January 6, 2010

Today we arrived in Santa Maria Tindu, although a couple hours later than planned. A tire blowout and a longer route from Huajuapan ended up costing us time.

We serendipitously planned our visit for the best time of year as today is Dia de los Reyes (the most celebrated day of Christmas season) and people have traveled from afar to see their families. Our host, Ramon, is in town for the month to take care of his parents and fix up the house while he’s there. Even with so many people in town visiting their parents like Mario (this is not his real name), many of the houses in the street still lie empty. Mario’s parent’s house, where we are staying, is a two-story cinderblock house with electricity and running water. He helped build the house for his parents and the town’s sewage system was created 3 years ago by a committee made up of those like Mario who live in the U.S. and visit their hometown. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to take care of your parents from such a long distance. He said he mails one or two hundred dollars every three months. Still, his father’s already 87 and it makes me a little nervous every time I see him try to walk up and down the concrete stairs.

On the second floor, there is a main room next to our two rooms where all the dried corn is kept. There are two huge piles on the floor, slightly off to the side, to allow room for people to get by. One is of white husked ears and the other is yellow. All this corn has come from his father’s field, Ramon explains. We’re all impressed, especially since his father is so old. We have some difficulty trying to ask his father about the farming since he can’t hear very much, but when we gesture at the corn he shrugs and says, “Es mi trabajo.” It’s my job. In many ways, Ramon’s father has remained the same in the face of so much change. He refuses to wear a hearing aid, he’s the only one in his direct family to still be able to speak Mixtec, and he still farms with animal-pulled plows.

But a lot in the town has changed. There have been some improvements as a result of the remittances like street lamps, nicer houses, a new drainage system. But the puebla has also turned into a ghost town. Mario explains that many of the houses around here “estan cerradas” are closed. Ramon tries to recall the number of families who still live on the street his parents live on: about 4 or 5. As we walk along the street he points out the houses “this house is empty, these people haven’t lived here for 5 or 7 years”- he points to one of the few houses with a light on- “and these people are here, but they only come once a year for the holidays.”

The holidays are a pretty festive time here. Everywhere we go, there are nativity scenes, or nacimientos, made out of figurines, moss, lights, and dolls. People eat Rosca de Reyes, a wreath-shaped sweet bread. Our hostess fed us some and it was great. Similar to Mardi Gras’ Kings Cake, there is a little figure in the cake and whoever gets the figure in their piece has to throw the party next year. Seeing everyone gathered together celebrating the holidays in this ghost town, I can’t help but wonder what the future will bring for Santa Maria Tindu. There are a few kids running around now, but how many of them will return to Madera, California with their parents after the party is over? We asked Mario if he will come back to retire in Tindu. He says he wants to but he doesn’t know if it will happen. And what if your children stay in Oregon, where they currently live? Then I don’t know, he says. Currently, he thinks that there are about 1,000 people from Santa Maria Tindu living in Madera, California and 400 more in Oregon. He has four kids and his oldest is going to college in Oregon this year. It’s not easy living in between two different worlds. Santa Maria Tindu seems a completely different place from Washington, but many of the people who are here are also my neighbors in the Pacific Northwest. As WDA-ers, we came here with the intention of both learning and helping, but the more I learn, the more helpless I feel. John asks Mario if the town will ever return to the way it was before. Sure it could, Mario says, people grew corn and tomatoes and beans and they could do that again. John points out that in order for that to happen, people would have to get paid, and that depends more on the economy than on whether or not people want to emigrate.

–Jojo

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Operations, Transnational Community Development Initiative, Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.