Written January 12, 2010

Hey Everyone!

Today was our last day in Barranca Fierro before we drove the two hours back to Oaxaca City and a meeting with UniTierra, which I’ll get into more later. Our time in el campo was again eye-opening, thought-provoking, and most of all for me, humbling. People with resources the majority of Americans you and I know would consider meager at best would again and again offer me second servings of bread or fresh eggs or soup and frijoles before touching any food themselves. They treated me like family, and called me that , welcoming me into their home and offering me everything there only minutes after they found out my name. All this despite knowing very well that I was a gringo from el Estados Unidos, the country responsible for keeping their ten year old granddaughter from knowing their mother, or their sons from coming to visit and take care of them in their old age; in short, the country holding their family forcefully apart.

This morning at breakfast I sat outside on the patio watched the sun climb higher over the fruit trees down by the river and the small bean field. “Muy bonita,” I tell Natalia over and over again. I want to show her desperately how wonderful I think her land is and how much I appreciate her overwhelming hospitality, constantly cooking even though she can hardly walk. She tells us how her sons have asked her to come North so they can take care of her, but she cannot bare to leave this land that she has poured herself into over the years, the place with her home, her friends and her Zapotec culture, where she wants to live out the rest of her days. I am moved by what seems an unshakable sense of place I have seen in both indigenous communities we’ve visited, and am only beginning to understand how this deep connection to the land adds another complicated layer into the difficult decision migrants face about migrating. “But we have to do these things, for our families,” I hear over and over again, “We know it’s wrong in some ways, and we don’t want to, but we have no choice.” It’s exactly what I’ve read in articles and immigration research, but seeing brows crinkle and eyes tear as they peer over their fields and village makes it hit home in an entirely new way. I feel embarrassed and ashamed to be from a place with such hateful laws and greedy policies, and I have no excuse for these gracious people.

After breakfast we said our goodbyes and headed to the school, which houses about 70 students grades one through six and two teachers who were amazingly calm in the face of such numbers. We toured the two classrooms and saw the computer room full of brand new Dells Donnaciano’s organization, Generacion Barranca 2006, provided for the school, and the bicycles the organization provided for students who originally struggled to get there on a daily basis (other students ride donated bikes to the middle and high schools at least twenty minutes away). The teachers explained to us how they teach the same general themes to grades 1-3 and 4-6 as much as possible to simplify things and then the students work out of their more specific books. There is no other way without more teachers we are told. We drop our donated school and dental supplies, and the older children tell us their aspirations: many want to be doctors, musicians, and soccer players, all at once. It feels the place has more life, more potential to save itself from ending up the ghost town Tindu is already becoming, and more people have immigrated and returned. But I can’t help but noting teaching English and glorifying the possibilities of life in the U.S. will only encourage more migration. And who can blame anyone for wanting to add material comfort to their lives, more food security and what we perhaps wrongly call a higher standard of living? And who are we to tell them not too? All I really know is that we must change our policies so that they are not directly responsible for the abject poverty Oaxacans and millions of others suffer through each day, and so that these people have the right to choose not to migrate or their families ripped apart from each other, their land, and their culture.

I could write much more, but this post is already long, and we have one last official meeting tomorrow morning. Kristen and JoJo will have more tomorrow on our time at the Women’s Cooperative and the first two days in Barranca Fierro. I can’t believe this trip is almost over. WDA has a lot of questions to answer, things we have been wrestling with since we arrived, but it’s been an amazing journey. I wish everyone could come here and see what we’ve seen.

Goodnight todos,
John

Written January 9, 2009

Hello WDAers and friends!

We just returned to our hostel in Oaxaca after spending three thoughtful and busy days in the small community of Santa Maria Tindu. Everyone on the delegation was impressed by the incredible graciousness and generosity of our hosts there. In this post I´ll talk a little about the last two days we spent there, as well as the situation of the community based on our meetings with the community nurse, informal talks with transnational community members in the home town association,and a meeting of all of the elderly people in the community.

So, Santa Maria Tindu is a Mixtecan community 4 1/2 hours north-west of Oaxaca, near Huajuapan. Although it was formerly a town of farmers (mostly corn), the rising cost of living in Mexico and falling corn prices have driven nearly all of the young men and women to move north, either to northern Mexico or the US. Today, Tindu is truly a transborder community; over 1000 people live in Madera, CA, and another 400 have settled near Woodburn,OR. 400 people remain in the town, and over 200 of them are people of the ¨¨tercer edad¨ - over seventy years old.

This summer, CAUSA introduced us to a small committee of people from Tindu who live in Oregon, and we met with them several times this fall to learn about their projects to help the elderly members of their community. The elders committee is a branch of the larger organization, which has collaborated with the Mexican government to develop the community, most recently to build 11 km of highway to the village and create a natural water treatment system that uses plants to treat sewage. However, this group is especially concerned with the plight of the elders in their community. Until visiting, I didn´t realize is that Tindu is almost exclusively elderly, except for the month when grown children return for the holidays. This is also the time when the autoridad, or main governing position, of the community is transferred from one person to the next.

On Friday, the committee we´ve worked with called a meeting of all the elderly people in town, announcing it over the town loudspeaker. The main square was filled with men and women, some in their nineties and many with difficulty walking, hearing or seeing. We did a ton of interviews and taping to use for the fundraising video. The committee introduced our delegation, and the idea of building a community center for elderly people. Then they opened the floor for people to speak. This was the hardest part of the trip for me, especially since many of the speakers put the situation very eloquently: “Our sons and daughters leave, and many send money back. Some come and visit. But many die trying to cross the desert, and they return in cardboard boxes.”

Elderly people’s income sources are limited to remittances from the US and weaving baskets and sombreros our of palms for a few pesos. It´s hard to feel hopeful about the survival of the community. At least it´s very clear that the elderly folks need more support, since the traditional social security system (their kids) is no longer around (they are all working in the US). The community nurse was an amazing woman who helped us get an application for the medical teams visit ready to discuss with the Oaxacan branch of Medical Teams Internation (we´ll meet with them next Wed). She described the greatest medicals of the elderly population, which are glasses, dental surgery and care, arthritis medication and walking aids. She also strongly emphasized the social need for a community center, since many elderly women live alone without relatives to visit or distract them from loneliness.

Our host mother told us about her experience living alone, while her husband and eight sons worked in the US or northern Mexico. One day she received news that one of her sons had disappeared while crossing the border. “I cried and cried for days,” she told us. “When I went to eat, or cook, or sleep, I couldn’t stop crying. Now every time I sit down to eat, I wonder, ‘does my son have something to eat? Is he even alive?”

Thanks for reading and staying up with our activities.

Take care,
Kristen

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

A rudimentary understanding of Mexico’s economic history is necessary to set the context for examining the roots of migration in Oaxaca and the powerful stories of our friends from Santa Maria Tindu. I am no economics major, and don’t specialize in Mexican history, so this is meant only to be a brief summary of the most important and startling information that contributes to Mexico’s current economic condition and its relationship to the United States. My apologies for leaving so much out, my mistakes, and painting too simple of a picture. The vast majority of this story is drawn from the extensive presentations of Witness for Peace and EDUCA, and I am largely trying to relate much of their message without speaking directly for them.

During roughly the first half of the Cold War, the United States practiced a policy of containment liberalism, which meant Mexico was flooded with U.S. dollars in support of national industry, money with few stipulations or oversight to its use as long as the country remained a strong U.S. ally. This contributed to a culture of corruption and continued expectations of free money with few strings attached. When the oil crisis and subsequent recession hit in the 1970’s, western banks swollen with petro dollars from OPEC members had billions in their coffers and a “developed” world still struggling in the recession and borrowing little. Bankers and politicians turned to the developing world, offering billions and billions in petro dollar loans for the first time, with extremely low (though variable) interest rates, and you guessed it, few controls. From 1970-1982, Presidents Verria and Portilla borrowed these billions, amassing a staggering national debt. To pay the interest on these loans, Mexico pumped more and more oil at the expense of other national industries; by the mid-80s oil would account for 75% of their export revenue! Subsequently, the “Green Revolution,” pushed by governments and billed as the solution to world hunger, forced many Mexican farmers away from traditional (and more sustainable) methods of farming to fertilizer and machinery, exposing new vulnerabilities.

Then, the era of Regan and Thatcher began in 1981, and with it their decision to fervently promote pure free-market capitalism and free trade. For the developing word this meant a crucial shift in production for internal to external consumption. Then in 1982, the Volcker shot spiked interest rates in order to revalue the dollar. This, along with a rapid drop in oil prices, irresponsible borrowing, corruption, and a recession in the U.S. and Europe that left Mexico with no market for its goods, create what WFP called “Mexcio’s Perfect Storm:” in August Mexico went into debt crisis and threatened to default on its loans. Who should swoop in but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with a 7 billion dollar loan in and its now infamous Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). It “rescued” Mexico again in 1988 and 1992 (the last rescue package was a $95 billion loan). In the decade-long process the SAPs decimated Mexico’s social security net with austerity programs that cut social services, especially health and education, eliminated price controls for corn and coffee, destabilized wages and devalued the peso, and sold off profitable state-owned industries to foreign investors while international investment put small and medium-sized enterprises out of business. Not surprisingly, these programs resulted in an increase in poverty, social conflict, and migration.

This is the backdrop out of which NAFTA emerged, the subject of Pt.2, which will appear tomorrow. We returned from our visit to Santa Maria Tindu a little after ten tonight, which was an amazing but also painful and sad experience. The people there have giving hearts and beautiful souls. I was also told I could handle spice like a real Mexican today (made my trip)! There will also be much more on our visit tomorrow. Quite frankly, we were going to have posts up tonight but ended up talking till 1:30 about this trip, the project, WDA, activism, and the immigration dilemma, and didn’t get to all of the actual writing.

¡y ahora duermo!

–john

Greetings Friends and Fellow WDAers!

JoJo, Kristen, and I arrived in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca last night after a few long days of travel (though nothing compared to the arduous three-day journey my bag took to get here from Virginia)! It has been almost a year to the day since we first met with Francisco Lopez, President of the Oregon Immigrants´ Rights Coalition (CAUSA), and embarked on a project to research the root causes of Oaxacan migration to the United States and work with Oaxacan Hometown Assosciation´s (HTAs), and the transborder communities they serve to promote sustainable community development. Our original goal was to unite Oaxacan home town associations into a coalition, but after a painful learning process both WDA and CAUSA realized this was unrealistic (and let’s face it, overambitious for us non-Oaxacan college students). However, we were fortunate that in the process we were introduced to two groups of Oaxacan immigrants working on development projects in their home communities. Since late August of this year, we have met with these HTAs, brainstormed projects, researched medical and fundraising resources to connect to the communities, and collected dental and school supplies. It´s safe to say it feels amazing to finally be on the ground seeing for ourselves what we´ve heard and learned so much about and actually getting down to action after so many iterations of our project.

Today was the first day of a jam-packed itinerary that will take us not only to Oaxaca City but the villages of Santa Maria Tindu and Barranca Fierro Mixteca. After breakfast and introductions to the rest of the delegation, which is comprised of brilliant people doing great work (hopefully a little more on this later in the trip), we spent all morning and half the afternoon with part of Mexico´s Witness for Peace team (WFP), Alexis and Dunya. It was a crash course in the origins of neoliberalism, globalization and the rise of the IMF and the World Bank, Mexico´s economic history leading up to NAFTA, a broad analysis of the agreement´s effects since its implementation in 1994, and U.S.-Mexico relations post 9-11, ie the Security and Prosperity Partnership and the Meridia Initiative. Clearly, this post could go on forever, but I´ll save our individual responses, including more details and analysis, for a separate post. We wrapped up the session with group trips to different markets to get average prices for subsistence goods such as kilos of chicken, rice, tortillas, and black beans. After dinner we calculated how many hours a worker being paid the minimum wage here, $4 a day, must work in order to afford these items, and what the equivalent cost would be in US dollars if this was the minimum wage in the states. The results were staggering; a kilo of chicken here costs more than we pay for a pound of premium steak at home and takes about half of an 8 hour work day to earn.

Our afternoon and early evening was spent listening to a wonderful presentation and engaging in a dialogue on the roots of Oaxacan migration and its effects on Oaxaca´s communities with Miguel Vasquez of EDUCA. He saw three main causes: violence and conflict, poverty, and exclusion of the indigenous community. Clearly, these roots have roots, but the overwhelming theme for the day was that until there is systemic change in both transborder relations and Mexico itself, including a renogiation of NAFTA (another separate post), these problems will not be solved and the inextricably linked cycles of poverty, violence, and exclusion will continue, with millions being forced to migrate.

In seven short hours, we will be heading out for our first visit to Santa Maria Tindu, where we will stay with families and begin work on creating media to assist in their HTA´s fundraising for a community center that public health, education, and political organization, among other things, can call home.

We will be blogging furiously upon return in three days or so, and hope you stay tuned. We can already feel ourselves becoming more articulate and educated advocates for immigrant rights, which are human rights, and all the policies that this entails. It´s going to be an amazing trip.