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.

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...