Hello Everyone,

Gauri, Kailey, Tim, and I arrived back in Walla Walla last night after a two-day trip down to Woodburn, OR to meet with Francisco Lopez and have our first appointments at the Mexican consulate and two Oaxacan leaders. We arrived Thursday afternoon and saw the PCUN office for the first time. It was a spacious building that was once an old Methodist church and had probably functioned as a house as well at some point in its rich history. Francisco told us many times in the course of a few days that he keeps telling the union to sell the building and get new offices: “They won’t do it!” he says; it has “too much sentimental value.”

After talking briefly with Francisco in the office about the basic operations of PCUN, CAUSA, and their sister organizations, he gave us the grand tour of Woodburn. We saw fields and restaurants, the Oregon Law Center, the town square, PCUN’s radio station, and the new and still under-construction farm labor housing the union had such a strong hand in building. After the tour, we returned to PCUN’s conference room and hashed out more project details, as well as went over who we were meeting with the next day and our objectives for each meeting. We came up with a to-do list of both short and long-term goals, and the most detailed timeline for our project yet. Naturally, the most exciting part of a very compelling meeting was when we discussed our trip to Oaxaca, scheduled for January 2010. Francisco talked about how “then we would see and really feel” the reasons for this project of empowering Oaxacans on both sides of the border: simply so that they can create better lives for their people.

The next morning we drove up to Portland to meet with Ursula Rojas at the Mexican Consulate, who heads the Institute for Mexicans Abroad (IME) in Oregon. She told us the institute exists to foster a close and beneficial relationship with Mexican communities abroad and to allow the diaspora to influence public policy back in Mexico. Since IME is part of the Mexican government, it was fascinating and informative to here the government’s take on Mexican immigration to El Norte. She also talked to us about the government’s 3×1 Development Program, where Hometown Associations (HTAs) put up 25% of the cost for a project that could range from infrastructure construction to planting trees or starting businesses, and different levels of the government provide the other 75% of funding. We learned that there are seven known Oaxacan HTAs in Oregon, which was very exciting news. Approximately 11% of the counted 350,000 migrants in Oregon are Oaxacan, and the Portland Consulate is 5th in the nation in the number of registered Oaxacans.

Also present at the consulate meeting was an enthusiastic Oaxacan immigrant named Donaciano Garcia who founded Generacion Barranca 2006. Barranca is Garcia’s hometown, and the organization, though not exactly an HTA by an academic definition, is very similar (I have a feeling it will become apparent quickly that there is no exact model for Oaxacan HTAS, which may actually be beneficial to the project. It just means the different groups will have that much more to offer each other). Comprised of friends and family members, GB2006 sustained itself through $50 a month dues and fundraisers like car washes and “adopt-a-child” style programs at Garcia’s church. The organization believes that the children of Barranca are the future; hope so that one day, “none of us will have to work in the fields anymore.” They are investing as much as possible in the children’s education, and have delivered five new computers to the school, as well as 70 bicycles so that students don’t have to walk so long to get to school, or to Oaxaca City to do their homework, and also planted 120 fruit trees. Some future goals are so modest as to be humbling: Garcia wants to get to two water fountains so that the children don’t have to risk getting sick from drinking out of the same bucket with one cup anymore. Others are ambitious and accomplish the exact same thing: “It is my dream to see a university there one day,” he says, beaming. Garcia’s passion for his work was evident and contagious. When we told him we were visiting Oaxaca in January he graciously invited us to come visit Barranca. “Together, we will walk,” he said, showing us a picture of the winding dirt road leading to the village with children running ahead of the camera, “and you will see.”

For the last meeting of the day the WDA team and Francisco drove back to Woodburn to meet Carmen Ramirez for lunch at Luis’s (Obama stopped there for lunch on the campaign trail; we had to try it). Carmen is an Oaxacan immigrant who organizes for PCUN, as well as volunteers her services as an indigenous translator for both the consulate and the Oregon Law Center. One of her largest projects right now is fighting sexual harassment in the fields and workplace through educational campaigns aimed at both men and women. She told us, with Francisco and Kailey doing excellent translation work, of the discrimination that the indigenous Oaxacans face in the larger Mexican community in both the U.S. and Mexico. Furthermore, the language barrier often prevents migrants from knowing their rights, or that they have any rights at all anywhere along their northward journey (most Oaxacans migrate slowly northward in step movements, working and saving money as they go for the eventual border crossing). She told us the story of a single father and friend whose young boy lost an arm to a reckless rancher’s son in a pickup in Guerrero, Mexico. They were refused health care several times for being poor and indigenous. The father couldn’t go to court because he doesn’t speak Spanish, and the pesos the rancher gave him aren’t even enough to buy a prosthetic limb. “It breaks my heart,” she says, “and there are many like this. It makes me feel and this is why I help my community . . . I am a mother, and this is no tragedy any parent should have to suffer.” She also explained to us many facets of Oaxacan culture and how the indigenous community inherently runs up against the established system, the one-time colonizer. “And it’s even worse when they don’t speak the language,” she tells us, “so hard to survive.” Finally, she explained the frustration she feels with the Mexican government and the current migrant condition: “They say Mexico is fine, we won’t be affected by the crisis . . . This is wrong. We indigenous people, we are being hurt the worst. They can lay us off without a reason, without any compensation, and we are in the street with nowhere to go, unable to apply for benefits, unable to feed our families.”

When we questioned all three of the kind people that spoke to us about the role WDA and CAUSA could play in assisting Oaxacan organizations, all three spoke of the need for greater collaboration between Oaxacan groups and involved institutions. Carmen pointed out that most migrants want to help, to try to make things better, but they aren’t specialists and don’t know where to start. “You will see,” Francisco told us, “they all want the same thing. They just need a little push.”

Today, Tim explained why he felt the trip was so important and why WDA is on the right track:

I think this trip was especially valuable because, in a relatively short amount of time, we were able to see the complex diversity of perspectives and priorities of the various community partners we will be working with to form a network. These differences illuminate how one of the main challenges of our project may be identifying and emphasizing the common agendas that can serve as a foundation for collaboration. The fact that hometown association goals and projects may be somewhat fragmented in their current state of autonomy also points to need for bringing the various parties together for constructive dialog and cooperative planning, as this project is designed to do.

Gauri also talked about the personal benefits of the short trip for her:

This trip really helped ground the project for me. Everything from revising and finishing the concept paper to meeting people who had worked in the fields really helped get me excited for the project. The fact that Garcia’s organization had plenty of members and human support, but struggled putting together material and developing a logo, while we have an abundance of material but were struggling with membership until recently, made me realize that we have a lot to learn and a lot to offer too.

Before this trip, I think many of us in WDA were struggling with the feeling that this project didn’t have as much of a human aspect or wouldn’t have as much of a direct impact. After spending only two days actually looking at places where migrants live and talking migrants and those who work with them, that feeling is no longer a problem. The talks we had with Ursula, Garcia, and Carmen were inspiring, intentional or not. We’re very excited that the project is finally taking off and had such a good start.

Peace,

John

Tags: Transnational Community Development Initiative, Updates

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