I have officially made my first hospital run in Mexico. It was not for me, I just was going to help. Out of 17 people, only 3 have not gotten sick. Two have been hospitalized with bacterial infections, one stayed over night. Others have felt bad and had to stay back some days. Then, some of the ones who could walk then got fleas, yes fleas.
Our quiz on agriculture and presentations got moved. So, I will be taking my second biology quiz in an airport or on a plane.
I have learned a lot today, I desperately need to improve my vocabulary sets in spanish. I couldn´t understand when my homestay mother was talking about¨chaining herself to a tree¨ (for a protest of course, let me remind you, she is 72) or instructions for medicine today. We never learned ¨chained¨ in spanish 21.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
341 / 30,000 Political Aslyum
¨La tierra es de quien la trabaja¨ Emiliana Zapata
I spent the weekend in the community of Amatlan, with indigenous people that can trace their history back four thousand years. We did a home stay , so everyone divided into groups based on Spanish and desired intensity level (running water, etc). I was with Becca and Anne and we had no running water. In fact, we never saw water for anything. It was like camping, only with the strongest 72 year old woman I have ever met/secretly hope to be.
She is a single woman who knows what she believes in. We had a lot of different questions for her because Anne spent time in Africa by herself and Becca traveled/lived in South America. Anne asked about the Zapatistas, a now un-armed revolutionary movement currently being fought in Southern Mexico- more on this later - and she told us her opinion and how she protests. She chained herself to a tree once with other woman to protest a development. They also successfully fought off a golf course development with other communities because it would destroy the ecosystem and aquifer - water is life here.
Amatlan has a messy history of resistance. The community is in the base of a mountain chain like nothing I have ever seen before, I can only describe it as cliffs that form mountains. This community believes that everything has a soul, especially the mountains. So, you have to ask permission to take a picture and be aware of how many you take, and what you will use it for, such as deleting them. You are taking a pìece of that object each time you snap the lens.
During the revolution and the civil war, guerrillas used the mountains to hide in and fight from. We hiked Saturday morning, and were shown all the medicinal plants (the town is famous for them) and told how Amatlan has felt the affects of the revolution. They took back their land during the revolution, because it was stolen from them. Not only that, it was land that had been in their family for four thousand years! Their land is literally their life, it supplies food and water for them, without it they starve.
We ate our meals with the family, had biology class, and visited a medicinal clinic, the fertility stone, and a farmers union this weekend.
I personally enjoyed hearing how immigration, out-migration, has affected even this small indigenous community. Clemente, a guide on the tour, told us how he worked a year in Arizona. Yes, illegally.
I believe we cannot have an open border, we cannot let just anyone in, we need to try and stop the drugs and crime. But, allow me to give you some things to think about.
From 1980 to 1986, only 341 applicants out of THIRTY THOUSAND have gotten political asylum. And these people were seeking political asylum, not economic relief, because during this time they were fleeing wars fueled with blood money. Not a cut and dry war, but messy ones that blurred the lines between the military and civilians. One that left death squads to decide who was who.
I find it ironic that these people come here seeking basic human rights, life. Away from death squads, a violence that is saturating even the smallest of communitites. Completing a sick cycle - we help to push them out of their homes, and then fight back when the come to us seeking life.
Even the human rights workers are threatened, no one is safe: ¨while I was typing this testimony, an explosion went off in front of the building. One side of the office collapsed and several persons were wounded. I was frightened, confused, and hardly able to speak. There was rubble everywhere. Three unidentified dead bodies, covered with acid, had been thrown on top of the rubble. One top of the bodies, a note signed by the death squad stated, ¨this is going to happen to you all.¨That day I had to decide whether I was going to continue working in that office or not.¨Pedro, page 8 of Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad
So, I was able to learn about why people like Clemente leave and then left to think about how we treat them. Americans think they are dirty and stupid, but of course not lazy, because we see how many of the jobs they do for us. I wonder how many stories we leave untold by simply reducing these people down to a simple quest for money. It is so much more. Who knew that the worker in Arizona was an indigenous Mexican, who can heal with medicinal treatments, that have been handed down for thousands of years. When did we allow his wetback to blind us from his life, his struggle?
¨La tierra es de quien la trabaja/ the land belongs to those who work it¨Emiliano Zapata
I spent the weekend in the community of Amatlan, with indigenous people that can trace their history back four thousand years. We did a home stay , so everyone divided into groups based on Spanish and desired intensity level (running water, etc). I was with Becca and Anne and we had no running water. In fact, we never saw water for anything. It was like camping, only with the strongest 72 year old woman I have ever met/secretly hope to be.
She is a single woman who knows what she believes in. We had a lot of different questions for her because Anne spent time in Africa by herself and Becca traveled/lived in South America. Anne asked about the Zapatistas, a now un-armed revolutionary movement currently being fought in Southern Mexico- more on this later - and she told us her opinion and how she protests. She chained herself to a tree once with other woman to protest a development. They also successfully fought off a golf course development with other communities because it would destroy the ecosystem and aquifer - water is life here.
Amatlan has a messy history of resistance. The community is in the base of a mountain chain like nothing I have ever seen before, I can only describe it as cliffs that form mountains. This community believes that everything has a soul, especially the mountains. So, you have to ask permission to take a picture and be aware of how many you take, and what you will use it for, such as deleting them. You are taking a pìece of that object each time you snap the lens.
During the revolution and the civil war, guerrillas used the mountains to hide in and fight from. We hiked Saturday morning, and were shown all the medicinal plants (the town is famous for them) and told how Amatlan has felt the affects of the revolution. They took back their land during the revolution, because it was stolen from them. Not only that, it was land that had been in their family for four thousand years! Their land is literally their life, it supplies food and water for them, without it they starve.
We ate our meals with the family, had biology class, and visited a medicinal clinic, the fertility stone, and a farmers union this weekend.
I personally enjoyed hearing how immigration, out-migration, has affected even this small indigenous community. Clemente, a guide on the tour, told us how he worked a year in Arizona. Yes, illegally.
I believe we cannot have an open border, we cannot let just anyone in, we need to try and stop the drugs and crime. But, allow me to give you some things to think about.
From 1980 to 1986, only 341 applicants out of THIRTY THOUSAND have gotten political asylum. And these people were seeking political asylum, not economic relief, because during this time they were fleeing wars fueled with blood money. Not a cut and dry war, but messy ones that blurred the lines between the military and civilians. One that left death squads to decide who was who.
I find it ironic that these people come here seeking basic human rights, life. Away from death squads, a violence that is saturating even the smallest of communitites. Completing a sick cycle - we help to push them out of their homes, and then fight back when the come to us seeking life.
Even the human rights workers are threatened, no one is safe: ¨while I was typing this testimony, an explosion went off in front of the building. One side of the office collapsed and several persons were wounded. I was frightened, confused, and hardly able to speak. There was rubble everywhere. Three unidentified dead bodies, covered with acid, had been thrown on top of the rubble. One top of the bodies, a note signed by the death squad stated, ¨this is going to happen to you all.¨That day I had to decide whether I was going to continue working in that office or not.¨Pedro, page 8 of Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad
So, I was able to learn about why people like Clemente leave and then left to think about how we treat them. Americans think they are dirty and stupid, but of course not lazy, because we see how many of the jobs they do for us. I wonder how many stories we leave untold by simply reducing these people down to a simple quest for money. It is so much more. Who knew that the worker in Arizona was an indigenous Mexican, who can heal with medicinal treatments, that have been handed down for thousands of years. When did we allow his wetback to blind us from his life, his struggle?
¨La tierra es de quien la trabaja/ the land belongs to those who work it¨Emiliano Zapata
Friday, September 19, 2008
Dear Skeptics
Dear skeptics, here is the data and formulas we used for the Market Basket Survey:
1. Item purchased and price
2. Price in pesos (MN$)
3. Price in US dollars
- price of pesos divided by MN 10.11 (approximate average current exchange rate) = USD $
4. Time cost, number of hours needed to work
- MN $ divided by MN$ 5.5 (hourly wage of minimum wage worker who earns MN$ 49.5/day) = hours
5. US cost equivilant
- hours worked mulitplied by USD $ 6.55 (US min. wage) = USD
Our conlcusions:
1 kilo oranges = 5 pesos/ .49 US cents/ .9 hours / $ 5.89 US equivilant
Deoderant = 25 pesos/ 2.47 USD / 4.5 hours work/ $29.50 US equivilant in dollars
1. Item purchased and price
2. Price in pesos (MN$)
3. Price in US dollars
- price of pesos divided by MN 10.11 (approximate average current exchange rate) = USD $
4. Time cost, number of hours needed to work
- MN $ divided by MN$ 5.5 (hourly wage of minimum wage worker who earns MN$ 49.5/day) = hours
5. US cost equivilant
- hours worked mulitplied by USD $ 6.55 (US min. wage) = USD
Our conlcusions:
1 kilo oranges = 5 pesos/ .49 US cents/ .9 hours / $ 5.89 US equivilant
Deoderant = 25 pesos/ 2.47 USD / 4.5 hours work/ $29.50 US equivilant in dollars
Thursday, September 18, 2008
12 Dollar Tortillas
Furman is traveling with the Center for Global Education at Augsburg College and our professors.
The mission of CGE is to provide cross-cultural educational opportunities in order to foster critical evaluation of local and global conditions so that personal, organizational and systematic chance takes place leading to a more just and sustainable world. Through a liberating and transformative experiential education individuals are encouraged to live as active agents in history, and hence, foster social transformation rather than the maintenance of the status quo.
One of the exercises they had us do was Market Basket Survey to give us a genuine look at life in the Third World, especially now as food prices and basic stables continue to rise. You may have seen the NY Times article about Haitians eating mud pies and the food riots resulting.
The mission of CGE is to provide cross-cultural educational opportunities in order to foster critical evaluation of local and global conditions so that personal, organizational and systematic chance takes place leading to a more just and sustainable world. Through a liberating and transformative experiential education individuals are encouraged to live as active agents in history, and hence, foster social transformation rather than the maintenance of the status quo.
One of the exercises they had us do was Market Basket Survey to give us a genuine look at life in the Third World, especially now as food prices and basic stables continue to rise. You may have seen the NY Times article about Haitians eating mud pies and the food riots resulting.
We divided up into groups of three and were given 100 pesos, ten dollars, and two hours to do a market survey and buy Mexican staples with our money. We did this exact same exercise in Greenville before leaving Furman, to be able to draw accurate conclusions.
I had just read two days before in a mail I received that Nicaraguan staples had soared to 400% and I was told the price of tortillas in Mexico jumped to 380% in the last year. They are in the third world, so it must be cheaper there.
Most of us automatically convert prices and then compare it to dollars. Coming to the satisfying conclusion that its okay, its cheaper in dollars. But, when you put the American minimum wage on a level playing field as the Mexican one, and then look at hours needed to work you come to shocking conclusions.
When we bought tortillas on Monday, September 14, they were equivalent to $11.80 US dollars! The poor are barely surviving on minimum wage in the US. Imagine what people do here, forget talks about a living wage, they are struggling to receive enough calories.
This allows us to understand a poverty mentality. Why people choose to live in a trash dump. They need the dependable income that results from sorting trash and selling it back to the recycling companies.
Living Abroad
¨If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But, if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.¨ Aboriginal Activists
I am on the trip I came to Furman for, the fall Latin America study abroad. It is a four class, four country sequence. Environmental Science in Mexico, Latin American politics in Guatemala, Latin American philosophy in Nicaragua, and Latin American history focused on comparative revolutionary movements in El Salvador, why El Salvador failed and Nicaragua succeeded.
To all the people thinking I am doing no school work, let me assure you, I am literally working twice as hard as a college student. I literally took double the hours of a regular student and was in class until 7 pm on Fridays. Now, I have class and quizzes along with meetings and lectures. The crucial difference being I get to learn about a subject and then go see it in person. For example, we took a quiz on our flight to Mexico City and thanks to Dr. Thompson we were all able to identify urban sprawl and ribbon development.
Yesterday we learned about the different types of air pollution and waste management. We then took two field trips that day to visit a community dealing directly with these issues. They are fighting the government trying to install a landfill in their community. They are resisting open sewage in their water while practicing cutting edge technology, such as dry toilets and the first biofilter toilet in Latin America in the community school.
We started in Mexico City and now are in Cuernavaca. Our hotel was a block from the zocolo. Mexico´s independence day was the 16th so we were able to enjoy the celebration for a week. I got sick the morning I left and was literally told they could only do one test because I was flying to Mexico in three hours. So, I sat the second day out, sick a mile and a half up and the third most polluted city in the world. The thousands of people celebrating and the protests helped cheer me up.
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