these men could not be immediately released. Finally, after three months imprisoned for their protest, the eight farmers were released on June 22, 2011. The clip provided a brief glimpse into the criminalization of the indigenous populations that is occurring in Mexico and all throughout Central and South America, all for the desire to protect and retain authority of what was once theirs.
The next clip, again from 2011, provided video footage of Nuevo Juan del Grijalva, this time from a hill outside of the gates of the city. This time, the footage showed empty streets, empty factories, and empty sport courts. Over the course of several audio interviews while the video spanned what appeared to be this deserted city, the audience heard the accounts of residents from the city, two years after its founding. It turns out the residents aren’t so happy about their new sustainable city. Sure there are factories, but what do these coffee and cacao farmers know about fixing bicycles and growing roses in a greenhouse? The jobs provided are not really providing jobs. Point one: the planners of this new Eden did not consult the recipients of the project. The government put in factories and jobs that (a) the residents did not know how to do, (b) the residents did not want to do, and (c) was completely immersed in an economic system that these rural indigenous folk were not a part of and definitely do not want to be a part of. The residents were now living in houses with bathrooms inside the same walls where they slept, in places where they needed to pay for water and electricity, and there was no land to have their ‘milpa’ where they could grow their corn and beans - instead they had to buy food from the supermarket. The lack of flow of money, due to the lack or work, has made it so that people cannot pay for their electricity and cannot buy their essentials. Point two: this development project attempted to give these peasants a good life and cure them of their poverty by giving them a hefty push into a foreign culture that relies on consumption to drive an economic system that is really not whatsoever sustainable. And who knows what will become of their old land – mined for minerals? Damned for electricity or water?
Context: Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico. In Chiapas alone there are over 14,000 communities with less than 100 people. For a government trying to rid poverty (or trying to exploit the country’s most natural-resource rich state), what are your options? For the 400,000,000 pesos (40 million U.S. buckaroos) that it cost to build this rural sustainable city, one wonders how many clinics could have been built centralized around those 14,000 communities, how many secondary schools or high schools could have built (if that’s really what the people want), how many nurses’ or doctors’ salaries could have been paid, or how many potable water systems could have been constructed. But no, instead we end up with a Rural Sustainable City.
The comments from the audience afterward focused on several debates. Debate one: bad planning on the part of the government. The government should have provided more capacity building so that the people would know what to do with a greenhouse of roses and bicycle workshop. That way, they could actually work and get the money they need to buy their essentials. Argument: None of the people in the town have bicycles or want roses. The town is so isolated that they have no market to sell these to anyone else. What was it really bad planning on the part of the government? Or was it actually a well-planned attempt to capitalize on a natural disaster and rapidly attempt to assimilate 11 indigenous communities into a capitalistic economic system based on consumption?
Debate two: What is really sustainable about a system based on consumption anyway? The way the consumptive world runs now, the United States alone needs 5 Earths to satisfy its appetite for all things shiny and new. The environment, that little system that economists refuse to believe that the economy lies within, simply cannot support this consumptive society. Un-renewable resources, such as oil, minerals, water, and air, are being depleted to the point we don’t have more to use or contaminated to the point that consuming them is detrimental to our health. Renewable resources, such as forests, animals, humans and all the rich biodiversity that lies atop the earth’s crust and under the oceans and rivers are being mistreated and unsustainably harvested to the point that forests are disappearing and species are going extinct. In short, the audience was very credulous as to whether or not putting these indigenous people into this economic system was really a ‘sustainable’ solution.
I left the showing room a bit early, my mind already full with thought. On the walk back home I stopped by the plaza in front of the main cathedral, where the night before I had played guitar with several indigenous youth which happened to be in the plaza as well. That night I learned briefly that Santiago, one of the youth, was camping out in the plaza indefinitely because he, his family, and four other families were displaced. Thus I returned to the plaza the next night, after the cine debate, to the little encampment in front of the central cathedral in San Cristobal’s main square, filled with tourists and locals alike, to find out more about this group of indigenous.
After finding one man who could speak Spanish, I soon learned the story of these five families, totaling 33 people, including 23 children, who had been displaced for the third time since the year 2000. This last displacement occurred before dawn on the morning of July 4th, just 16 days ago in the community of Las Conchitas, in the municipality of Salto de Agua, bordering the municipality of Palenque, famous for its millenia-old Mayan ruins. From their description, ten local paramilitaries armed with rifles entered their little village and began beating and torturing the residents. With nothing to fight back with and nowhere to go, all five families fled for their lives. With the help of the Frente Nacional de la Lucha por el Socialismo (National Front for the FIght for Socialism), of which these families are members, they made their way to San Cristobal and set up camp atop a stage that the municipal authorities were erecting for some other event.
Although they have been harassed by the local police to vacate the area, I do not believe the state government wants to overtly throw another wrench in their lives. According to the people of Las Conchitas, the paramilitaries that forced them to flee their village were given arms and fully supported by the state government. So there they camp, in the central plaza, encouraging the thousands of passersby to help demand justice and land from the government. The argue that there is plenty of land in Chiapas, and it is the government's responsibility to provide them with what it can. They hand out flyers describing the incident that forced them to flee their houses, and asking people for support of any kind, whether it be a tent or some food.
I finally returned home after promising to bring them some soup the next night, my mind that much fuller and my heart that much heavier. The two events of the night, the debate film and my talk with the displaced indigenous, seemed very much connected. In the former case, I see a failed development project initiated by the government that essentially tried to passively push 11 indigenous communities into a western economic system by masking it in disaster relief and alleviation of poverty. In the latter case, I see a forceful displacement of 1 community covertly supported by the government trying to criminalize the indigenous fight a human right to land.
The plight of the people whose interviews I saw in the film and whose voices and faces I heard in the plaza stayed with me all night. It was a sleepless night, and all the images and thoughts of development and economy and conflict and poverty mulled over and over in my head. I tried to count sheep jumping over a fence, but the pasture they jumped to was either flooded and destroyed or their owners were beaten and displaced. I thought often of the people sleeping in the plaza underneath a tarp, trying to find cover from the cold and rain of these summer months in the highlands of Chiapas. I finally fell asleep as I saw the fist light of dawn creep underneath my curtain, which falls two inches too short to cover the entire window…
I open the floor to discussion. I would love to hear new perspectives, different points of view, a way to move forward… How do you solve ‘poverty’ in Chiapas in 14,000 communities of less than 100 people? How does a country incorporate an indigenous way of life, a different way of life, into its borders? Does indicating ‘poverty’ by measurements of salary per head automatically place these indigenous in a losing battle for their existence? Who has the right to own the land of the Earth? Is it the responsibility of those who have to share with those who have not? If not, what responsibility has a government to provide for its country's inhabitants?
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Chris Goes to the Market
The rumbling in his tummy got Chris thinking he was hungry. Looking in the basket on the shelf where he kept his food, he realized there was not much there with which to make a yummy dinner. Grabbing the worn yellow bag that he bought when he first arrived in town, he stepped outside and made the five block walk to the local market, skipping over puddles in the cobblestone street so he wouldn’t get his feet wet.
He already had a meal in mind when he reached the market, and only needed a couple more ingredients. Ducking under the tarps that halfway kept out the everyday rain from the narrow walkways below, Chris made his way over to the little corner of the market he had gotten to know well since he had arrived in the new town. He liked this section of the market because he knew that most of the food sold in the little stalls was grown without using any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. How did he know? Well the tomatoes were smaller than the ones he’d seen sold at the supermarkets. Sometimes they weren’t even oval or round; same with the carrots, same with the chard, and same with the broccoli. Chris liked to eat what people were calling organic food. He had read some stories about how the chemicals used in the big farms are absorbed into the food and then eaten by people! He’d also heard about how these chemicals leak into the nearby rivers and streams, polluting the water that people use to clean and drink, and harming the rest of the plants and animals that use that water as well. Chris liked animals. He liked to look at them and pet them and play with them, if they’d let him. He also liked to climb trees and lay in the grass, and he got a sad feeling thinking about the trees and grass and animals dying. Not only that, but liked feeling healthy so that he could climb those trees and play in those streams, and wanted his friends to be healthy too so that he’d have some people to play with – that’s why he only tried to eat the natural food that didn’t have chemicals in it.
Chris loved the market. He felt alive walking through the narrow allies, ducking his head under the wet tarps and dodging puddles and people. He was the only one that had to duck his head – everyone else seemed just the right size to walk underneath without having to bend their back. There were so many people, so many colors, so many sounds, and so many smells. He felt excited in all of his senses. Each stall had different things to sell. One stall had a large collection of some the most amazing flowers he’d ever seen.
Chris passed by another stall with many sacks filled to the brim and then some with all sorts of colored beans. He imagined he was looking at a crayon box, or that he was in front of a life-size board game.
Then he passed by the fruit stands; there were pineapples, apples, bananas, guayabas, coconuts, grapes, papayas, and more different colored mangoes than he’d ever seen before. Each bucket of fruit was stacked in a perfect pyramid. The women, dressed in beautiful colored clothing, stood behind the stand, proud of their fruit pyramid making skills.
Finally, Chris arrived at one of the many vegetable stands. All of the big leafy green plants lay piled close together, and he carefully picked out the vegetables he wanted for his meal. A handful of chard – 2 pesos. A head of broccoli – 5 pesos. One of the things Chris loved too about the market was that the organic food was often times cheaper than the other food that had chemicals in it. He wondered why people would pay more for the food that harmed their bodies and the Earth. That didn’t seem right to Chris. And then he thought about the stores where he bought his food back in his home town. The organic food was always way more expensive than the other food. He wondered why the organic food in this market was cheaper, and also if the organic food in the stores back home would ever be able to sold for cheaper than the other food.
On his way back home, Chris passed by many other sights. There was a clown putting on a show for many people gathered together in the central square. Women dressed in beautiful shirts and skirts walked around offering people colorful scarves and belts. Someone leaned against a street light and beat a drum. Chris sat in the central square, watching all the different people and listening to all the different languages that people were speaking.
After a long while, the grumbling in Chris’ tummy reminded him of why he had left his house in the first place, so he picked up the worn yellow bag that held his fresh vegetables and walked the three blocks down the cobblestone streets back to his house to cook his dinner. Later, while Chris was eating his food, he felt very grateful to have a market with such colorful sights and sounds and such good food so close by. Everyone should have a market like this close by, he thought.
He already had a meal in mind when he reached the market, and only needed a couple more ingredients. Ducking under the tarps that halfway kept out the everyday rain from the narrow walkways below, Chris made his way over to the little corner of the market he had gotten to know well since he had arrived in the new town. He liked this section of the market because he knew that most of the food sold in the little stalls was grown without using any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. How did he know? Well the tomatoes were smaller than the ones he’d seen sold at the supermarkets. Sometimes they weren’t even oval or round; same with the carrots, same with the chard, and same with the broccoli. Chris liked to eat what people were calling organic food. He had read some stories about how the chemicals used in the big farms are absorbed into the food and then eaten by people! He’d also heard about how these chemicals leak into the nearby rivers and streams, polluting the water that people use to clean and drink, and harming the rest of the plants and animals that use that water as well. Chris liked animals. He liked to look at them and pet them and play with them, if they’d let him. He also liked to climb trees and lay in the grass, and he got a sad feeling thinking about the trees and grass and animals dying. Not only that, but liked feeling healthy so that he could climb those trees and play in those streams, and wanted his friends to be healthy too so that he’d have some people to play with – that’s why he only tried to eat the natural food that didn’t have chemicals in it.
Chris loved the market. He felt alive walking through the narrow allies, ducking his head under the wet tarps and dodging puddles and people. He was the only one that had to duck his head – everyone else seemed just the right size to walk underneath without having to bend their back. There were so many people, so many colors, so many sounds, and so many smells. He felt excited in all of his senses. Each stall had different things to sell. One stall had a large collection of some the most amazing flowers he’d ever seen.
Chris passed by another stall with many sacks filled to the brim and then some with all sorts of colored beans. He imagined he was looking at a crayon box, or that he was in front of a life-size board game.
Then he passed by the fruit stands; there were pineapples, apples, bananas, guayabas, coconuts, grapes, papayas, and more different colored mangoes than he’d ever seen before. Each bucket of fruit was stacked in a perfect pyramid. The women, dressed in beautiful colored clothing, stood behind the stand, proud of their fruit pyramid making skills.
Finally, Chris arrived at one of the many vegetable stands. All of the big leafy green plants lay piled close together, and he carefully picked out the vegetables he wanted for his meal. A handful of chard – 2 pesos. A head of broccoli – 5 pesos. One of the things Chris loved too about the market was that the organic food was often times cheaper than the other food that had chemicals in it. He wondered why people would pay more for the food that harmed their bodies and the Earth. That didn’t seem right to Chris. And then he thought about the stores where he bought his food back in his home town. The organic food was always way more expensive than the other food. He wondered why the organic food in this market was cheaper, and also if the organic food in the stores back home would ever be able to sold for cheaper than the other food.
On his way back home, Chris passed by many other sights. There was a clown putting on a show for many people gathered together in the central square. Women dressed in beautiful shirts and skirts walked around offering people colorful scarves and belts. Someone leaned against a street light and beat a drum. Chris sat in the central square, watching all the different people and listening to all the different languages that people were speaking.
After a long while, the grumbling in Chris’ tummy reminded him of why he had left his house in the first place, so he picked up the worn yellow bag that held his fresh vegetables and walked the three blocks down the cobblestone streets back to his house to cook his dinner. Later, while Chris was eating his food, he felt very grateful to have a market with such colorful sights and sounds and such good food so close by. Everyone should have a market like this close by, he thought.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Maria Vazquez Gomez
Maria Vazquez Gomez is forty years old. She was 27 years old when the massacre in Acteal, her home community, occurred on Dec. 22, 1997. Included in the 45 people that were killed were her husband, her mother, her sister and her son. Her nephew, orphaned by the massacre, is the same man, Manuel, left mentally stunted, whom recounted the story of the massacre to me and was able to create humor amid pain, as I recounted in a previous blog post. Left without a family, Maria has had to attend to the cafetal (coffee farm) and the milpa (the garden where maize, beans, squash and other veggies grow) by herself for the past 13 years.
After the massacre, a plethora of missionaries, NGO's, and caring individuals came into the area to provide solidarity and support. They organized a women's group, which was put in control of a small 'tienda de abarrotes,' or kind of like a corner store, and of making crafts to sell nationally and abroad to provide some extra financial assistance through the rough times. Although there were twenty women at first to help out with the cooperative store, there remains only two, Maria and another, because the rest of the women found it too difficult to balance their time between their duties at home and at the store. As fierce storms and heavy rains erode the soil on the steep cliff on which the store is perched, the floor has begun to crack and fall. The store seems truly precariously perched.
Yesterday afternoon, I had the opportunity to visit with Maria outside her store. Sitting in the shade provided by the laminate roof, she recounted to me her history, and her feelings about being involved in the cooperative Maya Vinic as a single woman. She spoke of the difficulties of producing coffee to sell - being shorter and physically weaker than a man, much of the work that her husband would have done she now has to pay workers to do. This includes clearing the brush, collecting and constructing composts for the natural fertilizer, chopping firewood with which to cook every day. Her involvement in Maya Vinic, which is committed to growing organic coffee, means using chemical fertilizer, insecticide, and herbicide to clear the land is out of the question. As most of the women have left the store cooperative, she spends much of her time there, selling pasta, snacks, drinks and any other small daily items to passer-byers on the street. This she does, constantly wondering when the floor is going to collapse and she will lose half of her store.
As I finished up my interview, I couldn't help but feel sympathy for Maria. I wondered what I could possibly do to help her situation. I have committed some time to her next week to do some work on her cafetal and chop some wood for her. In the meantime, I told her I might try to sell some of crafts that she sews and knits by hand. Below are some examples of shirts and bookmarks that Maria makes. She told me she would need around 3000 pesos to get the resources to rebuild the store. The shirt with the complex border sells for 150 pesos (US $15) (see picture, below), the one with the less complex border 100 pesos (US $10) (see picture, above); the bookmarks sell for 10 pesos (US $1) each (see picture, below). If you think you might like to purchase a shirt or bookmark, let me know and I will put in the order and bring them home with me when I come home. If purchasing a shirt, please specify whether this is for a women, man, girl, boy, baby, dog, cat. Any specific requests in color can be obliged. All is made with cotton. As the fair trade middle man, I will give absolutely all proceeds directly to Maria. For all the businessmen/women out there, I have absolutely no problem with resale - buy 100 bookmarks and sell them at a local bake sale or outside your place of worship. You can send the money via the paypal link provided on the side of my blog. Thank you for your generosity!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
(Un-) (De-) Re-education
With the passage of time, in the mountains of Chiapas, bits of local knowledge begin to trickle into my path. With these simple little facts, my understanding of the indigenous culture here continues to grow, and it forces me to question the system in which I have grown up. I begin to un-educate. I begin to de-educate. I begin to re-educate myself.
On Maize. It is widely accepted that maize production led to the settling of natives in Meso-America and to the transition from nomadic tribes to settled communities. The Maya are often called the 'people of maize.' Maize fields dominate the landscape. Mayan legend has their people actually being born as the fruit of the maize plant. This makes sense after discovering that maize takes nine months from the time it is planted as a seed to the time its fruit can be harvested, the same amount of time as a human embryo.
On Language. The more I speak with the associates of the cooperative and the other community members, the more I realize how important language is. Their language, whichever it may be (Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chontal, Chol, etc...), is a part of who they are. This is not something particular to the region - everywhere in the world, our language gives away our culture. Something I learned recently: When I ask 'how are you?', they do not know how to respond. Rather, in Tzotzil, 'how are you' is better translated 'how is your heart?" For the Tzotzil, answering my questions in Spanish is like not speaking from the heart. This was compared to me telling a lie. When I tell a lie - I am not speaking from the heart. This makes me wonder about all of the information I am gathering in my interviews...
On Development. Beginning with the scientific revolution in the 17th century, progress came to be correlated with fixed natural laws in physics, chemistry, and biology. Progress was the accumulated understanding of these static scientific laws and the manipulation of nature to further human achievement. This sense of progress paralleled a new historical science that gave weight to a linear perspective of time. In this new perspective, life took on a new meaning - something that was situated in the context of past and future events - and one could now regard the past as ‘old’ and the future as ‘new.’ This led to the displacement of the past as a source of authority, meaning that progress was separating one’s current condition from their old condition. Perhaps this had to do with a cultural will to separate from the darkness of the Middle Ages. Here in Acteal, and in many other cultures, this change in thinking never took place. There is no distinction between the past, the present and the future. One can think of the Mayan calendar as a set of gears, spinning against each other, each day, month and year set by the linking of clogs on this ever-revolving, ever-cyclical expanse of time. When the elders tell stories of their childhood, it is in the present tense, as if it is occurring to them at that very moment.
The definition of development as bettering one's condition, progressing, separating from the past, holds no value here. What is important is the now. The rain, the trees, the maize, the family. I wonder if these two vastly different ways of looking at life can coexist. Can the always forward-looking, capitalistic, globalizing economy create a space for these cultures and societies to exist? Can the Mexican government allow these people to retain the control of the land, and use it how they please? Can our Western society survive on the path it is walking with the resources that it already has and has taken, or do we need more? Should the communities change their way of thinking and secede their land and their culture to make way for mega-development projects aimed at specialization, urbanization, and consumption? Are conventional education systems put in place in these communities really a step in the right direction, or do they have their own education systems that have allowed them to exist on this land much longer than we have been here? Can we coexist, or does one society need to change?
On Maize. It is widely accepted that maize production led to the settling of natives in Meso-America and to the transition from nomadic tribes to settled communities. The Maya are often called the 'people of maize.' Maize fields dominate the landscape. Mayan legend has their people actually being born as the fruit of the maize plant. This makes sense after discovering that maize takes nine months from the time it is planted as a seed to the time its fruit can be harvested, the same amount of time as a human embryo.
On Language. The more I speak with the associates of the cooperative and the other community members, the more I realize how important language is. Their language, whichever it may be (Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chontal, Chol, etc...), is a part of who they are. This is not something particular to the region - everywhere in the world, our language gives away our culture. Something I learned recently: When I ask 'how are you?', they do not know how to respond. Rather, in Tzotzil, 'how are you' is better translated 'how is your heart?" For the Tzotzil, answering my questions in Spanish is like not speaking from the heart. This was compared to me telling a lie. When I tell a lie - I am not speaking from the heart. This makes me wonder about all of the information I am gathering in my interviews...
On Development. Beginning with the scientific revolution in the 17th century, progress came to be correlated with fixed natural laws in physics, chemistry, and biology. Progress was the accumulated understanding of these static scientific laws and the manipulation of nature to further human achievement. This sense of progress paralleled a new historical science that gave weight to a linear perspective of time. In this new perspective, life took on a new meaning - something that was situated in the context of past and future events - and one could now regard the past as ‘old’ and the future as ‘new.’ This led to the displacement of the past as a source of authority, meaning that progress was separating one’s current condition from their old condition. Perhaps this had to do with a cultural will to separate from the darkness of the Middle Ages. Here in Acteal, and in many other cultures, this change in thinking never took place. There is no distinction between the past, the present and the future. One can think of the Mayan calendar as a set of gears, spinning against each other, each day, month and year set by the linking of clogs on this ever-revolving, ever-cyclical expanse of time. When the elders tell stories of their childhood, it is in the present tense, as if it is occurring to them at that very moment.
The definition of development as bettering one's condition, progressing, separating from the past, holds no value here. What is important is the now. The rain, the trees, the maize, the family. I wonder if these two vastly different ways of looking at life can coexist. Can the always forward-looking, capitalistic, globalizing economy create a space for these cultures and societies to exist? Can the Mexican government allow these people to retain the control of the land, and use it how they please? Can our Western society survive on the path it is walking with the resources that it already has and has taken, or do we need more? Should the communities change their way of thinking and secede their land and their culture to make way for mega-development projects aimed at specialization, urbanization, and consumption? Are conventional education systems put in place in these communities really a step in the right direction, or do they have their own education systems that have allowed them to exist on this land much longer than we have been here? Can we coexist, or does one society need to change?
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Humor Amid Pain
Two nights ago I took the twenty minute walk into the town of Acteal from the Maya Vinic compound, on the outskirts of the same town. The views looking northwest to peak after peak in these highlands of Chiapas were breathtaking, as the sun was going down and the clouds began to alight with various oranges, yellows, and reds. I finally came upon the sacred ground along the main road where the monument to those 45 women and children killed in the massacre of 1997. The monument, as I mentioned before, took the form of a candle, whose melting wax formed the ghostly bodies of those killed. Apparently, it was fashioned after one presented in Tiananmen Square to honor those killed in that massacre in China.
I walked down a steep flight of stairs to a leveled piece of land along the slope. There was an open auditorium, with five or six half-circles of concrete steps/seats, that faced a level surface where there were a couple wooden crosses and some vinyl signs hanging from the wooden frames of the tin roof above. The signs spoke of the struggle for peace and justice. As I approached a small church to the side of this amphitheater, a young man approached me. With the softest of voices and a dazzled look in his eye, he introduced himself to me and shook my hand. He asked what I was doing there and when I responded that I was only exploring and was going to pay my respects in the church, he asked if he could join.
Still a little credulous of who this guy was, I allowed him to come with me and we entered the barren church and sat there in silence for a little while. After several minutes, I got up off of my knees (there were no chairs in the church) and proceeded outside. He followed and asked me if I would like to visit the old church. I said sure, and he took me around back to the edge of the leveled land, behind the new church, where there stood a very small hut, made of wooden planks taken directly from a cut of trees, bark and all, and an earthen floor. Through a very small door we entered and sat there on a pew, taking in the surroundings.
After a little bit, the man, Manuel, began to recount the story of the day of the massacre. He pointed out to me the bullet holes that were still present in the wooden planks that made up the walls. He told me how nine of his family members had died that day. He told me how at the end of the shooting, he was buried under three of his siblings, shot through the head and chest, dying above him. I wondered if the bullet hole sized scar in his forehead was a token from that day, and whether or not this token was what now affected his soft, almost inaudible speech. Manuel told me a story of the last words that his sister spoke to him; of the two things she requested of him: to remember to smile, and to take care of his parents and those in the community. Little did she know that their parents died as well that day.
It had been a long day for me, and the emotion of my day and of Manuel's story got to me - I began to choke up with tears. As we sat there, outside the old church, standing over the beautiful scene of the sunset and the mountains, and this land where the people have been nothing but warm and welcoming to me, I wondered where such pain, misery and evil could possibly come from. Sensing my despair, Manuel pulled me close to him and we embraced for a moment. Holding true to the second favor that his sister had asked, he told me not to fret. He then told me a joke to cheer me up. That Manuel could look back on those moments in his life and have the spirit to encourage and bring cheer to another is something I will never forget. I will never forget that moment, that church, that man. I'm not exactly sure why Manuel happened to be walking in that space that day the same time as I, but I have a feeling it was no coincidence that he was there to touch my heart, and touch my life - and possibly mine his.
I walked down a steep flight of stairs to a leveled piece of land along the slope. There was an open auditorium, with five or six half-circles of concrete steps/seats, that faced a level surface where there were a couple wooden crosses and some vinyl signs hanging from the wooden frames of the tin roof above. The signs spoke of the struggle for peace and justice. As I approached a small church to the side of this amphitheater, a young man approached me. With the softest of voices and a dazzled look in his eye, he introduced himself to me and shook my hand. He asked what I was doing there and when I responded that I was only exploring and was going to pay my respects in the church, he asked if he could join.
Still a little credulous of who this guy was, I allowed him to come with me and we entered the barren church and sat there in silence for a little while. After several minutes, I got up off of my knees (there were no chairs in the church) and proceeded outside. He followed and asked me if I would like to visit the old church. I said sure, and he took me around back to the edge of the leveled land, behind the new church, where there stood a very small hut, made of wooden planks taken directly from a cut of trees, bark and all, and an earthen floor. Through a very small door we entered and sat there on a pew, taking in the surroundings.
After a little bit, the man, Manuel, began to recount the story of the day of the massacre. He pointed out to me the bullet holes that were still present in the wooden planks that made up the walls. He told me how nine of his family members had died that day. He told me how at the end of the shooting, he was buried under three of his siblings, shot through the head and chest, dying above him. I wondered if the bullet hole sized scar in his forehead was a token from that day, and whether or not this token was what now affected his soft, almost inaudible speech. Manuel told me a story of the last words that his sister spoke to him; of the two things she requested of him: to remember to smile, and to take care of his parents and those in the community. Little did she know that their parents died as well that day.
It had been a long day for me, and the emotion of my day and of Manuel's story got to me - I began to choke up with tears. As we sat there, outside the old church, standing over the beautiful scene of the sunset and the mountains, and this land where the people have been nothing but warm and welcoming to me, I wondered where such pain, misery and evil could possibly come from. Sensing my despair, Manuel pulled me close to him and we embraced for a moment. Holding true to the second favor that his sister had asked, he told me not to fret. He then told me a joke to cheer me up. That Manuel could look back on those moments in his life and have the spirit to encourage and bring cheer to another is something I will never forget. I will never forget that moment, that church, that man. I'm not exactly sure why Manuel happened to be walking in that space that day the same time as I, but I have a feeling it was no coincidence that he was there to touch my heart, and touch my life - and possibly mine his.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Precariously Perched
This morning I caught a ride about twenty minutes along the curvy mountain ridge road that is the highway here into Pantelho, the 'cabacera', or municipality head, after which the Pantelho municipality is named. It is the next municipality to where I am located, in the town of Acteal in the municipality of Chenalho. Pantelho was the most action I've seen since I got up here. Although it is really not much of a city, the city square was bustling, and a several block radius around it was full of venders on the side of the road each selling their fruit, shirts, ripped dvds, cds, vegetables, etc.
I stocked up for the next while: avocados, tomatoes, carrots, oranges, squash, cucumber, pasta, a brush to clean my clothes with, candles for the night time relaxation, one of those big bottles of purified water, oats, juice, hot sauce, a big carton of eggs. The choice of fruits and vegetables here, all grown locally, that you can get for soooo cheap never ceases to amaze me. One example: about 15 mangos for 10 pesos (~ dollar). After stopping in at a little 'comedor' (eatery - comer is to eat), where absolutely everyone stopped and stared at me (not uncommon for the day or my life as a whole right now), I caught the next truck going back to Acteal.
Loading my stuff and myself into the bed of the truck and grabbing onto one of the metal rails that formed a frame around the bed, I began the journey back to Acteal, passing little ten-hut villages scattered along the edges of the mountains. The scenery is beautiful, although human presence is easily detected. Despite the apparent will of vegetation to overtake the land, the mountainsides are scarred by the clearing of steep inclines where the communities have attempted to grow the maize that sustains their life here, and has for thousands of years.
It is easy to see why bad weather and landslides can devastate the communities here - entire communities and their patches of land easily fold and are devoured by intense rains that can simply wash away the human presence. One would think they would have developed the concept of a terrace, but perhaps the fact that they were not always constrained to the mountainsides has something to do with the lack of development in this technique. I can now see how essential a training is like the one I participated in yesterday with six 'tecnicos', or technicians, from various regions where Maya Vinic has a presence. In the small community of Canolal, again perched precariously on a mountainside, the six technicians, myself, and a free-lance contractor, Poncho, from San Cristobal, whom Maya Vinic has hired for some time, spent about five hours training in the art of leveling land and making terraces. Although the majority of the time was spent showing the technicians how to make a level out of cut branches, a string, and a bottle of water (geniusly named 'Aparato A' (Apparatus A)) and how to measure the incline of the land, I wonder how much of that the technicians will really take home to teach in their respective communities. The majority of their interest seemed to be in finding the best spot to sit in the shade, and in the discussion afterward, it was discussed how most of the 'cafetaleros' (coffee farmers) simply do this by eye anyway... Perhaps I am just a bad judge of interest and absorption of knowledge at this point however, and don't give them enough credit. We shall see...
Today and tomorrow are days of rest for the people here, as is in most of the U.S., and so I will spend the days cleaning the kitchen and my room (dust covers everything), and wandering around the town of Acteal. I still have yet to go back and check out the monument to the 45 women and children killed by the paramilitary in 1997. Into this creepy pillar to the sky is carved the ghostly bodies of those massacred, like a burning candle, wax falling down the sides, and is a reminder of the political and social context into which I have been placed.
I look forward to the late afternoon, when the clouds gather overhead and a rain cools the peaks and valleys of these mountains. I will most likely sit on the cement patio outside my door, gazing through the banana trees, the ferns, the tabbaco plants and all other plants I don't know yet, smelling the smoke rising from the wood-burning stoves somewhere down below. Somewhere in the distance a radio will be playing polka -like sounds of a Mexican 'romantico,' and as I gaze off into the distance, my view stretching out over the patchy peaks of these mountains, my mind will inevitably wander to thoughts of how simple life can be.
I stocked up for the next while: avocados, tomatoes, carrots, oranges, squash, cucumber, pasta, a brush to clean my clothes with, candles for the night time relaxation, one of those big bottles of purified water, oats, juice, hot sauce, a big carton of eggs. The choice of fruits and vegetables here, all grown locally, that you can get for soooo cheap never ceases to amaze me. One example: about 15 mangos for 10 pesos (~ dollar). After stopping in at a little 'comedor' (eatery - comer is to eat), where absolutely everyone stopped and stared at me (not uncommon for the day or my life as a whole right now), I caught the next truck going back to Acteal.
Loading my stuff and myself into the bed of the truck and grabbing onto one of the metal rails that formed a frame around the bed, I began the journey back to Acteal, passing little ten-hut villages scattered along the edges of the mountains. The scenery is beautiful, although human presence is easily detected. Despite the apparent will of vegetation to overtake the land, the mountainsides are scarred by the clearing of steep inclines where the communities have attempted to grow the maize that sustains their life here, and has for thousands of years.
It is easy to see why bad weather and landslides can devastate the communities here - entire communities and their patches of land easily fold and are devoured by intense rains that can simply wash away the human presence. One would think they would have developed the concept of a terrace, but perhaps the fact that they were not always constrained to the mountainsides has something to do with the lack of development in this technique. I can now see how essential a training is like the one I participated in yesterday with six 'tecnicos', or technicians, from various regions where Maya Vinic has a presence. In the small community of Canolal, again perched precariously on a mountainside, the six technicians, myself, and a free-lance contractor, Poncho, from San Cristobal, whom Maya Vinic has hired for some time, spent about five hours training in the art of leveling land and making terraces. Although the majority of the time was spent showing the technicians how to make a level out of cut branches, a string, and a bottle of water (geniusly named 'Aparato A' (Apparatus A)) and how to measure the incline of the land, I wonder how much of that the technicians will really take home to teach in their respective communities. The majority of their interest seemed to be in finding the best spot to sit in the shade, and in the discussion afterward, it was discussed how most of the 'cafetaleros' (coffee farmers) simply do this by eye anyway... Perhaps I am just a bad judge of interest and absorption of knowledge at this point however, and don't give them enough credit. We shall see...
Today and tomorrow are days of rest for the people here, as is in most of the U.S., and so I will spend the days cleaning the kitchen and my room (dust covers everything), and wandering around the town of Acteal. I still have yet to go back and check out the monument to the 45 women and children killed by the paramilitary in 1997. Into this creepy pillar to the sky is carved the ghostly bodies of those massacred, like a burning candle, wax falling down the sides, and is a reminder of the political and social context into which I have been placed.
I look forward to the late afternoon, when the clouds gather overhead and a rain cools the peaks and valleys of these mountains. I will most likely sit on the cement patio outside my door, gazing through the banana trees, the ferns, the tabbaco plants and all other plants I don't know yet, smelling the smoke rising from the wood-burning stoves somewhere down below. Somewhere in the distance a radio will be playing polka -like sounds of a Mexican 'romantico,' and as I gaze off into the distance, my view stretching out over the patchy peaks of these mountains, my mind will inevitably wander to thoughts of how simple life can be.
Friday, May 13, 2011
South for the Summer
It has been quite a year since my last blog. Here's a short recap to place you back into my head before we continue my journey together: My last adventure brought me to Guatemala via a 3500 mile bicycle ride through Mexico. Despite the travel warnings and the media reports, I found Mexico to be a beautiful land with amazingly kind people, as vast and diverse as my own country the United States of America. Once in Guatemala, I soon discovered that my search for a vocation of justice for the indigenous in that country would take me back to my own country. I realized just how much United States' culture, society, and international economic policy has had (and continues to have) an effect on countries throughout the world - some for the good, some for the bad. This realization drove me to believe that by furthering justice in my own country's society and policies, I could have much more of an effect on other countries throughout the world. This realization is not such a new thought, after all - how many proverbs, secular and spiritual alike, speak to the transformation of the self leading to the transformation of all things outside the self? It starts with me, then my family, then my community, then my city, then my nation, then the world.
Nine months at University of San Diego's Kroc School of Peace Studies has furthered the transformation occurring inside me. I now have have a file cabinet inside my head with labels and dividers for the experiences that I witnessed during the several years previous. What I have learned about the pursuit of peace over violence, both overt and structural, and different theories of what 'justice' is or can be, has had its obvious worldly connotations, but it has also had its effect on the way I live my life. Striving to continue learning just what it means to be human, connected to all other humans and tied to the land off of which we live, I embark on an internship for twelve weeks this summer to the land of the Maya - Chiapas, Mexico. I will be living, working, and researching with a cooperative of coffee farmers, Maya Vinic, that has been striving for social justice and development in their own communities in the highlands north of San Cristobal de Las Casas.
The 'Bicycle Diaries' continues this summer, once again recording the various experiences and reflections I am having during this transformation. You will notice a couple new links on the right of the blog page. One allows you to enter your email address so that you will be notified whenever I create a new post. I have also condensed all the photos from previous trips into one link, where you will be able to explore those photos, and any new photos I snap from the field. Under the link "I'm Following" you will be able to find the links to the blogs of my classmates, who are striving for the same principles of peace and justice through different means in places all over the world, from Palestine to Uganda to Liberia to Ecuador to Nepal to India to Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, and more. Enjoy all the stories and adventures as we go out to practice all of the new theories and skills we have learned over the past year, and keep a prayer in your heart for the safety of everyone as they pursue noble goals in the face of conflict and contention.
Until Mexico...
Nine months at University of San Diego's Kroc School of Peace Studies has furthered the transformation occurring inside me. I now have have a file cabinet inside my head with labels and dividers for the experiences that I witnessed during the several years previous. What I have learned about the pursuit of peace over violence, both overt and structural, and different theories of what 'justice' is or can be, has had its obvious worldly connotations, but it has also had its effect on the way I live my life. Striving to continue learning just what it means to be human, connected to all other humans and tied to the land off of which we live, I embark on an internship for twelve weeks this summer to the land of the Maya - Chiapas, Mexico. I will be living, working, and researching with a cooperative of coffee farmers, Maya Vinic, that has been striving for social justice and development in their own communities in the highlands north of San Cristobal de Las Casas.
The 'Bicycle Diaries' continues this summer, once again recording the various experiences and reflections I am having during this transformation. You will notice a couple new links on the right of the blog page. One allows you to enter your email address so that you will be notified whenever I create a new post. I have also condensed all the photos from previous trips into one link, where you will be able to explore those photos, and any new photos I snap from the field. Under the link "I'm Following" you will be able to find the links to the blogs of my classmates, who are striving for the same principles of peace and justice through different means in places all over the world, from Palestine to Uganda to Liberia to Ecuador to Nepal to India to Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, and more. Enjoy all the stories and adventures as we go out to practice all of the new theories and skills we have learned over the past year, and keep a prayer in your heart for the safety of everyone as they pursue noble goals in the face of conflict and contention.
Until Mexico...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)