Going Home

This past week has had a wrapping-up quality about it, but also a sense of unreality that everything can be over.

On Tuesday, we spoke with a panel of youth activists working in the larger Cuernavaca area. All of the speakers were fascinating, but I was the most inspired by Vera, who had been involved in, among other projects, the fight to keep Costco from replacing a historic area in Cuernavaca. What inspired me in particular was the joy she seemed to take in activism despite her very busy life.

On Thursday, we gave our final presentations. I was really impressed by the work each person did. I know that Ashley, Anna, and I are excited about the energy between us being directed toward the School of the Americas protest in November and working on these issues.

Friday was an odd combination of relaxation and emotional stress. We got the chance to hang out and be together swimming and playing on the water slide at the water park, but we also had to face being together as SJGELA for the last time. A lot of people cried. Libeth spilled water all over herself. It was a mixture of laughter and tears, reminiscent of our time in Guatemala as well.

To me it seems, you can take the woman out of the class, but you can’t take the class out of the woman. On the airplane ride home I started reading the in-flight magazine. First I read a letter from the president of the airline saying that Continental had been named by Forbes as one of the top ten most admired global companies in the category of community/environment. That made me think back about Libeth’s presentation on globalization and corporate ethics and made me want to learn more about Continental, and about the Forbes rankings. Later, I read an article about offshore oil drilling which explained that one of the platforms was named after the octopus-god once worshipped by the residents of the Georgian islands. This made me wonder whether anyone had thought to ask the native residents of the Georgian islands whether they wanted the oil drilling platform to be named after the god. Furthermore, if no one on the islands still worships this god, why is that? Could it not be the forces of imperialism and globalization that probably also brought the drilling platform to the islands in the first place?

Leaving everyone was rough, especially finally having to say good bye to Sarah and Brooke in the Houston airport. At the same time, it’s a little bit like the “Lord of the Rings”, the fellowship has disbanded, but the daunting work of living out our hopes still lies ahead, and the sense of solidarity between us that developed by the end of the semester will never be forgotten. Here’s to the hope of seeing each other again, and the dream that the world might be a little better by the time we do.

Guatemala: Human Rights and the Environment

Pre-Guatemala

At the airport: We had a torta (Mexican sandwich) emergency(we were told we couldn't take our tortas on the plane with us, so we began to eat our tortas like mad...but then realized we had a good hour before we had to board the plane)...
SJGELA left for Guatemala City May 4th. We met up with Ruth and Fidel, CGE staff in Guatemala, at the airport (along with Gloria, fidel’s daughter who stayed with us to practice her English). We spent the first few days in Guatemala City then we left for the East coast Wednesday, staying with families in Livingston one evening and sleeping in the jungle along the Río Dulce at Ak’tenamit (cooperative school for indigenous youth living along the river). The next evening before our long road trip back to the capital, we survived the four-hour, sometimes six-hour winding mountainous van rides. Our group really came together during our time in Guatemala. We had discussed our hopes and fears before leaving – not only with regards to the content of our visits, talking about the 36-year long civil war in Guatemala, but also how we as SJGELA would survive together in such close quarters! We supported one another, we listened, and we definitely came back to Mexico on may 12^th exhausted and overwhelmed. Fortunately, we’re still debriefing and preparing for our return to the States, and despite the rush to finish up final projects, things are looking up.

Political & Economic Update

Our first evening in Guatemala a speaker came to la Casa de los Amigos, where we stayed while we were in the capital, for this talk. He shared information with us about Guatemala to situate us politically, socially, culturally, and historically. During our debriefing most of us agreed that this talk deeply moved all of us. He began by conceding that we all understand reality from different perspectives, with different lenses and that he carries with him various lenses; those of a theologian, a psychologist, an historian, a marxist, and a christian for peace. I think we could dedicate a whole blog to this speaker, but there are still several more talks and visits to mention...However, he did share a few stories with us that we all continue to discuss, and I think it is appropriate to spread at least one of those stories through this medium. He was expressing the importance of women in society, and how women organize much more easier because they organize from the heart, and then he told us about "mamá nieves".

"Mamá nieves" is 54 years old and has 12 kids. She now has eight kids – four are in la "mara salvatrucha", an urban gang, and four of them are in la "mara dieciocho" (another gang). Mamá nieves is a woman who defends gang members in her community where almost every family is affected by gang violence. "Mamá nieves" doesn’t have a lot; every morning she sells coffee and tortillas from her wheelbarrow in her neighborhood. When she makes beans at home, first she feeds her family, then she leaves the other food out for all those who pass by. It’s “la comida de la comunidad” and all kinds of people eat it: the police, the gang members...While she lives in a neighborhood where violence is a daily reality, she has a lot of hope, and believes that we are all invited to do small things for all of humanity... and that is resistance.

Speakers Galore in Guatemala

We moved from meeting to meeting: Victor spoke with us about mining; Leonorilda spoke with us about gender and women’s rights;

Calixta invited us to participate in a Mayan ceremony; there was lots of smoke involved - and the four candles: white, black, yellow, and red represent the four directions.

SJGELA after the ceremony at Iximche.

A representative from FAMDEGUA (Association of the Family Members of the Detained & Disappeared in Guatemala) spoke with us; we met a woman from the URNG (the Guatemalan guerrilla movement that signed peace accords with the government in 1995 that is now a political party); another woman from CONAVIGUA (National Widow's Association) took us to meet with four women whose husbands had recently been exhumed and their bodies returned to their families.

We also visited the largest garbage dump in Central America.

We toured the Dole shipping plant at Puertos Barrios on the Atlantic Coast.

This is the SJGELA at the plant.

We met Gloria and her cousin in Livingston to learn more about Garifuna culture and spirituality.

We traveled by boat while we were along the coast - from Puertos Barrios to Livingston, from Livingston to Siete Altares, from Siete Altares to Ak'tenamit...

SJGELA at Siete Altares with Gloria's cousin who spoke with us about garifuna history and spirituality.

Then we traveled to Ak’tenamit where Sandino was a great host, and we were fortunate enough to see "Proyeto Payaso", o "Payasos sin Fronteras, skits designed to share information about HIV/AIDS with those who do not have access to that information.

Ak’tenamit

Ak’tenamit was founded in 1992 because villages along the Río Dulce did not have access to basic services such as education and health care. Fifteen years later, Ak’tenamit provides services to 32 of the 100+ indigenous villages along the Río Dulce focusing on community development. Ak’tenamit offers programs in health, education, income generation (sustainable agriculture, vocational training, and eco-tourism), environmental conservation, community development, gender equity, and Mayan culture. While we were there, we ate in the restaurant/cafeteria where students studying tourism work to prepare the food, and attend to visitors in order to gain practical lived experience about the career they are studying. We walked around with Sandino and learned about their sustainable agriculture projects and how the students help to grow what they eat. We learned about the yuca plant and how the yuca feeds the 400+ students who study at Ak’tenamit. we had an amazing time walking around with Sandino learning more about the students, the school, and future projects – we’re all excited for a return so that we can all sleep together in hammocks and bathe in the river...o.k., also so we can spend more time at the school talking with the students there.

Showing us how to sleep in hammocks without hurting our backs...we tried to perfect the position but most of us weren't successful!

Debriefing and bringing it back

Obviously we have a lot to think about after all of these amazing visits. As a group, we talked about what we felt were some of the common themes, and we all agreed that many of the people we met with were working towards breaking the silence around fear and violence while working toward justice and reconciliation. and the struggle for peoples’ rights to their culture is familiar to the majority of Guatemaltecas (e.g. Garífunas y indígenas).

Right now we are in our last week and focusing on how we will be able to share these experiences when we get back to our communities in the U.S. Many of us are still struggling about how we will do this, and at what levels we should be doing our work. We met with young activists from Cuernavaca this week. Most of us feel relieved after hearing about their decisions to do the work they do. It helped us to realize the many opportunities we have in our own communities, and gives us hope that other young people are working toward social justice – and we are learning from their strength.

Eco-Feminism & GMOs

This week the SJGELA group had a talk on eco-feminism by Patricia Hume, an eco-feminist who shared with us her views on environmental issues through a feminist perspective. She talked about the differences between nature and the environment, describing the term “environment” as the scientific form of what we know as “nature”. Nature, the more spiritual term, is what we need to be aware of in our everyday lives. Awareness is, in fact, the ultimate goal of eco-feminism according to Ms. Hume--the practice in our everyday lives and complete awareness of the world around us is what eco-feminism strives to accomplish.

Eco-feminism is also based on the idea that nature and women are both put down by a system of patriarchy. In this system, the power structure that exists in the world puts nature down by feminizing it, and puts women down by naturalizing them. In this way, both the environment and women are dominated.

SJGELA also visited a woman named Catherine Marielle, who works in Mexico City with a group called Grupo de Estudios Ambientales (GEA), studying the effects of transgenic and hybrid corn on the Mexican population. She told us about a program called the Sustainable Agro-Food System (SAS) Program, which was developed to as a way to promote agroecological alternatives and information on transgenics, biosafety, biodiversity, and food sovereignty in the Latin American region. The group also researches the patterns in corn crops and lobbies to see change in what they find to be a flawed and damaging system.

This talk highlighted the issue of food sovereignty in the lives of the people here in Mexico. We learned about how the use of transgenic and hybrid corn seeds are part of a system in which transgenic and hybrid seeds are sold to indigenous farmers from large companies. These seeds have been altered, either naturally (hybrid) or in a laboratory (transgenic), and are designed to no longer reproduce. This leaves indigenous Mexican farmers who have been gathering seeds with no choice but to continue purchasing seeds from these companies, year after year, planting a crop that does not grow without chemical fertilizers. This lack of seeds is just one of the problems that ensues with this system, in addition to a lack of water, pollution, unfair commerce, and often forced migration when a farmer loses his land when he is unable to purchase seeds for the following year. The talk on the system of hybrid and transgenic corn stressed the importance of a sustainable system that produced secure, healthy and diverse food.

It was also emphasized that the issue of corn is at the root of the struggles for food sovereignty, not only because it is one of Mexico’s largest crops but because maize is a basic part of life in Mesoamerica. The culture of maize is thousands of years old, complete with myths, legends and rituals. As we have seen while living with families in Mexico, the people here eat tortillas on a daily basis. Mexico has one of the world’s most diverse biosystems, complete with a unique maize population that is very diverse--there are at least 60 different landraces of maize in Mexico--and that could reproduce continuously when planted and harvested naturally.

Traditionally, the farmers of Mexico planted using an ancient policultivated system called MILPA, which combines corn, beans and squash crops with chilies and tomatoes to naturally complement each other, eliminating the need for chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Since the early nineties, food sovereignty has gone down in Mexico- the country now has to import native crops like corn and soy to survive.

Water Treatment & Alternative Technology

The contrast between our two visits this week illustrates probably one of the greatest dilemmas for a person working in social justice or environmentalist movements: when are we curing the disease, and when are we just treating the symptoms? On Friday, we visited ECCACIV, a water treatment plant with the motto “It is not just another business, it is a commitment with the environment.” This plant treats mainly the contaminated water from the industrial park north east of Cuernavaca, before it is dumped into a nearby river. The harshest chemical in the entire treatment process is chlorine gas; the rest of the decontamination is done with microorganisms and oxygenation. Unfortunately, this process cannot remove a specific red dye from the textile factory, so that stays in the river and kills the plant life and fish. This red dye does not have any environmental regulations put on it as of yet. Our guide said it was a way in which the government is protecting the textile industry. ECCACIV has asked nicely for the textile factory to stop using that dye, or do some sort of pre-treatment of the water, but (surprisingly) they have not agreed to that.
I think we can all agree that water treatment is good, and that we shouldn’t just dump contaminated water into the river, but what if we didn’t create contaminated water in the first place? On Tuesday, we visited the house of eco-architect César Añorve and heard his opinion on water management. “Sewage is crazy,” he said. With the dry toilet and the bio-filter for soap and other contaminants of household water, he does not need to send his water anywhere to be treated. Nor does contaminated water from his house flow into any of Cuernavaca’s many ravines, which is common for other households.
Obviously, the water issue is not strictly environmental. The social implications of water contamination and especially unequal access to water are blatant in Mexico. The privatization of water, for example, is already in its advanced stages. Making water into a commodity to be bought and sold, a large sector of the population who don’t have the money to buy water is cut off from a necessity of life.
As environmentalists and/or social justice advocates, we need to stop lamenting the state of our world and start acting at the source of its problems. What if instead of funding a project to connect a community to a sewage system, it funded dry toilets, bio-filters and rain water collection tanks? Maybe Bechtel, one of the multinational companies involved in the water business, could take a workshop from Cesar Añorve and still get the contract.

Solid Waste Management & Privatization

This week, our class visits focused largely on the issue of trash management, a topic with great current relevance to Cuernavaca and its surrounding municipalities. Last summer, the residents of two communities outside of Cuernavaca, Alpuyeca and Tetlama, united to protest the government and force the closure of an open air landfill in Tetlama, the site which had received the daily trash produced by Cuernavaca and four other municipalities for the past 35 years. As a result of not being able to use the Tetlama landfill to store all of its trash, trash accumulated in the streets of Cuernavaca. City residents, concerned with the trash piling in the streets, demanded another system of trash management and storage. After arranging to temporarily send the city’s trash to Mexico City, the municipal government has since struggled to improve its system of trash management.

We had the opportunity this week to speak with members of the municipal government involved with environmental decision-making, visit the landfill in Tetlama, and speak with community representatives that participated in the resistance movement.

On Friday, SJGELA met with José Juan Tovilla, Secretary of Public Services and the Environment for the city of Cuernavaca. We also spoke with the municipal director of ecology and a coordinator of environmental education in Cuernavaca. They described a system of ecological inspection and vigilance in the city and discussed government efforts to improve environmental education within Cuernavaca. Workshops that, for example, teach participants how to recycle paper or how to start a compost program are open to the public and are designed to improve environmental consciousness. As well, they informed us about the current system of trash management and the government’s recent decision to contract a private company, Promotora Ambiental (PASA), to take over trash collection and treatment. They also explained the decision to create a new landfill in an area of San Antón, the colonia in which our school is located. This new landfill, they argued, would handle all of Cuernavaca’s trash for the next twenty years. Throughout their presentation, they stressed that they were representatives of a new government that had received the trash problem from the previous administration, but that they were planning to resolve it.

In our visit to Tetlama, we discussed the importance of the geological layout in determining landfill sites. Taking what we had learned from Laura Kuri’s presentation on water runoff, it was evident that the runoff from the Tetlama landfill most directly impacted the town of Alpuyeca. Hipólito García, a community leader in Tetlama who was integral in the struggle to close the landfill, told us that the people of Alpuyeca are the most affected by the negative health impacts of the landfill because they live at the bottom of the landfill. He noted that Alpuyeca has a surprisingly high rate of cancer, a result, many suspect, is the result of pollution caused by the landfill. As well, the group discussed the side effects of placing a landfill above critical water sources, leading to questions about the possibility of a new landfill in San Antón, an area with many ravines that connect to water sources for many people.

Hipólito García also spoke to us about the social and environmental resistance effort in Tetlama. He felt that government officials never enforced the regulations they had promised, that the landfill had never been properly managed, and that secrecy on behalf of the government had contributed to many frustrations within the town. Men, women, and children united in Tetlama to block a back passage to the landfill and prevent the government from forcing garbage trucks into the disposal site. He further described the struggle as one not only for the inhabitants of Tetlama, but one for other communities as well. García stated that the resistance movement was greatly strengthened by unification with other towns and activist groups.

The visit to the Tetlama—the drive through the old disposal site and our dialogue with town representatives--was very moving because although we have highlighted the consumption of Cuernavaca and its current struggle to design an effective and safe solid waste management program, trash management is a universal issue that every community faces every day. It is easy to detach oneself from the issue of solid waste disposal if trash is collected by a garbage truck and stored outside of one’s community. Seeing the trash in the old open air landfill was extremely moving because consumption and trash production are processes in which everyone engages. Many of us do not know where our trash goes or who lives around those trash disposal sites. To actually view a landfill where such trash is stored and speak with community members forced to deal with the consequences forges a unique consciousness about the impacts of individual waste production.

In class sessions throughout the week, we spent time discussing the role of social movements in democratic systems of governance. Speaking with two representatives of the movement in Tetlama and Alpuyeca provided a living example of community organization as a form of exercising citizenship. During our week we also discussed the injustices of trash management and the possibility of environmental racism in the placement of hazardous storage sites: Tetlama, for example, is an indigenous community and it was selected as a site for an open air landfill. It was evident that the social struggle in these two communities was intricately linked to the natural environment. The close location of the landfill, its inadequate regulation, and the pollution and contamination that resulted were among the main contributing factors that motivated the social resistance in Tetlama. Through organization, its citizens were able to challenge government policy to force consideration of a more just system of management.

Our Local Environment

During this past week we had the opportunity to meet with two progressive environmentalists. Our first speaker Laura Kuri, spoke on bioregionalism. Bioregionalism incorporates three aspects which include trying to create a sustainable culture, organizing against globalization and educating as many people as possible to take action within their region. One exercise in particular that we did forced us to think about the immediate environment that we live in. On a piece of paper we were told to draw our home and within it list native plants and animals, the direction the wind blows, the type of soil that exists, the sources of water in the area and the path of water drainage. While many of these aspects may seem like “no brainers”, it was evident that none of us actually know our environments as well as we thought we did. While we appreciate and recognize that our physical environment is essential, this exercise showed the importance and relevance of knowing concrete facts about our immediate surroundings.

Our second speaker, Juan Manuel Zaragoza led us on an ecological tour of our very own neighborhood, San Anton. We first visited a gorgeous waterfall that at first glance is breathtaking, though unfortunately contains 17,000 kinds of bacteria for every 100 meters of water. As part of a project to preserve this waterfall and conduct education on wastewater, dry toilets have been installed. Not only do these dry toilets produce zero waste, but the feces are actually recycled to be used as fertilizer for soil.

Next we visited a local secondary school. Within the month, a bio-filter was installed on the school grounds in order to safely and cleanly dispose of the waste water that is produced every day from the school. The typical cost for a project like this is 1.5-2 million pesos. Because of the growing interest in these bio-filters, leaders from other facilities and schools are currently meeting in hopes of replicating this same project in their own communities
Lastly, we visited a community that has recently set up a recycling center in their neighborhood in order to decrease the amount of waste in their river. Jovita, one of the leaders in this recycling project, showed us the large bins that have been set around the area for separation and the makeshift recycling center for further separation. This project, primarily started and followed through by women, is successfully underway. As we toured, the local government official of the neighborhood, called an ayudante, joined us to listen in. As Juan Manuel explained to us, most people don’t trust the government as a whole, though more trust is placed in this local official, as their job is to listen to the concerns of their constituents on a local level.

There was a common theme that linked both Laura’s and Juan’s talks and this included the importance of participating in environmental awareness and change on a local level. This begins with simply being aware of the physical environment around us. For instance, this means knowing basic facts about our natural habitat around us as well as knowing where our waste water and trash go. Once we are familiar with these aspects, we are able to participate in the preservation of our environment on the local level with steps for change within our own neighborhoods.

Conflicting Views of Development

Two weeks ago we SJGELA students had our first Globalization, Social Struggles, and Environment class. Throughout the semester we have been tackling social justice issues and their relationship to the environment, with a focus in Latin America. Now we are shifting from looking at historical events that still have noticeable consequences in Mexico to current policies (trade, economic, social) that hinder many people’s attempts to maintain a healthy environment.

Perhaps one of the most recurring themes we have seen in visiting various towns and listening to numerous speakers is the difference between indigenous views of the land and contemporary visions of land and development. It seems that the populations affected by environmental issues like the lack of drinkable water or foreign expansion onto lands owned by indigenous communities are the ones that are most ignored by the government and the policies they put into place. Modern views on development are centered on neoliberal economic policies, such that emphasize a free market, or a market that has few trade restrictions and even fewer environmental rules to follow. Cathy Good, an anthropologist familiar with conflicting views of development between indigenous communities and governmental authorities, touched on this specific topic in a talk last Friday. She taught us about the San Juan Tetelcingo, Guerrero dam project that was set to be built. The social and environmental consequences of the building of this dam would have been enormous, which is why the local community mobilized to fight the building of this project. The defeat of this project is noteworthy because the community came together and successfully fended off the potential loss of their culture and identity.

Throughout the eight weeks we have been here we have seen the convergence of abstract ideas and policies with real lives of people. The effects of foreign policy and environmental laws are visible everywhere, and they go well beyond potential economic gains or losses; but also have endless social costs. Still, as young students learning about these issues we are given the tools necessary to inform those around us and assist in the struggle toward a sustainable environment in which the basic needs of people are met and respected.