El Último ´Taxibat´

As I was leaving Chiapas, it was very hard saying goodbye to all the friends I have made in Damasco and San Cristóbal (or that is, 'taxibat' and 'adios', respectively). All the people I have met this summer have been very welcoming, and have graciously invited me to share in their lives. I hope that someday I will be able to return and visit them all again.

The last few days in Damasco showed me a wide variety of what the people are like there. On Sunday, the family I was staying with as well as the community leaders of Damasco organized a surprise going away party for me. All of the women that we built toilets for were in the kitchen cooking the dinner, and I ate with the men who received the toilets as well as the community leaders (I would have liked that the women ate at the dinner table as well, but that is a long time change before women will ever eat at the dinner table as equals with the men). Then on Monday, my final day in the community, I was provided with all sorts of food and coke by people wanting to see me off ( I ended up drinking about 3 liters of coke the last two days!). Everyone was so nice, and didn't want me to leave, it seemed like the perfect day to end my time in Damasco. However, then about an hour before I was about to leave the community for the final time, a rather sobering experience occurred that reminded me that life in Damasco isn't just children's smiles and Coca Cola. While we were working, the wife of the albañil walks up to us crying. She proceeds to tell us through her tears that their neighbor, of only 16 years old, was murdered the night before. He was working in San Cristóbal as a bootleg CD vendor on the street, when at 8pm some people strangled him with his own belt. They still didn't know yet who did it or why. I could tell that it really hurt the albañil to find this out, especially since he has a son about the same age. Yet, all he did was ask for the next day off, to go to the funeral, and then proceeded working as if nothing happened...he wasn't wanting that I saw him suffering. Its one thing I sometimes forget when I see all the smiling and happy faces in Damasco , that it hurts peoples' dignity to let other people see their suffering. They would rather that people see their happy side, even though they are unemployed and can't possibly support themselves financially (or even just food wise) on their tiny plots of corn and beans. For this reason, people will provide me with a coke almost everyday, even though their daily diet consists of mainly corn tortillas washed down with a corn drink called atole. And to be honest, I don't really want to see their suffering either. It's much easier to get through the night not seeing the suffering of hunger and sicknesses (especially after knowing that it is the free trade practices of my own country that are partly to blame for making the indigenous campesino life in Mexico almost impossible to be economically sustainable). It's important not to take everything I see at face value and try to think of things from the standpoint of the community. All in all, life in Damasco is very multifaceted and would take much longer than 3 months to completely understand it...and perhaps, as an outsider, it would be impossible to ever completely understand.

Reading my first posts on the blog, I realize that I was a little optimistic about what we were going to be able to accomplish this summer, in regards to organizing the community. I was hoping to have more community organizing involved with the project, but this didn´t really happen for a few reasons. First of all, the community is already fairly organized with their assambleas every saturday and the cargos in the community. Second, the organization COPÍN wasn't really set up with this in mind, which makes it harder to change. Third, the men of the community are busy most of the week harvesting their crops or working in San Cristóbal, so there isn ´t much time throughout the week to have meetings (I´ll get to the women later on). As a result, the best time to make announcements about the project was during the weekly assamblea...but these were only announcements, and didn´t have much input from the community. In addition, I got the feeling that Mateo, the community leader, didn´t like us taking up his meeting (or basketball) time with our anounements. Fourth, the native language of the community is Tzotzil, and not Spanish, so their meetings were all held in Tzotzil, which made it very difficult to know anything that was going on. And lastly, I´ll put some blame on myself, I don´t have a clue how to approach organizing a community. I have had previous experience with community organizing, but mostly as a bystander and not as the one actually organizing the organizing. I had the fear that if I started any organizing, the community would feel it was a waste of their time and it would end up making the community lose interest in the project as a whole.

However, putting all that aside, I am very pleased with how the project has turned out and feel like this summer has been successful. I´m not going to delude myself into thinking I was hammering out justice, as the Pete Seeger song goes (even though my arms are awfully tired). After all, all I was doing was building dry toilets for people. But I feel like the project was well worth it, even though the project was largely just a charity project. One of my worst fears going into this was that the community of Damasco didn´t want dry toilets and this was just going to be another project of outsiders coming in and building something that we thought was important, but wasn´t really important to the community. The Mexican government has built plenty of expensive chicken coops that look like dry toilets. But luckily, all the people we have been involved with in the project this summer have been very interested in their dry toilet and have contributed the mano de obra, and all but one have contributed the sand and gravel. I think the word of mouth from the previous toilets helped to increase demand for the toilets. So the final count for the summer is 7 dry toilets built, which makes a total of 16 toilets including the ones built by Amanda 2 years ago.

One thing I would have liked to have seen happen with the project is a woman's empowerment component. However, I don't know if that will ever be a part of the project. The women of the community are expected to stay at home, make food, take care of the house, and take care of the children. They don't have any say in the community meetings every saturday , and hardly any of them even show up to these meetings. While women are not empowered in the community and are not treated as equals of men, that isn't to say that women are treated completely without respect by the men. Most of the men I saw treated the wives well, and beating one's wife was considered an offense punishable by a day in jail as well as a fine. However, taking the project to such an extreme would require a lot more than just 3 months, and I don't think the members of the organization have enough free time to take on any additions to the project of such a scale. Also, as a male who doesn't speak Tzotzil, it would have been almost impossible to begin any dialogue with the Tzotzil speaking women, especially since I don't know if the men would appreciate me talking to their wives without them.

Had I had more time with the community, I think I would have considered throwing out the idea to the community of a tortilla making cooperative. On account of the U.S. flooding the market with our subsidized corn, corn growers are forced to sell their product for ridiculously low prices...one hectare of corn might fetch about $150 US for the entire year! And in addition to that, almost all the tortillas sold in Mexico are from a monopoly called Maseca, which owns almost every single tortillería. With this monopoly, they can charge whatever they feel like for tortillas, a staple food in Mexico, and as a result, the price of tortillas has more than doubled in the past two years...its now 90 cents US a kilo in most places. If a tortilla cooperative among the communities was set up, then they could possibly bypass the sell low/buy high cycle that dominates their lives. I was talking to one person in the community about this, but he thought that Maseca would almost certainly shut down any competition against them...so maybe a cooperative would have more political resistance than I thought.

One thing I would like to be worked on as the project progresses past this summer is that the project be a Damasco project and not a COPÍN project. What I mean by this is that the residents of Damasco see the project less as a charity project for them, and more as their own project that they take ownership of and are responsible for. I
don't see it as possible that all of the people in Damasco will be able to afford their own dry toilet...one person couldn't even afford sand and gravel...so the inherent charity structure will most likely always be present, but I want the project to become less of a charity project as it progresses. I saw positive steps towards this as the summer came to a close. Juan said that he would put up his own blocks and wood for his toilet, the community was able to come up with albañil without me finding my own, and the second albañil said that once he was finished with the final toilets this summer, he wanted to construct his own dry toilet at his house. Hopefully more people in the community will begin to take matters into their own hands and not just wait for their name to be picked. On a side note, the second albañil told me an interesting thing about building his own dry toilet. COPÍN has a bunch of extra separating toilet seats lying around from when Alex bought too many toilet seats about a year ago. So the albañil saw these toilet seats and had told his wife about them. Then, about two weeks into construction he asks me "I was wondering if you could give me one of those toilet seats to build my own dry toilet. My wife has kept telling me "When are you going to ask them if you can have one of those seats, I want to have a dry toilet!" This shows that while the women don't have much power in the organization of the community, they do have influence over household decisions, such as building a dry toilet.

This summer was such an enriching experience for me, and I've learned so much about the culture and history of indigenous peoples of Mexico as well as project organization. I'd like to thank everyone that has shown an interest in the project throughout the summer, and I hope that I've been able to provide a glimpse of what life is like in indigenous Chiapas. Some things that I'm not going to miss now that this summer is over include:

• Hitting my tall head on every single door frame, tree limb, bus ceiling, store sign, clothesline, you name it ( I feel like Gandalf visiting the tiny houses in Hobbiton)
• The many, many days spent, Pepto in one hand and suero(rehydration fluid) in the other
• Coming home wet every other day
• Waking up to find myself covered in flea bites

But there are many more things that I am going to miss;

• All the children calling my name and saying "bye" to me every day
  
• Sitting down for Coke breaks with the families every day
  
• The hour long bus ride every day listening to ranchero music, packed like sardines with Tzotzil men and women carrying a wide assortment of artesanías, produce, chickens, etc. (however, on they days the driver chose to listen to evangelical preachers in Tzotzil, I would have to put that in the ´Not going to miss´ category)
• Seeing indigenous women walk with pride down the streets of San Cristóbal
• Getting to learn from all the great people that I've gotten the chance to meet in Damasco and San Cristóbal

Colobal for everyones' support throughout this summer, and
Taxibat!

Duraznos y Coca

I´m about to start my last week on the project, and its so strange thinking that I probably won´t ever see this place again. I´ve learned so much and met so many interesting people throughout this summer. The last four toilets are continuing to proceed, although I´m sure I´ll have to leave a few of them for the albañil to finish without me. All the families have been participating with the mano de obra...as well as in the provision of duraznos (peaches) and Coca-Cola to the hungry engineer. In one of the families, the son Pedro is providing the mano de obra for his family. He is actually the same age as me, which sortof feels like putting a mirror up to myself. At the age of 19, he left his family, took the dangerous road to the U.S., and worked for 3 years doing brickwork in Atlanta, Georgia. So while I was busy studying (as well as some partying) at the University of Texas, he was building the arches to McDonalds. He returned this May, because he was missing his family, but thinks that he will have to return to the U.S. again, since he can´t get any good jobs in his home. I was rather surprised to find out how much it costs to travel to the U.S., the coyotes (the human transporters) actually ask for $2000 U.S. for the trip! That´s as much as 3 times more than my round trip ticket here! How long does someone have to work just to make up the amount of money they just spent on the trip alone?

Talking with the new albañil, Miguel, I found out an interesting part of the organization of the community. In this community, as well as in most Tzotzil communities, the members of the community have communal duties, called ´cargos´, that they have to do every week (by ´members´, I of course am only referring to male members of the community). The word for cargo in Tzotzil is ¨nichimal abtel¨, which means flowery or sacred work. It is considered a position of high respect to serve your community through cargos. The community appoints a person to their cargo for a full year, and if the person refuses, they have to pay a fine of $30,000 pesos ($3,000 U.S.). In Damasco, no one yet has refused to comply with their cargo. The different cargos in Damasco are Agente Municipal, Water Monitor, Highway Cleaning, Education Committee Chair, and 6 policeman. Miguel is currently the Water Monitor, which he was appointed to on May 2, which entails making sure the spring water is clean that feeds the piped water to the houses. All the people with cargos must be present at all the asambleas on every Saturday...although there seems to be more basketball than official business going on at these meetings. In the community of Chamula, the cargos involve a whole lot more drinking of trago (liqour), but I think since Damasco is mostly protestant converts, many who don´t drink, there is not as much trago at these asableas (although the community leader Mateo is drunk just about most of the time). Even though women traditionally do not have cargos in Tzotzil communities, it is not because they are not wanting to serve their community. In all the Zapatista bases, they have women in charge of cargos such as heading a weaving cooperative or a baking cooperative. I asked Miguel about women having cargos, and he replied that no women in Damasco have cargos. I didn´t probe the subject any further...I have to admit that I´m a little afraid to approach delicate subjects, being seen as the radical feminist foreign intigator.

Miguel was telling me that on Thursday his wife was going to San Cristóbal to receive poverty money from the government. This is one example of struggle between charity and justice, which sortof pulls strings between my heart and head. At the government offices of San Cristóbal, the government of Chiapas will give money to poor indigenous people. Every Thursday you can go look at the long line of women lined up going through the plaza, waiting for their money. In the case of Miguel´s family, they will receive $400 pesos (about $40 US), but the amount of money changes depending on how many kids the family has. Its so hard to have an opinion on the program. On the one hand, it is a pure charity project. It has at its aim to reduce poverty, but doesn´t do anthing to change the causes of povery, but rather just creates a dependence on the government(which I´m sure the government doesn´t mind). In fact, the way it is set up actually encourages people to have more kids (in order to get more money), which only means more malnourished children. On the other hand, it means that people like Miguel´s family will get to eat something other than beans and tortillas once in a while (not that I don´t absolutely love beans and tortillas, but you´ve gotta have more nutrition than that). I guess the question to answer is; are poor people better off because of the project? I think I would have to answer a tentative ´yes´, but I would think there has got to be a better way to use the money to aleviate poverty. But then again, it would be a government project, and the Mexican government sortof has the reverse Midas touch, where anything it touches turns to crap. It´s quite easy to criticize something without offering a solution (as a just did), but I don´t know of a solution. Its not like Miguel´s family isn´t trying to make a better life for themselves. In order to make ends meet, Miguel has worked in Florida has a gardner, away from his wife and family, day in and day out for three years. In fact, a son and a daughter of his even joined him up there to work as well. And now, Miguel is working for me for a measly $170 pesos ($17 US) a day... the $400 pesos a week adds up to more than 2 hard days of work for Miguel. And the problem of poverty has much deeper roots, in that indigenous people who have lived as sustinance farmers for centuries now have to compete on a world market with the scales heavily tilted against them. Perhaps a better use of the money would be to give low interest loans to people...or fund more weaving cooperatives. But there has gotta be some massive change before they can even think of reducing poverty...and until then, I don´t really see a problem in Miguel´s family getting to eat chicken on Friday.

Hay trabajo, inquire within

We followed up last Sunday with the capacitation session for the three families. It involved all three families crowding around the toilet (20 people in total!), while Alfredo, Alex´s husband, explained the proper maintenance and use of the dry toilet. After each use, they need to throw a handful of a mixture of lime and ashes so that it keeps the pH up and keeps the dessication going. I think everyone understood the basic concept, but Alfredo didn´t allow enough time between talking for an adequate translation of everything he said into Tzotzil (it was the same way when I was translating into English for Andrea!). I don´t think people understand how hard translation is. But hopefully, the members of the families that know Spanish will explain it well enough to the non-Spanish speakers. Everyone seemed excited about using their toilet, and of course they all found it hilarious the explanation of how the toilet works...I guess potty humor transcends all cultures!

Now, I´m sortof in a work slump, because an albañil from the community seems rather difficult to come by. You basically have to know someone who knows an albañil...and then that albañil has to be free at the time you want him to be. I´m beginning to realize how lucky we were with getting the previous albañil, though I think we paid him much too little for his work. First of all, in the beginning Alfredo negociated him down to $12 per day, which is not a whole lot of money ( even though we did let him take as many taquito breaks as he wanted), but second of all, other albañils seem to be put off by that number. It seems that the amount albañils are paid is public knowledge in the community, so whenever I ask someone if they know any albañils, the response seems to be ¨None that would work for $12 a day¨. I´m perfectly willing to pay more than that, but its hard to bring the subject up around the first albañil after he worked for so little. I think a typical wage for an albañil in Damasco is about $14-15 a day, and a typical wage for an albañil in the city of San Cristóbal is a minimum of $18 per day. Its hard to imagine how someone can provide for the family on $12 a day, especially when they spend $2 on Coca Cola alone!

I was talking with Beto, Alex´s father, about it, who hasn´t been without his preocupations about the organization of this project in general, and he thinks that it ought to be up to the community to obtain an albañil. It should be their project and their responsibility, and that indigenous people of Mexico are so used to receiving handouts from the government (in exchange for votes for the PRI and, specifically in Chiapas, to prevent future Zapatista communities) that they never take the initiative and work for things if they can get them for free. Beto worked for a while with an NGO in his home state of Hidalgo, in which he worked with campesinos to organize themselves to set up community wells. The NGO wasn´t set up to just dig a well and provide the campesinos with water for free, but rather they organized the community to set up their own wells and the only thing the NGO provided was the credit so that the campesinos could get loans (otherwise unavailable to campesinos...although I´ve actually seen two Grameen Banks here in San Cristóbal!). Then the campesinos will pay off their loans with the increased crop production from the water. One thing interesting about how he was describing his work with this NGO was that he said a few of the projects they worked on were failures. With these projects, they built the wells and the wells are still there, so in an engineering sense they were anything but failures (and also when reporting to international donor organizations), but that they failed to have the community take on the project as their own and organize it themselves.

I think this is the aspect of participation that this project is still lacking, that the community feels like they need to take the initiative on the project. The people in the community obviously want a dry toilet...I´ve only talked with one person who said that they didn´t want one. However, they don´t want one enough to save up the money to purchase one. Now, to be fair, a dry toilet is not an income producing item like a water well is, so its not like the people could expect to earn back the money they were loaned for a toilet. An example of the economic state of the people in Damasco: Domingo II (who we just built a toilet for) a while ago got a $300 loan (I think) so that he could have a chainsaw for growing his crops. And then the chainsaw broke soon afterwards, but he was stuck with a high interest debt that has grown to over $1000 by now. I don´t expect him to be able to come up with the $300-400 to purchase a dry-toilet, and the participation of him and his family has been well worth his receiving a toilet. But I want to keep this in mind when continuing with the project, that we are still lacking levels of participation. Speaking about the government projects, Alex showed me a sketch of a new proposed government project building dry sanitation toilets...which looked exactly like the ones we are building except they cost about $1000 more per toilet (I think someone is skimming a little something something off the top). These are dry toilets that the government is giving, just perpetuating the reliance on handouts...and I hope that we can distinguish our project from that of the government. However, when deciding who will receive the toilets or trying to find an albañil, I still feel like people are expecting me and the organization to do it, and that the community of Damasco sees this as a COPÍN project and not as a Damasco project.

Terminados...Sale pues

The project had a minor setback two weeks ago. Andrea came down with a kidney stone and had to return to Houston to see a doctor there. It looks like everything has turned out all right for her, but she will be missed by everyone here!

Sitting in the waiting room of the public hospital provided me with a different perspective of what the problems of poverty and lack of education really look like. This hospital has many indigenous people visiting it, because it provides free emergency care to everyone(and I have to say, it was faster care than I´ve ever seen in a hospital in the U.S). While I was sitting in the waiting room, in walks this young girl, that couldn´t be more than 12, who looked malnourished, was having trouble walking by herself, and was clutching her stomach in pain. She had thought she had some sortof gastrointestinal illness, but found out that she was actually pregnant. A pregnancy has to be one of the worst things for a 12 year old body, and espcially for someone malnourished as she was. The chances of complications during childbirth are extremely high for someone that young, which brings me to the next people I saw. There was an indigneous male and some family members waiting in the room before we had arrived. Then the doctor calls them over to talk to them. His wife had given birth in el campo, but the baby had died in the womb a few days earlier, most likely due to malnutrition. As a result of the complications in the birth, the mother got a serious infection and so they took her too the hospital. And so, the doctor begins telling this man, in a completely nonchalant manner, that his wife has a serious infection and they are going to give her a dose of penicillin, but there is a good chance that she might die in the next 3 days. I couldn´t beleive the way the doctor brought this news, it seemed as if what the doctor said and the way she said it were two completely different situations. I guess it´s just hard to beleive that situations like this still exist after living in a such a rich country like the U.S. Many of the people here don´t receive more than a primary education ( many less), because they have to start working or get married after primary school. And in addition to that, the schools don´t provide the sex education that people need in order to realize that a pregnancy at 12 is not healthy at all. And malnutrition just makes any problem much worse than it was. Walking though communities like this, you see many of the ´things´ of poverty, such as tar paper roofs, unlined pit latrines, hauling firewood up the hill everyday...which seem uncomfortable but not terrible. But just walking through the community, you don´t see the child and mother mortality and the terrible affects of malnutrition. There is just so much more than you see in the first glance.



The albañil (skilled worker) we have been working with invited me to be the padrino (or godfather) of his daughter for her graduation from kindergarten. That was such an interesting experience and an honor. Throughout Mexico, graduation from kindergarten and from primary school is a big deal in which there is a huge celebration and all the parents select a padrino for their child to walk up with the child when they receive their diploma. When I arrived at the school, the albañil told me that all the padrinos and fathers were eating breakfast, so I went and had some food in the preschool building. Everyone was busy preparing for the graduation, which was held on the basketball court of the school, and the entire town of Belén must have been present (Belén is the community directly across the carretera from Damasco). The event started a little later, when the teacher sang the national anthem (who has gotta be one of the worst singers I have ever heard). It seemed as if the kids didn´t really have the amount of patriotism I would think one would find at a mestizo school, the teachers had to go around forcing the kids to stand up during the national anthem. I would imagine that I wouldn´t feel inclined to patriotism if my government ignored my needs for so long and acted like I was inferior to them. Then the celebration commenced with a full two hours of dancing! All the students in each grade would have a few dances they had prepared to music. There were 16 people graduating from kindergarten, but only 7 were graduating from 6th grade. I guess one could assume that half of the kids in kindergarten are going to drop out of school in order to work before they finish primary school. After the dancing was over, they gave out the diplomas, in which they would call name of the kids, and they would walk up with the padrinos. The teacher would hand them their diploma and the padrinos would hand them a present (thank god I remembered to buy a present!). After it was over, I was taking pictures for the family, and it seemed like everyone wanted a picture of them with their kid...so I´ve got about 30 pictures I need to get printed.

We aren´t going to be working with this particular albañil anymore, because we had only contracted with him to do 3 dry toilets, and he has already found work starting on Wednesday. That´s too bad, because in additional to being a good albañil, he was great about organizing with the families and getting them to participate in the construction of their toilets. He was born to a father who was an alcoholic. He was one of 7 kids, but his 5 older siblings all died as children because of the negligence of his father. His father died when he was about 8 from alcohol abuse, and because his mother didn´t have any savings, he had to go out to work. He began working in the corn and coffee fields in the lowlands close to Tuxtla Guitierrez, where he remained working for 16 years. He became an alcoholic himself, and began to spend all of his little money on alcohol, leaving little for his family. When he began to work as an albañil, he began to see what he was doing to his family and stopped drinking so much alcohol. Its such a downward spiral that people turn to alcohol because of the shame of not being able to provide for their family, but spending all the money on alcohol only makes the problem worse. He has 7 children right now, and one of his children died at the age of 3 months. They took the child to the doctor, but he was unable to do anything to save the child. He seems very interested in what work is like in the U.S., but I don´t think he likes the idea of being away from his family that long. I can´t imagine how hard it must be to make that choice to risk it all for that great job in the U.S.

We finished the first three toilets today! All the families are really excited about it. Alex wants to have an information session on Saturday in which we teach the families about the proper use and maintenance, and she doesn´t want people using them until we have had the information session. But Salvador II is really wanting to start using it today, and keeps asking to use it before the information session!

The father of Alex has come up with a motto he wants us to write on the toilets;

Caga feliz
Caga contento
Cages adentro

but I don´t know if the families would really appreciate the humor of that written on their toilet!

I´m unsure when we are going to be able to start on the next toilets. At this point, I am thinking that the time and money will alcanza for a total of 7 dry toilets this summer, however we still don´t have an albañil to work on the remaining 4. I want to hire another albañil from within the community, because not only would he speak the language and be able to communicate with the families, but we would keep the knowledge of how to construct the toilets within the community, so that the project can continue without us gringos being around. Speaking of gringos, on the trip to the community earlier this week, I saw a couple of Americans standing by the side of the road, and I have to saw that my first thought was ¨What the heck are a couple of gringos doing here?¨ before I realized that that is probably the exact same thought process going through everyone´s minds when I get stared at on the trip over there every day.

For the next 4 toilets, as I mentioned before, one of the toilets is going to be for Juan, who is contributing more materials than just sand and gravel. The other 3 we are going to do through another lottery in the community. We have been working with the town leaders to come up with a complete census of the community...but it seems like every census has a different number to it. The lottery is definitely a more fair way of choosing the order of who is to receive the toilets, and it seems to have more legitimacy with the community (even though its hard to tell what they are thinking at the community meetings, since everything they say is in Tzotzil). However, I think that having participation on the family level will be more difficult, since we are picking random people and hoping they will participate. For these three toilets, I have been very impressed with the level of participation we have had with all of the families. They have always been there to help with the construction and seem very proud of their toilets. One of the more important reasons for family participation in the construction is that they have pride in the toilet, the willingness to maintain the toilet, and the know how of how to fix the toilet should problems arise. Today, I saw a great example of why this is important. One of the sons of Domingo II seemed concerned about if rain would enter through the door, so I began to figure out a way of putting up some láminas to divert the water away from the door, and then the son says ¨No no no, don´t worry about it. If I see that it is a problem, I´ll fix it myself.¨ I was excited after hearing that, I think that these toilets are going to be maintained pretty well and the families are taking ownership of them.

Día de San Juan Chamula

The community of San Juan Chamula is a very religious community, with a blend of catholicism and their traditional beliefs, that is fighting tooth and nail to hold on to its identity and traditions. It is from this community that the residents of Damasco were either expulsed for religious intolerance or moved away to find cheaper land to till. One of the main ways in which Chamula preserves its traditions and identities is through its religious celebrations, which coincide with important harvest dates in the Mayan calander, and Andrea and I got the chance to experience one of these festivals last sunday, the fiesta of San Juan.

We learned about this festival while reading the book titled ¨Juan Pérez Jolote¨ (¨Juan the Chamula¨ en inglés). The book is a biography (who knows if its true) that follows the life of a man growing up in the municipality of San Juan Chamula in the early 20th century. In a part of the book, Juan becomes the ´fiscal´ for the community, who is the person in charge of announcing the correct days of the fiestas, because he is able to read. The previous fiscal had gotten the day wrong for the fiesta of San Juan (June 24), and instead they celebrated it on the 23rd. As a result of this, they threw him in jail! This caught our attention and we decided it would be a shame to miss it while we were in Chiapas.

The fiesta of San Juan occurs on June 24 every year and is celebrating San Juan Bautista (John the Baptist), who is the patron saint of San Juan Chamula. The community of San Juan Chamula is located about 20 minutes northwest of San Cristóbal, and consists of 3 different barrios (San Juan, San Pedro, and San Sebastian). It is mostly farmland in which people grow corn and beans and raise sheep, however it is becoming grossly overpopulated. As people have 8, 10 , or 12 kids, they will divide up their property equally among them so that now, there is hardly enough land to grow subsistance farming...let alone make any sortof income, which is a necessity as the western world slowly encroaches on their life. As a result, many will move away, or go to work on large coffee plantations on the coast (or as I´ve mentioned earlier, los Estados Unidos). The leaders of Chamula have taken very strict measures to preserve its identity as well as maintain control. Mestizos are not allowed to own any land in the municipality of Chamula, nor are they allowed to spend the night there unless they get consent from leaders. Chamula has their own police force and laws, which are completely independent from Mexican laws. The leaders also have control over the sell of pox (pronounced ´posh´), a cane based liquor considered to cleanse the soul, as well as Coke and Pepsi, which have taken on a sortof mystical cleansing aspect as well. As I have mentioned earlier, Chamula leaders do not allow any political parties other than the PRI nor any religions other than Catholicism. This is in part to preserve the power that they currently have through the church, but also to prevent the destruction of their traditions, as has occurred in many indigenous communities throughout the country.

When Andrea and I arrived at the fiesta, there were thousands and thousands of people there. Most of them were wearing their traditional dress: for women, it is the same colorful silk fabric they wear all the time as well as a black woolen dress, and for men, a woolen chamarro that fits over the shoulders and goes down to the knees, tied on with a belt as well as a straw sombrero. The church bell was constantly ringing and fireworks were continuosly going off in the plaza in front of the church. We squeezed our way to go take a look at where the fireworks were going off, getting plenty of strange looks coming our way (but it wasn´t like we were the only gringo tourists in attendance). There was a band of musicians wearing red chamarros and wearing hats that I have heard were made out of monkey skin. The large doors to the church were wide open, which are only opened during festival days, and it is usually very dark within the church. There was a parade going around the plaza with a few manikin dolls and and some flags (we would soon find out the importance of these figures). I had been told not to take any pictures within the church, but that it was okay to take pictures outside the church. So, working on this assumpion, it is only natural to take a picture of a parade that is walking right in front of you. After I took the picture, a man next to me told me that I wasn´t allowed to take that picture, so I said I was sorry and put my camera away in my backpack. Then the guy signals to someone standing on a podium, who starts pointing at me...and soon I find myself surrounded by 5 large men in the white chamarros who were in possession of fairly large sticks. These were the Chamula police I assume, and the main one was explaining that I had to delete the pictures I just took, while the other ones were whispering disparaging remarks about gringos under their breath. The main one was explaining that the flags and the manikins were religious images (probably of San Juan) and that it is prohibited to take any pictures of them. So he went through my camera and we deleted every picture that had the images in it. He was actually surprisingly nice about it...it could have turned out much much worse. I´ve heard stories of many a tourist that have wound up in a Chamula jail for taking pictures inside the church. Chamula is very serious and protective about their religion, which is probably one of the most iconographic and symbolic religions that I have witnessed. He said that pictures outside the church and of the mercado were fine, but that the images were off limits. Needless to say, I left my camera in my backpack for the rest of the day. We left before it got too late in the afternoon, because we heard that the drinking gets heavier and more violent the later in the day it gets.

It´s impressive that the community of San Juan Chamula has been able to preserve their culture and traditions through all these years while other communities have lost them or are beginning to lose them. The downside is that they have preserved these traditions through violence and intolerance, such as the burning of protestant temples and the murdering of other indegenous people who have converted to protestantism. Although the protestant and muslim missionaries do nothing but divide the indigenous communities, Chamula responds with religous intolerance that seems unjustified. I´m glad that we got to experience a religious festival of San Juan Chamula, it provides us with a greater understanding of where the people of Damasco came from and why they left. I would definitely like to visit Chamula again after reading more about it.

To read more about Chamula, here are a few articles about the religous beliefs, political structure, and expulsions:

Chickens in Church
Cola Wars in Mexico
Evangelicals and Catholics in Chiapas

Lek oy...ja jech

We began construction Tuesday, and it is going pretty well so far. We´ve laid the 3 firmes and almost completed all the cámaras out of cinderblock. Tuesday was actually the first day since we´ve been in Chiapas that is hasn´t rained! Maybe that´s a good sign (many people in Mexico are very superstitious...why not join in?).

The three people we are constructing the dry toilets for are Salvador II, María, and Domingo II (I am calling them II, not because that was their father´s name...but just because I am trying to avoid confusion with the previous Salvador and Domingo that I have mentioned). They live up on the top of the hill, in what I believe is the northern border of Damasco, and have a wonderful view of the town center below. The family plots of land are covered in peach trees, and all the kids will get long sticks and knock down the fruit and come sit and watch the construction. It seems like some of the kids are predisposed to smiling, while others I haven´t seen smile once...they just kindof sit there with a blank stare on their face. I can only really talk with the ones who are old enough to attend school, because the young ones haven´t learned any Spanish yet. One particularly mischevious one saw that we were taking all the organic matter out of the sand for the concrete, so he went and got a handful of leaves and started throwing tiny pieces in to see if we were watching. Other frequent vistors to the construction site are the chickens. Both the families of Salvador II and María are raising chickens to eat, and we´ve had several instances where the chickens flew the coop and the family had to have an emergency rescue mission. They would all surround the chicken, with arms extended, and converge in and grab the chicken. I imagine that raising chickens like that is about the equivalent of having a bank account with wings.

For the construction, we hired an albañil from the neighboring community of Belén, because we want to have a local worker so that the technical knowledge of how to build the toilets stays within the community. The one problem I found out about hiring a local worker is that when he is talking with the family members, he only speaks in Tzotzil, since that is both of their first language. I end up feeling left out of the conversations and decisions most of the time, but it is better that the families participate in the decision making.

One thing I´ve noticed is that the American Dream is something very real in the community of the Damasco. It has come up in conversations with multiple people in community. It might just be because we are from the United States and is something in common we have, but everyone seems to have dreams of that perfect job in the U.S. Today, I ended up teaching the albañil and the family of Domingo II a course in English. Many of the questions were things like ¨How do you say ´I am looking for work´ or ´Do you have any work?´in English¨ The son of Domingo II had actually lived in Virginia and Florida for 7 months, but he said that he wasn´t able to learn any English while he was there.

The other son of Domingo II is mute, and Domingo II said that he has two other daughters that can´t talk either. I was wondering if this might be genetic, but I heard later that many indigenous people become mute because they are born without the proper medical care and when they are born, they have phlegm in their throat that causes muteness if it isn´t treated correctly.

For the project, we are still in the process of deciding on the level of participation that we can expect in this project. I think that community participation is out as far as deciding who will receive toilets this summer, but we still have participation on the family level. As of now, I sortof see that we have 3 directions the project is going in terms of family participation:

The original intent of the level of family participation for this project was that each family contribute sand, gravel, and water, as well as contribute mano de obra (i.e. labor). The first person to receive a toilet, Salvador I, is a shining example of this level of participation. As I explained earlier, he´s put in all the materials and done all the work that we have asked from him with a surprising enthusiasm. He is even putting in the mano de obra for the toilet of María, the single mother next door...since she can´t do the heavy lifting (although she has provided us with some delicious cokes).

However, we have had some difficulties with his other neighbor, Domingo II, which is taking another direction of participation. To begin with, he doesn´t speak spanish, is somewhat deaf, and is, as Salvador II described it, ¨mal de cabeza¨ which I guess I would translate as mildly retarded. He came back to us two weeks ago and said that he couldn´t afford to pay for the sand and gravel and didn´t want a toilet because he couldn´t take off work for the mano de obra. This was against our rules for participation...because without an investment in the toilet, the chance of it being properly maintained is slim to none. But Salvador II was telling us afterwards that Domingo II changes his mind a lot, and will say one day he doesn´t want something and will say he does want it the next. The mano de obra part is unnegotiable, but we felt like there should be some leniancy regarding the mentally handicapped as well as those unable to afford sand and gravel. So we came to him last week and said that we could pay for sand and gravel, but that he would still have to contribute mano de obra. This time he said that he would agree to do the mano de obra, so we are now contructing a toilet for him now. This isn´t really a direction we wanted to take in terms of participation, but I think this should turn out fine as long as he keeps his word to contribute the mano de obra...I personally wasn´t wanting to give up on someone just because he is mentally handicapped or too poor to participate.

The third direction we have towards participation is Juan, who approached us and asked us to build him a toilet, saying that he would contribute lumber and blocks in addition to the sand, gravel, and water. Now this is even more of a degree of participation than just sand and gravel...and I think that he would definitely maintain and use his dry toilet correctly. If we took this route for more toilets, there would be more of sense of pride in the toilet and more use (and not to mention saving the meager funding that we have). My only problem if we took this approach, and this approach alone, would be that we would leave all the Domingo II´s in the community behind, only building for those that can afford some of the materials. Its so hard dealing with poverty like this. I know that handouts aren´t going to fix the problem...building Domingo II a toilet for free isn´t going to miraculously bring him out from being the poorest of the poor, nor is it going to change his way of thinking or living(except for being less sick). However, just ignoring him and focusing on those that can afford it doesn´t seem like a solution either. I guess at this point, I would like to see this project take on a combination of these approaches for participation.

El Censo

As we approach the expected day to start construction, Tuesday, I just can´t help but feel like we are forgetting something important. I guess we´ll just find out what that is on Tuesday...

Andrea and I were working on a census of the population of Damasco today. The purpose of the census is to have a better idea of how many people are in need of a dry sanitation toilet as well as help with the creation of a new lottery, if we continue with the lottery route for the remainder of the toilets. Salvador, the agente municipal, helped us with the necessary translation, as my Tzotzil ability wouldn´t have gotten us very far. But I do think, after today, I´ve got down all the one-word greetings and salutations (i.e. hello, how are you, thank you, goodbye...not exactly a deep conversation). We ran into Salvador at the primary school, I think he was probably handling some business there as the agente municipal. The teacher of the school is from Teopisca, the nearby city, and spoke spanish, which I think is the language they use to teach kids in the school. We arrived there during the physical education period, which consisted of the children walking around the basketball court with the teacher yelling ¨1-2-1-2...etc.¨ I can think of a few more interesting sports than walking in a circle. More than half of the students at the school were boys, but I would say that there were a lot of girls in the class as well....which is promising that they are getting an education. I´m not sure how many of the students will progress to secondary school, I´m not even sure where the closest secondary school is. I think, however, that most of the kids have to start working after they finish with primary school. While we were standing there waiting for Salvador, one of the boys in class yelled out my name...I don´t have a clue how he could have remembered it! I said hi and asked him what his name was... but I can´t believe that I already forget it (possibly Victor?).

The census basically consisted in going to each house and asking the names of everyone that lives there. Most of the men work in the fields during the day, so we were mostly talking with the women today. The women have to stay home and watch after the young kids and cook all day. The ones with young babies carry them on their shoulders all day in these pouch type sashes. In San Cristóbal, I see a lot of women from nearby communities selling the different things they've woven, but I don't know how many women in Damasco weave...so far I only seen one person in the community weaving. They do have a lot of women running stores that sell coke...there is no shortage of refrescos in Damasco! Most of the houses in Damasco consist of two buildings, the building where everyone sleeps and the kitchen and stove building. They are typically made of pine wood from the nearby forest, but a few of them are built with cinderblock. The building for where people sleep typically has a roof made with láminas (corrugated steel), while the kitchen typically has a tar paper roof which you can see the smoke eminating from when they are cooking. The women and young children stay inside the kitchen most of the day cooking, which can create a major health probelm due to all the exposure to particulate matter from the burning wood. Everyone was helpful with completing the survey. It was surprising that a few of them took a few minutes to remember the names of all the people in the house...but the women were definitely better at remembering the names than the few men we talked to. One household had 12 people living there! She just kept listing off name after name.

While we were walking around the community, Salvador took us through a short cut which was basically walking in the middle a muddy creek. It was hard to believe this man in his late 50´s/early 60´s taking us on a short cut that I would only expect from a 6th grader. It was kindof fun though (and we got the mud cleaned off our boots later when we got caught in the typical afternoon flood storm in San Cristóbal). After we completed the survey, Salvador invited us to his house for refrescos...mmm, I love real sugar coke. ¡Qué rico! He pulled out some little chairs for us to sit in. For some reason, everyone in Damasco seems to only have tiny dwarf size chairs. I guess they would take up less space than normal size chairs, but they make you feel like a giant sitting in them. Salvador has a house on the top of the hill, so you can see in all directions. We were talking about how, as the agente municipal, it's his job to settle disputes when people come up to him with their problems, but he said it isn't that much work to be the agente municipal. He was also talking about how he has three sons that came to Georgia to work for a chicken packaging plant. They really liked it there and had saved up enough money to buy their own houses close to Damasco. Salvador is a lot of fun to talk with, I don't really feel that cultural barrier between us that I normally feel when I'm talking with people in poor communities. There are still times that I will say something and he doesn´t have the slightest idea what I´m talking about...but I think those are inevitable.

So as long as things go to plan, we are going to empezar with construction on Martes.