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

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