Damasco...Empezamos

In the midst of Tormenta Tropical Bárbara, we had our first meeting with the community of Damasco today. Damasco is located to the southeast of San Cristóbal and is one of a series of communities along the southbound carretera(highway) of people expulsed from the Chamula communities, which are located to the north of San Cristóbal. The people living in the municipio of San Juan Chamula are indigenous Tzotzils with a very stringent form of Catholocism. So much so that when other Tzotzils in the community convert to Protestantism (or even Islam, as a few communities have), they will burn their temples, cut off their water and electricity, disallow kids from attending school, and even kill people. I still don´t understand what has caused such religious intolerance, especially since these are both western religions brought in by foreigners.

On the drive out there, as you are passing through the pine forest, all of a sudden there is a military post, which apparently, is a location where Marcos´ Zapatista troops had a battle with the Mexican national guard. Its a very strange feeling thinking that this land had a battle only 13 years ago, after visiting battlefields in the U.S. which happened at least a century ago. After the pine forest begins the series of expulsed communities, each named after biblical names of places (Damasco being the Spanish version of Damascus). The carretera is sortof in a valley, with small cornfields on both sides, along with a numerous amount of sheep tied to trees. There are many people walking around, carrying heavy objects, such as firewood or water, with harnesses attached to their heads (it hurts my neck just thinking about it). The women all wear bright colored clothes of a silk-like fabric and carry their kids in satchels around their shoulders. Everyone either wears rain boots or sandals...and standing in an afternoon shower there will tell you why. Despite the fact that it is summer, its actually pretty cold there when its raining (or ´hoy sic´as they would say in Tzotzil).

Domingo, one of the people who received a toilet two years ago, has been a great help with our organizing so far. His involvement and enthusiasm has definitely brougt an air of legitimacy to us as we are walking through the community (not to mention the necessary translation). Salvador, the municipal president, looks like he will also be a great help to us (everyone in the community is named Domingo, Salvador, or Manuel...it gets a little confusing!). Today we decided on the first 3 people to receive toilets this summer (hopefully we will be doing more than 3). We didn´t follow the lottery list that was chosen when Amanda and Marié were here 2 years ago. Instead, we chose people that live next to each other(for ease of construction) and actually had an interest in receiving a new toilet. This wasn´t exactly our (Andrea and I´s) choice, but we aren´t really the ones in charge of the project. We were concerned that by not following the initial list, we might perhaps loose the trust of the communtiy...since we are just sortof picking who we think needs a toilet the most, which could possibly cause tensions in the community. The previous way with the lottery had problems in which some people didn´t live in the houses or contribute labor, but this new way could possibly cause different problems. Both Domingo and Salvador seemed to think there wouldn´t be a problem with not choosing people through the lottery, so I guess we´ll just have to see. But still, the community wasn´t involved in the selection of who receives the 3 toilets, which only enforces the feeling that this a project of COPÍN and not a project of Damasco.

We then headed over to the meeting where we were going to announce that Andrea and I will be in the community. Every Saturday at 4 pm Tiempo de Dios (they have their own time zone seperate from the rest of Chiapas i.e. Tiempo de Gobierno), the residents of Damasco will have a meeting called ¨Usos y Costumbres¨ in which they organize the community as well carry out their own penal code. The head of the municipio, Salvador, actually legally has more power than the leader of the Usos y Costumbres, but the leader of Usos y Costumbres has sortof usurped the power of Salvador so that everyone respects him more than Salvador. As we drove up, there was a huge argument going on with about 20 men in the street yelling, while women and children sortof stood to the sidelines watching. We were a little uncomfortable at this point (by ´a litte´ I mean ´extremely´!!!) and just sortof of stood in the middle of the street hoping they didn´t start focusing their attention on us. We found out later that this was actually part of the meeting. They were enforcing their community laws, and a man had hit his wife while he was drunk and they were deciding on a punishment for him. The punishment ended up being 1 night in the community jail (located under the school basketball court) and a fine of $500 pesos. All the discussion was in Tzotzil, so we didn´t find out what was going until until Domingo gave us a recap. After they passed the sentence, they invited us over to make our announcment. Alex and her husband did most of the talking (my public speaking is bad in english, let alone spanish), and they introduced us and what we will be doing this summer. It was all men and boys in the circle, as the women stood over to the side and didn´t talk at all. Most of the men are able to speak in Spanish, but they feel more comfortable talking in Tzotzil. Overall, I felt that the reaction was very good from the people at the meeting. Most seemed very interested in it, although I noticed one person that seemed displeased, but I have no idea what he was saying because no one was translating it for us.

We´ve asked that the three people to receive toilets contribute sand, gravel, water and labor for the project and we plan to start construction about a week and a half from now. I feel like at this moment that we have unnecessarily rushed things and didn´t have the full community involved in the decision process of who receives the toilets. We´ve taken a step in what I feel is the wrong direction (not involving the community), but we can´t exactly backtrack right now after we announced the 3 to receive toilets. I hope that if we are able to construct more than 3 toilets this summer, we can come up with a consensus about the importance of involving the community in the whole process. Even if we don´t involve them more, the process should at least be transparent to them (which as of now, it is not).