Prudence Mabele, Executive Director of Positive Women's Network phoned in from South Africa to participate in the August 28th Morning Show on KPFA.
Prudence spoke about the escalating hate crimes in South Africa directed at members of the lesbian and gay communities.
A recent press release issued by Positive Women's Network states:
"These hate crimes underscore the need to forcefully end discrimination based on gender and sexuality, as well as the stigma and discrimination that women living with HIV and AIDS face."
To listen to the segment visit KPFA.
EduPaz's health program is focused on mental health as they felt that the issue of addressing people's traumas after having lived through a conflict was missing in many indigenous communities. Maria Elena, the director of EduPaz's health program, studied Gestalt therapy when she was in Argentina years ago and now has shared her knowledge with other community members to provide a space for families who need more psychological support.
Jose, an indigenous man who comes from a community that speaks Tojolabal, manages the economic development program. He is the son of indigenous farmers who used to work on a large finca back in the day. He told me how when he used to be a young boy of 8 years old that he would talk Tojolabal with all the other children on the finca and that his father would discourage him from doing so and told him he should only speak Castilla (Spanish). So he did and he lost most of his Tojolabal until he was in his 20s and when he began interacting with Tojolabal-speakers outside of the finca and gained it all back. Now, as director of the microcredit project in EduPaz, he speaks Tojoloba all the time.
EduPaz has a more personalized way in managing its microcredit program than many other non-profit organizations. Before a group of community members can receive microcredit, EduPaz will have a dialog with them 3 times to make sure everyone understands the conditions and why these conditions exist. All members of the group have to become responsible for the group members to pay back their loans. A board of directors is selected and then Jose, with the support of Javier, EduPaz's executive director, will check one by one all the microcredit proposals and budgets to ensure that the proposed income-generating project will be guaranteed a positive result.
EduPaz will also assist the groups by providing financial administration training to each group. But they do not organize workshops and then ask people to come. Instead, they go to each of the groups they work with, one by one, and give each group the necessary training to build everyone's capacity to administer their loans.
Before, EduPaz used to offer many workshops such as training in agroecology and seminars on NAFTA and the World Bank but they discovered that not many would attend and people were just not interested. They decided to stop offering the workshops and focus on giving more personal attention to each group.
EduPaz's office includes a collective store on the first floor where group members involved in the microcredit program can sell their products. The store is focused on offering products that are both organically made and qualify as fair trade. The main product they sell is organic coffee as EduPaz has given a microcredit to organic coffee collectives.
EduPaz has only three staff members and all of them are constantly traveling, mostly to the communities in the Zona Selva and Fronteriza, that border with Guatemala. In spite of the small staff they seem to be covering lots of neglected areas and the advantage of having a Tojolabal native on staff makes a lot of difference.
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After finishing this visit, I feel sad and happy that my work in Chiapas has been completed. I am sad to leave Chiapas as this has been a magical place to be and for me it has been quite an eye-opening experience where I have witnessed the hard work that is being done on the ground with the financial support IDEX has provided. This is a place where you can meet many activists, many community members and people living with another type of government. I am happy to be able take all that I saw and learned back with me to San Francisco to do a better job in raising more funds and working harder to make my small contribution to supporting the various groups that IDEX supports there.
I hope you have all enjoyed reading about my trip and has encouraged you to visit Chiapas and/or learn more about the work that is being done there.
Until the next trip.... Peace out!
Kat
Then Rosaluz came in and said, "I tried to come last night to talk to you but the lights were out."
"Yes, that's right. The DESMI staff wanted to sleep because they had to wake up early today," I responded as I snuggled in my hammock.
"Well, I wanted to tell you that the Junta would like you to talk to the women artisans."
"Oh, that's great. When would they like to get together?"
"The women decided they want to talk to you before the DESMI workshop."
"Oh, that workshop starts at 6am." Then it suddenly sunk in. "That means they want to talk to me now?"
"Um... yes."
So much for sleeping in!
When I entered the training hall, the women artisans were already waiting for me. They started the meeting by welcoming me and asked me to talk about my visit.
All these women are representatives, chosen by their communities to be responsible for coming to the trainings and then inform the rest on how the cooperative is coming about. In fact, the women have just started this process and after talking to me, they will continue their training on what constitutes a cooperative.
This group is unique as they are the first group of artisans who have decided to become an autonomous cooperative. This means that they don't have to go through the long legal process that is required when registering with the governmental system. Instead, they need to be recognized by the Junta (Good Governance Council). Nevertheless, they want to create a cooperative that is legitimate, so they are taking the positive parts of what is usually required to have a cooperative.
I asked them what was their dream of having this cooperative, why did they want to form it. After some silence, one artisan spoke out:
"Our dream to have a cooperative is to be united. We are all trying to sell our products in the market to earn some money but we don't want to compete with each other. We don't want one municipality to sell more than the other. (The cooperative has members from 7 municipalities and 4 regions.) Instead, we want to unite so that the money can be distributed to everyone."
I could tell that not all the women were jumping to talk openly, except the coordinator who was doing a great job leading and encouraging the group while she tried to comfort her baby at the same time. But the fact that they are all participating in this workshop speaks a thousand words.
The women are here because they want to be here. This is a workshop that they have asked to have and not because it is being offered by an organization. You can tell the difference as I can see that even the quiet ones are paying close attention.
This cooperative is ambitious, trying to include indigenous women who speak different Mayan languages and Spanish. But it is their decision as a group to create this cooperative and apparently that communication among them has been very clear!
Kat
I am waiting to meet the Good Governance Council (Junta de Buen Gobierno) in the caracol (regional center) of Morelia. I came in the morning with a group of 4 staff members of DESMI. They have been invited to give workshops to community members in agroecology, organic fertilizers, cooperative management and cattle rearing. I am here with Rosaluz from Enlace Civil to meet the Council members that are in charge of the plan of production (focusing on food security and arts and crafts). IDEX is supporting specifically the group of women artisans who are starting an autonomous cooperative to build the capacity to market their textile products.
Each caracol has its own security commission, which receives every guest who enters the premises. They then make an appointment with the Council. I am already participating in this alternative governance system.
Right now it seems that there is a conflict that has occurred in a nearby municipality and it is taking the Council a long time to resolve. I might not get to meet the Council before lunch.
After some beans and tortillas...
The Council has received me and has asked me to explain the reason of my visit. They welcome me and tell me that this is my home too. They ask whether I have a space to spend the night and if I had eaten. It is nice to know that even though this is all a procedure that the communities have created, it feels like a genuine service to all people who enter this place.
I then went to meet a Commission of the plan of production, which includes IDEX's support to the artisans cooperative. The Commission has just formed as the plan is too big and required a separate commitment by the Council. It was an interesting dialogue where I explained what IDEX was and they told me about their plans and hopes for this project.
From the meeting I could instantly tell that this was a project that has ownership amongst the people themselves. This project was planned and initiated by them and now they are building their capacity to see the project through with the support of Enlace Civil. It is a constant support that encourages professional development as Enlace Civil helps them administratively such as guiding the financial administrator to practice Excel to track the funds.
These people have been chosen by the communities to be in this commission and Enlace Civil is giving them the basic skills to govern their people and to help them improve their quality of lives.
You can't come here and not feel that people have taken ownership of their own governance and that this is all done with the goal of providing a better future for their communities.
FOCA was established in 1996 focusing on two programs: education and health. FOCA started their education program in one community in the Los Altos region, and offered classes to students because the one professor that community had had, decided to leave suddenly. From teaching the students FOCA went on to teach community members to become teachers so they could build their capacity and offer children education in other communities. After 12 years, FOCA has been able to train teachers in more than 24 municipalities in the region of Los Altos.
FOCA works with community members in all aspects of their programs. With education, FOCA has been working exclusively with autonomous municipalities, teaching literacy classes and a curriculum developed by the communities themselves. FOCA is continually expanding their program as they are planning to train 80 teachers this October on gender issues so they can develop interactive games that talk about gender equity with children from their first grade.
They are also focusing on encouraging their students that graduate from elementary school to continue their studies and register for middle school. This isn't easy as students finish elementary school at 12 years-old and therefore, are considered old enough to be part of the community and need to help their families. So FOCA has to be constantly talking to the parents and community leaders to demonstrate the necessity of their children continuing their education.
With their health program, FOCA initiated with traditional plants, but over time they saw that a missing component in health issues was sexual and reproductive health, an issue that is related more with women. To address this issue, FOCA has organized training workshops on gender issues and trained 5 indigenous women intensively to become health promoters so that they could train other indigenous women on these issues as well.
In order to have success with training indigenous women on sexual and reproductive health, FOCA realized with experience that they needed the full support of the community leaders. FOCA has focused particularly on the issue of maternal mortality as many community members can relate to this. No one wants their mom to die. Unfortunately there are a high number of mothers who die due to poorly performed abortions that can cause heavy hemorrhaging. These statistics are not documented as these women are not considered part of the census population.
It has been a struggle but FOCA have now been able to get the full support of community leaders to train women in sexual and reproductive health. This was necessary because even though it is crucial that indigenous women know their own rights, it is also important that they still feel they belong to their community. Now with the support of the community leaders, the women being trained aren't being expelled from the communities. They are still subject to criticism, especially by men, but because FOCA’s training and approach, they are learning to have a voice, while staying part of the community.
Diana does part of the health training, and focuses on information about the Mayan cultures before the Spanish conquest. This is essential as it teaches women that indigenous cultures did not traditionally accept women to be in a subordinate role or to allow men to beat them up, which is unfortunately all too common. Being half indigenous, half mestiza, Diana understands the context of living in a small community where traditions prevail over everything. I can tell she is a great trainer as she has been explaining everything to me at great length. Eventually I needed to raise my hand to excuse myself to the bathroom.
FOCA gives training to health promoters once a month and like CIAM, they plan out all their activities in January. Activities are based on the monitoring and evaluation tasks they carried out throughout the year before. Once a month health promoters come to FOCA's office for training and they bring with them a report of how many women they have trained, what themes they covered and how successful they were. By constantly training women to train others, FOCA has been able to increase from 2 indigenous health promoters to a network of 120 indigenous women specializing in sexual and reproductive health over the course of 12 years.
"Many people can't believe all the work that has been accomplished with such a small staff," Diana commented, "but what I always tell them is that this hasn't been the work of FOCA, it has been the work of the women and their communities. They are the ones that have carried out this work and have shared their knowledge with other women so that there are more women experts in sexual and reproductive health. This is why the impact is so big."
Enlace Civil is an association that grew out of a request from the local communities in Chiapas in 1996 to become a link between them and the national and international civil society. Enlace has worked together with the formation of the Good Governance Councils (Juntas de Buen Gobierno), since 2003, to support the different projects/programs the communities have planned for themselves.
Contrary to many organizations I have visited, Enlace has a different system in supporting communities. Enlace itself does not implement, nor offer projects/programs to the communities. They consider themselves to be at the service of the communities. The communities have been running their own programs in health, education, economic development, etc. and these programs are then communicated to Enlace Civil so that they can support them administratively. The staff team of Enlace Civil have been mostly chosen by the Good Governance Councils themselves and they work voluntarily. Enlace exists to support the strengthening of this alternative governance to better address the needs of the communities.
I met with Rosaluz, the staff member responsible for the "caracol" (regional center) called Morelia. There are 5 main caracoles in Chiapas. The Good Governance Council in the Morelia caracol has 66 members (33 women and 33 men), where each week 11 members are rotated to be in charge of a program or project in the Council. Currently, these Council members in Morelia are in their third year. (Members are selected to be in the Council for a term of 3 years). Next year the Council will be receiving new members. To support the new members, Enlace Civil will facilitate training and follow-up visits with them to ensure that they have all the capacity to govern as the Council for the next three years.
After the first year, Rosaluz will continue to follow up with the Council members but no longer at such an intensive rate. One of the things she has supported after the first year has been the systemization of the Council's evaluations and its organizational structure.
Rosaluz shared enthusiastically with me, "It's actually been an exciting experience to do this because the structure envisioned is already in place. Many time, one writes about the vision of an organization that one wants to achieve. Well, in this case, the communities have already formed their vision over the years: the formation of their own government structure, so now I'm just writing down or documenting their own governance they have created."
This week I will be accompanying Rosaluz to meet the Council members in the Morelia caracol and cooperative members within the communities. I'm looking forward to meeting them!
Kat
Katherine, with Toño, DESMI's Director
When I entered DESMI's office, I thought to myself, "I want to work here!" DESMI's office is in a beautiful colonial house with a huge garden, which they have owned since 1979. I knew several of DESMI's staff from my IDEX trip to Guatemala last year, so seeing them again felt like seeing old friends.
Sitting down with the staff on my office visit, DESMI taught me a lot about their programs, and specifically their microcredit program. DESMI works in 3 regional areas in Chiapas: North, South and Los Altos. Currently, they have one person managing each regional area but they are in a process of staff restructuring to see if there is a way to better facilitate the work in these areas by distributing the responsibility.
I found DESMI's microcredit program very interesting. DESMI's loan fund will only be distributed to collectives. The whole process from the moment the community applies for microcredit to receiving it may take 2 to 3 months, as DESMI wants to ensure that the microcredit they receive will guarantee success of their project. There hasn't been a case where DESMI has rejected an application. Instead, if something doesn't make sense or the application is not complete, DESMI's staff will take the time to visit the collective and work together on the application. Every first Monday of the month, DESMI's staff sits down together to look at all the applications. Since 2003, they have not received many applications.
DESMI expressed to me their excitement on the exchange trip they're doing next week together with K'inal Antsetik to visit IDEX's Guatemalan partners: AFEDES, APROSADSE and ISMU, as well as other organizations. They are planning to visit AFEDES' Weavers' Store in Santiago Sacatepequez and APROSADSE's agricultural program in Chimaltenango.
DESMI is hoping to learn especially how these organizations work with gender issues into their programs, since DESMI is also initiating their own workshops on masculinity. These exchange trips, organized by IDEX partners themselves, came about during IDEX's regional conference in Antigua, Guatemala in January 2006. IDEX's partners decided they wanted to exchange experiences as they saw that they all were facing similar challenges although living in different political and cultural contexts.
IDEX has been a long supporter of DESMI and it's easy to see why. DESMI is continually working to become more efficient in their site visits, training and in being more aware of the needs of the communities. DESMI is currently working on developing a monitoring and evaluation plan to ensure they are achieving the objectives they have set themselves to accomplish."It hasn't been successful yet, to be honest," Toño, DESMI's Director tells me, "but we are doing our best to get this plan together because we want to make sure that DESMI is working well to improve the quality of life of these communities."
Kat
Gladys and Lupita of CIAM
On the outskirts of San Cristóbal lies the office of El Centro de Investigación y Acción de la Mujer Latinoamericana (Latin American Women's Center for Research and Action, or CIAM), one of IDEX's catalyst grantees. Even the taxi had a difficult time to find this place but once I arrived, I found myself in a beautiful house where CIAM's staff is busy working with different rural development programs for improving women's quality of life.
Gladys, CIAM's Director of Programs and Lupita, the Financial Administrator, sat down with me to talk about their organization. Unfortunately, the field staff could not accompany us as they were busy working in different meetings that day.
Gladys shared with me the programs at CIAM, which all integrate a genders lens and a holistic approach. The 4 main programs are: Health, Agroecology, Women's Issues and Human Rights. A fifth program is in progress which will concentrate on researching these four thematic issues to facilitate even better their discussions with community members.
CIAM works in 3 areas in two states in Chiapas (Amatan and Hiutiupan), bordering the state of Tabasco, a very neglected area. It takes a day to drive there. However, once a month, the field staff (in charge of health, agroecology and women's issues) drives there together to stay for almost a week, during which they give workshops to these communities on the issues mentioned in the parenthesis. After their week, they return to CIAM's office to evaluate how it went and then use that evaluation to improve their training for the next month.
"Why did you choose to work with these states in Chiapas, especially since they are so far away?" I asked Gladys.
"These areas used to be filled with coffee plantations and the coffee there used to be exported. In 2000, the price of coffee went down globally and at the same time, a strong plague attacked the plantations, leaving the people in these communities in a difficult crisis. As a result, they need so much support now, especially since they are in an inaccessible area.
Also, the cultural trends that existed on these plantations have continued today within the families. For example, there still is the tradition of women being stolen at 13 or 14 years old to get married to the man who stole her. Another example is how daughters are being sold today for a sack of sugar and other foods."
"What?! That still exists?" I was shocked!
"Yes, in the 21st century, those customs still exist today and not many people know about it."
If you can't even imagine how these customs work, I highly recommend you to watch the movie "Like Water For Chocolate." At least that's they way I can picture these traditions.
Gladys continued:
"There's also a need to preserve the Zoque culture. Its identity is being lost as the new generation don't want to speak the Zoque language anymore. Instead, they want to celebrate the Spanish holidays and we have seen many of them consuming high amounts of alcohol. This is a reason why we are emphasizing now workshops on "masculinity" where we bring men together to talk about their role in the community and how they perceive women to bring more awareness on gender equity."
In spite of being an organization that works on low economic resources, CIAM is very organized in terms of their planning and evaluation. Each January, CIAM's staff plans their activities for the entire calendar year! In order to schedule these activities, CIAM sends the communities they work with a questionnaire that will tell CIAM what are the issues requested so that CIAM can plan for workshops that address the community's needs. What I really like is that their plan depends mostly on what is requested by the communities.
But my favorite aspect of CIAM is what they have done with their human rights program. CIAM has created a 3-year school program that has a focus on leadership development and invites 30 women from different social organizations to participate to become better leaders for themselves and their communities. The school started in 2004 and currently, they are about to start the second generation of graduates this fall.
I had hoped to visit one of their workshops but that was not possible, given that I will not be here when they have their next workshop. In any case, I could tell from my conversation with CIAM´s staff, and the photos and materials they showed me the hard work that CIAM is doing to support women and neglected communities in Chiapas.
Kat
Read the NY Times story.
At IDEX we applaud CARE for its brave and principled rejection of millions of dollars in government food aid. It is exactly because of these sorts of conflict of interest, in this case, between a government beholden to agribusiness lobbies and poor communities abroad struggling with a glut of subsidized American commodities, that some overseas aid agencies, including IDEX, have decided not to receive funds from government-sponsored programs. Instead, we rely on donations provided by thousands of generous individual citizens which, though harder to raise, come without any agenda beyond a sincere desire to end poverty.
IDEX thanks you for your continued support.
Near the market of Santo Domingo I took a colectivo (van) to head towards IDEX's partner, K'inal Antsetik's Leadership Center. Both the offices of K'inal and the Mayan weavers cooperative called Jolom Mayaetik are based there.
Getting to K'inal's offices turned out to be not so easy. The colectivo dropped me of in the middle of the street. "Just cross the piece of land ahead and watch out for the dogs! They like to bite people," was the last thing I heard the van driver say. I found myself ultimately on Calzada de la Escuela and of course, none of the numbers are in order. A woman that looked out of place was walking nearby, so I thought maybe she would know what I'm looking for. Indeed the European woman showed me the way to K'inal. I knew I was there once I saw the pink building.
The first person I met was Celerina, the President of Jolom Mayetik's Board. She is in her last year of presidency and is already training young indigenous women to become part of the Board the next year when she leaves.
"What do you want to do after leaving your president's role?" I asked her.
"I want to study medicine to become a nurse. I want to be able to support women in the communities in issues of health. That has always been my dream."
"How is it, being president for the cooperative?"
"It has been hard but I have learned so much on the way. At first I told the cooperative that I didn't want to be the president, but no one really paid attention to me, because the next thing I know I was the president! But now I'm glad because I have the opportunity to learn to speak to people and to travel and get to know other countries. I now can travel to other countries by myself."
I then met with Micaela, K'inal's Director and Rosalinda, the Health Program Coordinator. Micaela talked about her ongoing work in supporting Jolom Mayaetik cooperative and how excited she is to start a new program for indigenous young women at K'inal.
K'inal is hosting for the first time 3 young women from the community of Marques de Comillas to stay at K'inal's Leadership Center to continue their education in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Also, at the end of August, they will be receiving a 17 year-old young woman who will be studying law at a nearby university. Her community will be collectively paying her tuition fees with the commitment of her returning to the community to defend their rights as indigenous people.
Rosalinda gave me the details of the health program at K'inal that started in 2006. By March 2007, Rosalinda had visited 3 times each group of women belonging to Jolom Mayaektik cooperative to create a needs assessment of what health-related issues to cover in the program. At the same time, she's been accompanying indigenous women to doctor and gynecological appointments to be the translator from Spanish to Tzotzil so that these women can have access to healthcare in the city.
As if that wasn't enough, Rosalinda just finished her first semester of studying alternative medicine where she plans to get her bachelor's degree.
"Why did you want to study alternative medicine?" I asked her.
"At first I thought I wanted to study accounting because of my experience at Jolom Mayaetik. [Rosalinda is the former President of Jolom's Board.] Then I thought I wanted to study computer science but how am I going to help women directly with a computer? I chose alternative medicine because it will allow me to have the skills to support directly women in the communities. That was the most important decision maker for me."
After our conversation, Rosalinda showed me her garden, where she is growing various medicinal plants. She's still learning but she is hoping that whatever she learns she can pass on to indigenous women in Chiapas.
Kat
A workshop showing members of the collective how to grow mushrooms.
Kat Today I went to San Rafael, a community near Comitán to visit a training workshop that IDEX partner, DESMI, was facilitating together with the collective living there.
San Rafael's collective is a new group that started one year ago with DESMI. In this brief period, they have already established their own training center that teaches community members in the region how to grow a type of mushroom called zeto.
When I got there, they were already sowing the mushroom seed in bags filled with olote (corn without their kernels). The training had started yesterday and I was joining them in their last phase. They encouraged me to participate and it looked like fun, so I did. I felt like a surgeon as I wore my mask, hat and latex gloves. The gear was to help prevent contamination on the seeds, so they can grow better. Once the bag of seeds with olotes was completed, it was placed in a separate dark room covered with plastic to foment the mushroom to grow.
After the training workshop the trainees, two of DESMI staff and I sat down together and had a good talk about their experience in working collectively, the projects they're working on and their hopes for their communities. The trainees were representative leaders that their communities had elected to promote organic agriculture. When I asked them what their hopes were for themselves and their communities, many responded that they wanted health among community members to improve and that everyone should have a balanced diet. One young man, promoter of organic agriculture in the community of Nuevo Tepeyac said, "I'm hoping to change the world." Everyone cried in unison that this was really the ultimate goal, to show that there is a better way to live in this world.
Don Juan, member of San Rafael's collective, used to own the land where the training center now stands. He sold the land to the collective so that the center could be owned and used by the collective members. He offered to show me his plot of land after the meeting, where he just harvested his milpas (corn). He's been practicing organic agriculture for 4 years now. Everything he grows has been primarily for his family's consumption, and whatever remains, is sold at the central market in Comitán.
It was a great experience to be among the people at the training today. All of them had the intention to go back to their communities to demonstrate how to grow mushrooms and if they are motivated enough, San Rafael's collective will go directly to them to train them and give suggestions. A couple of the trainees today were 14-year-old, young girls, who are already working to support their community.
They have all shown how much they care for their land, for their Mother Earth. They've all come here to be part of something bigger, because they want a better life, a better world for themselves and their communities. One cannot help but witness their dedication to achieve this wonderful goal!
Kat
August 11, 2007
Today, I sat down with the two operative staff members of COMPITCH, Ana and Juan Ignacio.
COMPITCH is integrated by 17 organizations with the objective to recover, defend and develop the practice of traditional medicine and knowledge of the indigenous community in Chiapas.
I had spent one day at its regional forum, and I was curious to see how just two people had planned such a large event.
Several representative leaders of the 17 organization members of COMPITCH were in the office to welcome me.
Don Arturo from the community of Margaritas asked me what I thought about the forum. I told him I was excited to have been there even if it was only one day, but I could already see the impact the gathering was making among the midwives present there. In addition, I'd enjoyed seeing how participative the midwives had been in their work groups.
Doña Francisca, another representative leader, said that actually this was the first time the forum had brought such a high level of participation because they were able to bring so many midwives. On other occasions, when COMPITCH tried to bring midwives together, they would get busy at the last minute because of women going into labor and would send community members instead. These members usually would not understand these gatherings and therefore, would not participate. This time, the midwives did come and thus, encouraged the constant dialogue among them.
From the brief conversation I had with these representative leaders, I noticed just two COMPITCH staff hadn't coordinated the forum, but it had been an enormous group effort from the 17 organizations that made the forum such a huge success. Without them, there would not have been the extensive outreach or planning for the forum to happen.
Talking to Ana and Juan Ignacio, demonstrated to me their depth of information in all biodiversity-related themes. They keep themselves updated on all the recent laws, actions, campaigns and research to be always prepared to protect natural resources.
COMPITCH's first priority is health for all communities - to the point that they will sacrifice their own salaries if it meant the money will help cure someone's sickness. COMPITCH is continually working and mobilizing to protect the indigenous culture, local biodiversity and the practice of traditional medicine in Chiapas. COMPITCH exists because the Mexican government is not encouraging these crucial elements to survive. Someone has to defend every citizen's right to healthcare, whether it is in the hospital or in nature.
At the office, Ana and Juan Ignacio are working seven days a week with few resources for this defense. I don't know how they manage but their determination to do the right thing, in spite of the odds, to ensure everyone's right to have good health is clear and inspiring. Money will not be an obstacle to them. Their work continues and one can be guaranteed that COMPITCH is not going to go away any time soon.
Katherine
August 10, 2007
I arrive at CIDECI at 9am, a center that provides a space for indigenous communities to meet and unite. I'm here for the third and final day of COMPITCH's first regional forum for indigenous midwives.
During the first two days, several guests were invited to give presentations and lectures on health-related themes, linking them to food sovereignty and the right to practice traditional medicine.
Due to direct translations from Spanish to Tzeltal and Tzotzil (the two prominent Mayan languages in San Cristóbal de las Casas), and the active dialogue between the presenters and attendees, the forum delayed into the late hours. The third day was then meant to provide a space and time for midwives and traditional medicine doctors to reflect back on what they had learned from the forum and exchange their experiences with fellow attendees.
The groups were split into the three language groups: Tzeltal (20 participants), Tzotzil (21 participants) and Spanish (39 participants). I guess I had one choice of which group to observe....hmmm. You guessed it I observed the Spanish group!
What stood out for me during this time was the high level of participation the women midwives were demonstrating in their work group. There were times when the facilitator had to be disciplined to allow one participant to speak at a time.
Midwives had come as far as Oaxaca and Yucatan to learn from the midwives of Chiapas. Traditional medicine has been a discouraged practice in Mexico since the 1990s and as a result, no space had been offered to allow midwives from different states of Mexico to share their medicinal knowledge... until now.
It was amazing to see midwives giving advice to each other. One story that stayed in my head was the use of the placenta after it was taken out after birth. Do you really want to hear this? I didn't think so.
Towards the end of the form, the three language groups shared with each other the actions they were going to take in short, medium and long term in order to continue the practice of traditional medicine, as well as share their experiences in their respective communities.
After the forum ended, Ana the coordinator suggested to hike the mountain that CIDECI was on to identify medicinal plants.
This was a randomly selected mountain in Chiapas, but as soon as we started walking up the path, midwives were identifying medical plants everywhere. Not only that, they were taking the plants with them! Many of them, particularly those from other states, hadn't seen any of these plants before and wanted to try them. Others became excited about finding such a diversity of plants that they were taking as many as they could carry.
How cool to walk among women who could tell you which plant will help stop your coughs, your stomach ache, headaches and even help eliminate cancer. I had found myself amongst medicine in nature. It made me think of Golden Gate Park and how I never thought that a plant from there could actually provide me health care.
Young women, apprentices of traditional midwifery, accompanied us and took notes of all the knowledge that was sprouting from this field trip. This passing of knowledge to the next generation ensures the continuation of traditional knowledge.
It was a beautiful way to end such an incredible encounter!
Katherine
Katherine Zavala is IDEX's Programs Coordinator. Katherine is currently in Chiapas, Mexico visiting our long-term partners, DESMI and K'inal Antsetik, plus 5 new grantees, to meet with staff and the local communities and evaluate their progress.
August 9 2007:
As my flight left Mexico City today I saw endless buildings and houses below me. It was a beautiful sunny day to fly and I could see the diversity of bright colors from the buildings' rooftops. As the plane reached altitude, I saw the layer of snow on one of Mexico's famous volcanoes called Popocatépetl, rising just above the clouds.
One hour later, I see a completely different picture - large green patches of land everywhere! This was my first introduction to Chiapas.
Driving towards San Cristóbal de las Casas, the people I shared my taxi with fell asleep while we traveled through the green landscape, the fog and again through the green mountains as the sun shone through.
"What are those?" the lady next to me had woken up.
"Those are milpas [cornfields]," I said. There were miles of them!
"Maize, correct?"
"Yes, if you prefer it that way."
After an hour of thinking I was heading towards Emerald City, we came upon the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas.
August is high season for foreign travelers, especially from Europe and the US, so finding a place to stay was not so easy. But I finally found a room in a posada just north of the zócalo (central plaza). As I walked with my suitcases to the posada, a new friend I made accompanied me. She had originally tried to help me find another posada but apparently, it no longer existed. We passed a group of indigenous women and children on our way. One of the women was wearing a black woolen skirt or "fur" skirt with a fairly plan white blouse. "Than woman is from San Juan Chamula," my friend tells me, "see the skirt."
I know I have just arrived but I have yet to see many indigenous people. I feel I have been here before, though this is my first time to San Cristóbal and I haven't had time to explore this beautiful colonial town. But I think that feeling is related to how close this place looks to Antigua, Guatemala.
Tomorrow, I'll be going to the outskirts of San Cristóbal to a training center called CIDECI, place that helps indigenous communities by coordinating seminars and meetings there. One of IDEX's catalyst grantees, COMPITCH, is having its final day of its regional forum for indigenous midwives of Chiapas. I can't wait to be there!
Katherine
Prudence spoke about the escalating hate crimes in South Africa directed at members of the lesbian and gay communities.
A recent press release issued by Positive Women's Network states:
"These hate crimes underscore the need to forcefully end discrimination based on gender and sexuality, as well as the stigma and discrimination that women living with HIV and AIDS face."
To listen to the segment visit KPFA.
Labels: Positve Women's Network
Today I had my last site visit of my trip and for that I had to travel one-hour south to Comitan. Comitan is where the organization Educación por la Paz (Education for Peace) more often called EduPaz was founded ten years ago, focusing primarily on supporting Guatemalan refugees in Chiapas. Now EduPaz has evolved to an organization that focuses mainly on 2 areas: health and economic development though microcredit.EduPaz's health program is focused on mental health as they felt that the issue of addressing people's traumas after having lived through a conflict was missing in many indigenous communities. Maria Elena, the director of EduPaz's health program, studied Gestalt therapy when she was in Argentina years ago and now has shared her knowledge with other community members to provide a space for families who need more psychological support.
Jose, an indigenous man who comes from a community that speaks Tojolabal, manages the economic development program. He is the son of indigenous farmers who used to work on a large finca back in the day. He told me how when he used to be a young boy of 8 years old that he would talk Tojolabal with all the other children on the finca and that his father would discourage him from doing so and told him he should only speak Castilla (Spanish). So he did and he lost most of his Tojolabal until he was in his 20s and when he began interacting with Tojolabal-speakers outside of the finca and gained it all back. Now, as director of the microcredit project in EduPaz, he speaks Tojoloba all the time.
EduPaz has a more personalized way in managing its microcredit program than many other non-profit organizations. Before a group of community members can receive microcredit, EduPaz will have a dialog with them 3 times to make sure everyone understands the conditions and why these conditions exist. All members of the group have to become responsible for the group members to pay back their loans. A board of directors is selected and then Jose, with the support of Javier, EduPaz's executive director, will check one by one all the microcredit proposals and budgets to ensure that the proposed income-generating project will be guaranteed a positive result.
EduPaz will also assist the groups by providing financial administration training to each group. But they do not organize workshops and then ask people to come. Instead, they go to each of the groups they work with, one by one, and give each group the necessary training to build everyone's capacity to administer their loans.
Before, EduPaz used to offer many workshops such as training in agroecology and seminars on NAFTA and the World Bank but they discovered that not many would attend and people were just not interested. They decided to stop offering the workshops and focus on giving more personal attention to each group.
EduPaz's office includes a collective store on the first floor where group members involved in the microcredit program can sell their products. The store is focused on offering products that are both organically made and qualify as fair trade. The main product they sell is organic coffee as EduPaz has given a microcredit to organic coffee collectives.
EduPaz has only three staff members and all of them are constantly traveling, mostly to the communities in the Zona Selva and Fronteriza, that border with Guatemala. In spite of the small staff they seem to be covering lots of neglected areas and the advantage of having a Tojolabal native on staff makes a lot of difference.
********
After finishing this visit, I feel sad and happy that my work in Chiapas has been completed. I am sad to leave Chiapas as this has been a magical place to be and for me it has been quite an eye-opening experience where I have witnessed the hard work that is being done on the ground with the financial support IDEX has provided. This is a place where you can meet many activists, many community members and people living with another type of government. I am happy to be able take all that I saw and learned back with me to San Francisco to do a better job in raising more funds and working harder to make my small contribution to supporting the various groups that IDEX supports there.
I hope you have all enjoyed reading about my trip and has encouraged you to visit Chiapas and/or learn more about the work that is being done there.
Until the next trip.... Peace out!
Kat
Labels: Chiapas, Comitan, EduPaz, IDEX, microcredit
Today I thought I would have the privilege to sleep in. I stayed the night at the Morelia caracol and I slept in a hammock in a cabin shared with the DESMI staff. The DESMI staff had to wake up early as their workshops were going to start at 6am. I watched them all leave from my hammock.Then Rosaluz came in and said, "I tried to come last night to talk to you but the lights were out."
"Yes, that's right. The DESMI staff wanted to sleep because they had to wake up early today," I responded as I snuggled in my hammock.
"Well, I wanted to tell you that the Junta would like you to talk to the women artisans."
"Oh, that's great. When would they like to get together?"
"The women decided they want to talk to you before the DESMI workshop."
"Oh, that workshop starts at 6am." Then it suddenly sunk in. "That means they want to talk to me now?"
"Um... yes."
So much for sleeping in!
When I entered the training hall, the women artisans were already waiting for me. They started the meeting by welcoming me and asked me to talk about my visit.
All these women are representatives, chosen by their communities to be responsible for coming to the trainings and then inform the rest on how the cooperative is coming about. In fact, the women have just started this process and after talking to me, they will continue their training on what constitutes a cooperative.
This group is unique as they are the first group of artisans who have decided to become an autonomous cooperative. This means that they don't have to go through the long legal process that is required when registering with the governmental system. Instead, they need to be recognized by the Junta (Good Governance Council). Nevertheless, they want to create a cooperative that is legitimate, so they are taking the positive parts of what is usually required to have a cooperative.
I asked them what was their dream of having this cooperative, why did they want to form it. After some silence, one artisan spoke out:
"Our dream to have a cooperative is to be united. We are all trying to sell our products in the market to earn some money but we don't want to compete with each other. We don't want one municipality to sell more than the other. (The cooperative has members from 7 municipalities and 4 regions.) Instead, we want to unite so that the money can be distributed to everyone."
I could tell that not all the women were jumping to talk openly, except the coordinator who was doing a great job leading and encouraging the group while she tried to comfort her baby at the same time. But the fact that they are all participating in this workshop speaks a thousand words.
The women are here because they want to be here. This is a workshop that they have asked to have and not because it is being offered by an organization. You can tell the difference as I can see that even the quiet ones are paying close attention.
This cooperative is ambitious, trying to include indigenous women who speak different Mayan languages and Spanish. But it is their decision as a group to create this cooperative and apparently that communication among them has been very clear!
Kat
Labels: cooperatives, DESMI, Morelia
I am sitting among the beautiful green trees and mountains. The sky is very clear today. You wouldn't have guessed that the night before Hurricane Dean had gone over the Yucatan peninsula.I am waiting to meet the Good Governance Council (Junta de Buen Gobierno) in the caracol (regional center) of Morelia. I came in the morning with a group of 4 staff members of DESMI. They have been invited to give workshops to community members in agroecology, organic fertilizers, cooperative management and cattle rearing. I am here with Rosaluz from Enlace Civil to meet the Council members that are in charge of the plan of production (focusing on food security and arts and crafts). IDEX is supporting specifically the group of women artisans who are starting an autonomous cooperative to build the capacity to market their textile products.
Each caracol has its own security commission, which receives every guest who enters the premises. They then make an appointment with the Council. I am already participating in this alternative governance system.
Right now it seems that there is a conflict that has occurred in a nearby municipality and it is taking the Council a long time to resolve. I might not get to meet the Council before lunch.
After some beans and tortillas...
The Council has received me and has asked me to explain the reason of my visit. They welcome me and tell me that this is my home too. They ask whether I have a space to spend the night and if I had eaten. It is nice to know that even though this is all a procedure that the communities have created, it feels like a genuine service to all people who enter this place.
I then went to meet a Commission of the plan of production, which includes IDEX's support to the artisans cooperative. The Commission has just formed as the plan is too big and required a separate commitment by the Council. It was an interesting dialogue where I explained what IDEX was and they told me about their plans and hopes for this project.
From the meeting I could instantly tell that this was a project that has ownership amongst the people themselves. This project was planned and initiated by them and now they are building their capacity to see the project through with the support of Enlace Civil. It is a constant support that encourages professional development as Enlace Civil helps them administratively such as guiding the financial administrator to practice Excel to track the funds.
These people have been chosen by the communities to be in this commission and Enlace Civil is giving them the basic skills to govern their people and to help them improve their quality of lives.
You can't come here and not feel that people have taken ownership of their own governance and that this is all done with the goal of providing a better future for their communities.
Labels: DESMI, Enlace Civil, IDEX, Morelia
When I arrived at the office of FOCA I was surprised not to see their name displayed outside their door. Usually the organizations have some kind of sign to show their names, even if it is just piece of paper. Once inside, Diana, FOCA's co-founder and director, explained to me that their organization name wasn't displayed because they didn't want to have people think they were offering a general service. But because their work belongs to the community, there is always a debate whether to put the name out or not. I'm not surprised as their name, FOCA, stands for Formación y Capacitación (Professional Development and Training) which might make people think it is a general service.FOCA was established in 1996 focusing on two programs: education and health. FOCA started their education program in one community in the Los Altos region, and offered classes to students because the one professor that community had had, decided to leave suddenly. From teaching the students FOCA went on to teach community members to become teachers so they could build their capacity and offer children education in other communities. After 12 years, FOCA has been able to train teachers in more than 24 municipalities in the region of Los Altos.
FOCA works with community members in all aspects of their programs. With education, FOCA has been working exclusively with autonomous municipalities, teaching literacy classes and a curriculum developed by the communities themselves. FOCA is continually expanding their program as they are planning to train 80 teachers this October on gender issues so they can develop interactive games that talk about gender equity with children from their first grade.
They are also focusing on encouraging their students that graduate from elementary school to continue their studies and register for middle school. This isn't easy as students finish elementary school at 12 years-old and therefore, are considered old enough to be part of the community and need to help their families. So FOCA has to be constantly talking to the parents and community leaders to demonstrate the necessity of their children continuing their education.
With their health program, FOCA initiated with traditional plants, but over time they saw that a missing component in health issues was sexual and reproductive health, an issue that is related more with women. To address this issue, FOCA has organized training workshops on gender issues and trained 5 indigenous women intensively to become health promoters so that they could train other indigenous women on these issues as well.
In order to have success with training indigenous women on sexual and reproductive health, FOCA realized with experience that they needed the full support of the community leaders. FOCA has focused particularly on the issue of maternal mortality as many community members can relate to this. No one wants their mom to die. Unfortunately there are a high number of mothers who die due to poorly performed abortions that can cause heavy hemorrhaging. These statistics are not documented as these women are not considered part of the census population.
It has been a struggle but FOCA have now been able to get the full support of community leaders to train women in sexual and reproductive health. This was necessary because even though it is crucial that indigenous women know their own rights, it is also important that they still feel they belong to their community. Now with the support of the community leaders, the women being trained aren't being expelled from the communities. They are still subject to criticism, especially by men, but because FOCA’s training and approach, they are learning to have a voice, while staying part of the community.
Diana does part of the health training, and focuses on information about the Mayan cultures before the Spanish conquest. This is essential as it teaches women that indigenous cultures did not traditionally accept women to be in a subordinate role or to allow men to beat them up, which is unfortunately all too common. Being half indigenous, half mestiza, Diana understands the context of living in a small community where traditions prevail over everything. I can tell she is a great trainer as she has been explaining everything to me at great length. Eventually I needed to raise my hand to excuse myself to the bathroom.
FOCA gives training to health promoters once a month and like CIAM, they plan out all their activities in January. Activities are based on the monitoring and evaluation tasks they carried out throughout the year before. Once a month health promoters come to FOCA's office for training and they bring with them a report of how many women they have trained, what themes they covered and how successful they were. By constantly training women to train others, FOCA has been able to increase from 2 indigenous health promoters to a network of 120 indigenous women specializing in sexual and reproductive health over the course of 12 years.
"Many people can't believe all the work that has been accomplished with such a small staff," Diana commented, "but what I always tell them is that this hasn't been the work of FOCA, it has been the work of the women and their communities. They are the ones that have carried out this work and have shared their knowledge with other women so that there are more women experts in sexual and reproductive health. This is why the impact is so big."
Labels: FOCA, gender issues, indigenous women, women's health
Next to the market of Santo Domingo, where many indigenous women are selling their crafts and textile products, I found the office of Enlace Civil.Enlace Civil is an association that grew out of a request from the local communities in Chiapas in 1996 to become a link between them and the national and international civil society. Enlace has worked together with the formation of the Good Governance Councils (Juntas de Buen Gobierno), since 2003, to support the different projects/programs the communities have planned for themselves.
Contrary to many organizations I have visited, Enlace has a different system in supporting communities. Enlace itself does not implement, nor offer projects/programs to the communities. They consider themselves to be at the service of the communities. The communities have been running their own programs in health, education, economic development, etc. and these programs are then communicated to Enlace Civil so that they can support them administratively. The staff team of Enlace Civil have been mostly chosen by the Good Governance Councils themselves and they work voluntarily. Enlace exists to support the strengthening of this alternative governance to better address the needs of the communities.
I met with Rosaluz, the staff member responsible for the "caracol" (regional center) called Morelia. There are 5 main caracoles in Chiapas. The Good Governance Council in the Morelia caracol has 66 members (33 women and 33 men), where each week 11 members are rotated to be in charge of a program or project in the Council. Currently, these Council members in Morelia are in their third year. (Members are selected to be in the Council for a term of 3 years). Next year the Council will be receiving new members. To support the new members, Enlace Civil will facilitate training and follow-up visits with them to ensure that they have all the capacity to govern as the Council for the next three years.
After the first year, Rosaluz will continue to follow up with the Council members but no longer at such an intensive rate. One of the things she has supported after the first year has been the systemization of the Council's evaluations and its organizational structure.
Rosaluz shared enthusiastically with me, "It's actually been an exciting experience to do this because the structure envisioned is already in place. Many time, one writes about the vision of an organization that one wants to achieve. Well, in this case, the communities have already formed their vision over the years: the formation of their own government structure, so now I'm just writing down or documenting their own governance they have created."
This week I will be accompanying Rosaluz to meet the Council members in the Morelia caracol and cooperative members within the communities. I'm looking forward to meeting them!
Kat
Labels: Enlace Civil, good government
Katherine, with Toño, DESMI's Director
When I entered DESMI's office, I thought to myself, "I want to work here!" DESMI's office is in a beautiful colonial house with a huge garden, which they have owned since 1979. I knew several of DESMI's staff from my IDEX trip to Guatemala last year, so seeing them again felt like seeing old friends.
Sitting down with the staff on my office visit, DESMI taught me a lot about their programs, and specifically their microcredit program. DESMI works in 3 regional areas in Chiapas: North, South and Los Altos. Currently, they have one person managing each regional area but they are in a process of staff restructuring to see if there is a way to better facilitate the work in these areas by distributing the responsibility.
I found DESMI's microcredit program very interesting. DESMI's loan fund will only be distributed to collectives. The whole process from the moment the community applies for microcredit to receiving it may take 2 to 3 months, as DESMI wants to ensure that the microcredit they receive will guarantee success of their project. There hasn't been a case where DESMI has rejected an application. Instead, if something doesn't make sense or the application is not complete, DESMI's staff will take the time to visit the collective and work together on the application. Every first Monday of the month, DESMI's staff sits down together to look at all the applications. Since 2003, they have not received many applications.
DESMI expressed to me their excitement on the exchange trip they're doing next week together with K'inal Antsetik to visit IDEX's Guatemalan partners: AFEDES, APROSADSE and ISMU, as well as other organizations. They are planning to visit AFEDES' Weavers' Store in Santiago Sacatepequez and APROSADSE's agricultural program in Chimaltenango.
DESMI is hoping to learn especially how these organizations work with gender issues into their programs, since DESMI is also initiating their own workshops on masculinity. These exchange trips, organized by IDEX partners themselves, came about during IDEX's regional conference in Antigua, Guatemala in January 2006. IDEX's partners decided they wanted to exchange experiences as they saw that they all were facing similar challenges although living in different political and cultural contexts.
IDEX has been a long supporter of DESMI and it's easy to see why. DESMI is continually working to become more efficient in their site visits, training and in being more aware of the needs of the communities. DESMI is currently working on developing a monitoring and evaluation plan to ensure they are achieving the objectives they have set themselves to accomplish."It hasn't been successful yet, to be honest," Toño, DESMI's Director tells me, "but we are doing our best to get this plan together because we want to make sure that DESMI is working well to improve the quality of life of these communities."
Kat
Labels: AFEDES, APROSADSE, DESMI, IDEX, ISMU, K'inal, microcredit
Gladys and Lupita of CIAM
On the outskirts of San Cristóbal lies the office of El Centro de Investigación y Acción de la Mujer Latinoamericana (Latin American Women's Center for Research and Action, or CIAM), one of IDEX's catalyst grantees. Even the taxi had a difficult time to find this place but once I arrived, I found myself in a beautiful house where CIAM's staff is busy working with different rural development programs for improving women's quality of life.
Gladys, CIAM's Director of Programs and Lupita, the Financial Administrator, sat down with me to talk about their organization. Unfortunately, the field staff could not accompany us as they were busy working in different meetings that day.
Gladys shared with me the programs at CIAM, which all integrate a genders lens and a holistic approach. The 4 main programs are: Health, Agroecology, Women's Issues and Human Rights. A fifth program is in progress which will concentrate on researching these four thematic issues to facilitate even better their discussions with community members.
CIAM works in 3 areas in two states in Chiapas (Amatan and Hiutiupan), bordering the state of Tabasco, a very neglected area. It takes a day to drive there. However, once a month, the field staff (in charge of health, agroecology and women's issues) drives there together to stay for almost a week, during which they give workshops to these communities on the issues mentioned in the parenthesis. After their week, they return to CIAM's office to evaluate how it went and then use that evaluation to improve their training for the next month.
"Why did you choose to work with these states in Chiapas, especially since they are so far away?" I asked Gladys.
"These areas used to be filled with coffee plantations and the coffee there used to be exported. In 2000, the price of coffee went down globally and at the same time, a strong plague attacked the plantations, leaving the people in these communities in a difficult crisis. As a result, they need so much support now, especially since they are in an inaccessible area.
Also, the cultural trends that existed on these plantations have continued today within the families. For example, there still is the tradition of women being stolen at 13 or 14 years old to get married to the man who stole her. Another example is how daughters are being sold today for a sack of sugar and other foods."
"What?! That still exists?" I was shocked!
"Yes, in the 21st century, those customs still exist today and not many people know about it."
If you can't even imagine how these customs work, I highly recommend you to watch the movie "Like Water For Chocolate." At least that's they way I can picture these traditions.
Gladys continued:
"There's also a need to preserve the Zoque culture. Its identity is being lost as the new generation don't want to speak the Zoque language anymore. Instead, they want to celebrate the Spanish holidays and we have seen many of them consuming high amounts of alcohol. This is a reason why we are emphasizing now workshops on "masculinity" where we bring men together to talk about their role in the community and how they perceive women to bring more awareness on gender equity."
In spite of being an organization that works on low economic resources, CIAM is very organized in terms of their planning and evaluation. Each January, CIAM's staff plans their activities for the entire calendar year! In order to schedule these activities, CIAM sends the communities they work with a questionnaire that will tell CIAM what are the issues requested so that CIAM can plan for workshops that address the community's needs. What I really like is that their plan depends mostly on what is requested by the communities.
But my favorite aspect of CIAM is what they have done with their human rights program. CIAM has created a 3-year school program that has a focus on leadership development and invites 30 women from different social organizations to participate to become better leaders for themselves and their communities. The school started in 2004 and currently, they are about to start the second generation of graduates this fall.
I had hoped to visit one of their workshops but that was not possible, given that I will not be here when they have their next workshop. In any case, I could tell from my conversation with CIAM´s staff, and the photos and materials they showed me the hard work that CIAM is doing to support women and neglected communities in Chiapas.
Kat
Labels: Agroecology, Amatan, catalyst grants, CIAM, coffee, Health, Hiutiupan, Human Rights, Women, Zoque
On Wednesday CARE announced its decision to turn down $45 million worth of Federal Funds for Food AID.Read the NY Times story.
At IDEX we applaud CARE for its brave and principled rejection of millions of dollars in government food aid. It is exactly because of these sorts of conflict of interest, in this case, between a government beholden to agribusiness lobbies and poor communities abroad struggling with a glut of subsidized American commodities, that some overseas aid agencies, including IDEX, have decided not to receive funds from government-sponsored programs. Instead, we rely on donations provided by thousands of generous individual citizens which, though harder to raise, come without any agenda beyond a sincere desire to end poverty.
IDEX thanks you for your continued support.
Labels: CARE, US Food Aid
Near the market of Santo Domingo I took a colectivo (van) to head towards IDEX's partner, K'inal Antsetik's Leadership Center. Both the offices of K'inal and the Mayan weavers cooperative called Jolom Mayaetik are based there.
Getting to K'inal's offices turned out to be not so easy. The colectivo dropped me of in the middle of the street. "Just cross the piece of land ahead and watch out for the dogs! They like to bite people," was the last thing I heard the van driver say. I found myself ultimately on Calzada de la Escuela and of course, none of the numbers are in order. A woman that looked out of place was walking nearby, so I thought maybe she would know what I'm looking for. Indeed the European woman showed me the way to K'inal. I knew I was there once I saw the pink building.
The first person I met was Celerina, the President of Jolom Mayetik's Board. She is in her last year of presidency and is already training young indigenous women to become part of the Board the next year when she leaves.
"What do you want to do after leaving your president's role?" I asked her.
"I want to study medicine to become a nurse. I want to be able to support women in the communities in issues of health. That has always been my dream."
"How is it, being president for the cooperative?"
"It has been hard but I have learned so much on the way. At first I told the cooperative that I didn't want to be the president, but no one really paid attention to me, because the next thing I know I was the president! But now I'm glad because I have the opportunity to learn to speak to people and to travel and get to know other countries. I now can travel to other countries by myself."
I then met with Micaela, K'inal's Director and Rosalinda, the Health Program Coordinator. Micaela talked about her ongoing work in supporting Jolom Mayaetik cooperative and how excited she is to start a new program for indigenous young women at K'inal.
K'inal is hosting for the first time 3 young women from the community of Marques de Comillas to stay at K'inal's Leadership Center to continue their education in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Also, at the end of August, they will be receiving a 17 year-old young woman who will be studying law at a nearby university. Her community will be collectively paying her tuition fees with the commitment of her returning to the community to defend their rights as indigenous people.
Rosalinda gave me the details of the health program at K'inal that started in 2006. By March 2007, Rosalinda had visited 3 times each group of women belonging to Jolom Mayaektik cooperative to create a needs assessment of what health-related issues to cover in the program. At the same time, she's been accompanying indigenous women to doctor and gynecological appointments to be the translator from Spanish to Tzotzil so that these women can have access to healthcare in the city.
As if that wasn't enough, Rosalinda just finished her first semester of studying alternative medicine where she plans to get her bachelor's degree.
"Why did you want to study alternative medicine?" I asked her.
"At first I thought I wanted to study accounting because of my experience at Jolom Mayaetik. [Rosalinda is the former President of Jolom's Board.] Then I thought I wanted to study computer science but how am I going to help women directly with a computer? I chose alternative medicine because it will allow me to have the skills to support directly women in the communities. That was the most important decision maker for me."
After our conversation, Rosalinda showed me her garden, where she is growing various medicinal plants. She's still learning but she is hoping that whatever she learns she can pass on to indigenous women in Chiapas.
Kat
Labels: Health, indigenous women, Jolom Mayaetik, K'inal
A workshop showing members of the collective how to grow mushrooms.
Kat Today I went to San Rafael, a community near Comitán to visit a training workshop that IDEX partner, DESMI, was facilitating together with the collective living there.
San Rafael's collective is a new group that started one year ago with DESMI. In this brief period, they have already established their own training center that teaches community members in the region how to grow a type of mushroom called zeto.
When I got there, they were already sowing the mushroom seed in bags filled with olote (corn without their kernels). The training had started yesterday and I was joining them in their last phase. They encouraged me to participate and it looked like fun, so I did. I felt like a surgeon as I wore my mask, hat and latex gloves. The gear was to help prevent contamination on the seeds, so they can grow better. Once the bag of seeds with olotes was completed, it was placed in a separate dark room covered with plastic to foment the mushroom to grow.
After the training workshop the trainees, two of DESMI staff and I sat down together and had a good talk about their experience in working collectively, the projects they're working on and their hopes for their communities. The trainees were representative leaders that their communities had elected to promote organic agriculture. When I asked them what their hopes were for themselves and their communities, many responded that they wanted health among community members to improve and that everyone should have a balanced diet. One young man, promoter of organic agriculture in the community of Nuevo Tepeyac said, "I'm hoping to change the world." Everyone cried in unison that this was really the ultimate goal, to show that there is a better way to live in this world.
Don Juan, member of San Rafael's collective, used to own the land where the training center now stands. He sold the land to the collective so that the center could be owned and used by the collective members. He offered to show me his plot of land after the meeting, where he just harvested his milpas (corn). He's been practicing organic agriculture for 4 years now. Everything he grows has been primarily for his family's consumption, and whatever remains, is sold at the central market in Comitán.
It was a great experience to be among the people at the training today. All of them had the intention to go back to their communities to demonstrate how to grow mushrooms and if they are motivated enough, San Rafael's collective will go directly to them to train them and give suggestions. A couple of the trainees today were 14-year-old, young girls, who are already working to support their community.
They have all shown how much they care for their land, for their Mother Earth. They've all come here to be part of something bigger, because they want a better life, a better world for themselves and their communities. One cannot help but witness their dedication to achieve this wonderful goal!
Kat
Labels: Comitan, DESMI, training
August 11, 2007
Today, I sat down with the two operative staff members of COMPITCH, Ana and Juan Ignacio.
COMPITCH is integrated by 17 organizations with the objective to recover, defend and develop the practice of traditional medicine and knowledge of the indigenous community in Chiapas.
I had spent one day at its regional forum, and I was curious to see how just two people had planned such a large event.
Several representative leaders of the 17 organization members of COMPITCH were in the office to welcome me.
Don Arturo from the community of Margaritas asked me what I thought about the forum. I told him I was excited to have been there even if it was only one day, but I could already see the impact the gathering was making among the midwives present there. In addition, I'd enjoyed seeing how participative the midwives had been in their work groups.
Doña Francisca, another representative leader, said that actually this was the first time the forum had brought such a high level of participation because they were able to bring so many midwives. On other occasions, when COMPITCH tried to bring midwives together, they would get busy at the last minute because of women going into labor and would send community members instead. These members usually would not understand these gatherings and therefore, would not participate. This time, the midwives did come and thus, encouraged the constant dialogue among them.
From the brief conversation I had with these representative leaders, I noticed just two COMPITCH staff hadn't coordinated the forum, but it had been an enormous group effort from the 17 organizations that made the forum such a huge success. Without them, there would not have been the extensive outreach or planning for the forum to happen.
Talking to Ana and Juan Ignacio, demonstrated to me their depth of information in all biodiversity-related themes. They keep themselves updated on all the recent laws, actions, campaigns and research to be always prepared to protect natural resources.
COMPITCH's first priority is health for all communities - to the point that they will sacrifice their own salaries if it meant the money will help cure someone's sickness. COMPITCH is continually working and mobilizing to protect the indigenous culture, local biodiversity and the practice of traditional medicine in Chiapas. COMPITCH exists because the Mexican government is not encouraging these crucial elements to survive. Someone has to defend every citizen's right to healthcare, whether it is in the hospital or in nature.
At the office, Ana and Juan Ignacio are working seven days a week with few resources for this defense. I don't know how they manage but their determination to do the right thing, in spite of the odds, to ensure everyone's right to have good health is clear and inspiring. Money will not be an obstacle to them. Their work continues and one can be guaranteed that COMPITCH is not going to go away any time soon.
Katherine
Labels: Compitch, IDEX, Mexico, midwives, San Cristobal de las Casas, traditional healing
August 10, 2007
I arrive at CIDECI at 9am, a center that provides a space for indigenous communities to meet and unite. I'm here for the third and final day of COMPITCH's first regional forum for indigenous midwives.
During the first two days, several guests were invited to give presentations and lectures on health-related themes, linking them to food sovereignty and the right to practice traditional medicine.
Due to direct translations from Spanish to Tzeltal and Tzotzil (the two prominent Mayan languages in San Cristóbal de las Casas), and the active dialogue between the presenters and attendees, the forum delayed into the late hours. The third day was then meant to provide a space and time for midwives and traditional medicine doctors to reflect back on what they had learned from the forum and exchange their experiences with fellow attendees.
The groups were split into the three language groups: Tzeltal (20 participants), Tzotzil (21 participants) and Spanish (39 participants). I guess I had one choice of which group to observe....hmmm. You guessed it I observed the Spanish group!
What stood out for me during this time was the high level of participation the women midwives were demonstrating in their work group. There were times when the facilitator had to be disciplined to allow one participant to speak at a time.
Midwives had come as far as Oaxaca and Yucatan to learn from the midwives of Chiapas. Traditional medicine has been a discouraged practice in Mexico since the 1990s and as a result, no space had been offered to allow midwives from different states of Mexico to share their medicinal knowledge... until now.
It was amazing to see midwives giving advice to each other. One story that stayed in my head was the use of the placenta after it was taken out after birth. Do you really want to hear this? I didn't think so.
Towards the end of the form, the three language groups shared with each other the actions they were going to take in short, medium and long term in order to continue the practice of traditional medicine, as well as share their experiences in their respective communities.
After the forum ended, Ana the coordinator suggested to hike the mountain that CIDECI was on to identify medicinal plants.
This was a randomly selected mountain in Chiapas, but as soon as we started walking up the path, midwives were identifying medical plants everywhere. Not only that, they were taking the plants with them! Many of them, particularly those from other states, hadn't seen any of these plants before and wanted to try them. Others became excited about finding such a diversity of plants that they were taking as many as they could carry.
How cool to walk among women who could tell you which plant will help stop your coughs, your stomach ache, headaches and even help eliminate cancer. I had found myself amongst medicine in nature. It made me think of Golden Gate Park and how I never thought that a plant from there could actually provide me health care.
Young women, apprentices of traditional midwifery, accompanied us and took notes of all the knowledge that was sprouting from this field trip. This passing of knowledge to the next generation ensures the continuation of traditional knowledge.
It was a beautiful way to end such an incredible encounter!
Katherine
Labels: Compitch, Mexico, midwives, San Cristobal de las Casas, traditional healing
August 9 2007:
As my flight left Mexico City today I saw endless buildings and houses below me. It was a beautiful sunny day to fly and I could see the diversity of bright colors from the buildings' rooftops. As the plane reached altitude, I saw the layer of snow on one of Mexico's famous volcanoes called Popocatépetl, rising just above the clouds.
One hour later, I see a completely different picture - large green patches of land everywhere! This was my first introduction to Chiapas.
Driving towards San Cristóbal de las Casas, the people I shared my taxi with fell asleep while we traveled through the green landscape, the fog and again through the green mountains as the sun shone through.
"What are those?" the lady next to me had woken up.
"Those are milpas [cornfields]," I said. There were miles of them!
"Maize, correct?"
"Yes, if you prefer it that way."
After an hour of thinking I was heading towards Emerald City, we came upon the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas.
August is high season for foreign travelers, especially from Europe and the US, so finding a place to stay was not so easy. But I finally found a room in a posada just north of the zócalo (central plaza). As I walked with my suitcases to the posada, a new friend I made accompanied me. She had originally tried to help me find another posada but apparently, it no longer existed. We passed a group of indigenous women and children on our way. One of the women was wearing a black woolen skirt or "fur" skirt with a fairly plan white blouse. "Than woman is from San Juan Chamula," my friend tells me, "see the skirt."
I know I have just arrived but I have yet to see many indigenous people. I feel I have been here before, though this is my first time to San Cristóbal and I haven't had time to explore this beautiful colonial town. But I think that feeling is related to how close this place looks to Antigua, Guatemala.
Tomorrow, I'll be going to the outskirts of San Cristóbal to a training center called CIDECI, place that helps indigenous communities by coordinating seminars and meetings there. One of IDEX's catalyst grantees, COMPITCH, is having its final day of its regional forum for indigenous midwives of Chiapas. I can't wait to be there!
Katherine
Labels: Chiapas, Compitch, IDEX, San Cristobal de las Casas