Education for 250 working children in Chiapas

Our current educational project in the markets of San Cristóbal is called “Telling Our Stories”. The project works to educate girl and boy laborers to talk, reflect, and recognize their individual and collective identities so that they can develop a critical view of their reality and history. These identities are focused on their being girls or boys, indigenous, and workers.

We believe that by understanding their identities, the girls and boys will come to better understand their realities and will have the skills to reflect and understand why certain things happened in their lives. This is a central process that helps to reclaim identities and create ownership.

The following is a story written by Rocio about his family as part of the “Telling Our Stories” project. Rocio participates in the educational activities with Melel Xojobal in the markets in San Cristóbal. This project encourages reading and writing for children laborers between the ages of 6 and 13. 

A family lived in a community, a place where there are trees, animals and beans, corn, vegetables, potatoes, tomatoes, onion and chayote. The family grew many things, like beans, and made tortillas. They went to the mountains to cut firewood, started fires, cooked food, slept and then woke up early. The came to San Cristóbal to bring seeds and to grow them.

They wore the nahua* that they made from sheep wool in many different colors. At night, it was hot and there were many animals, like chickens, ducks, dogs, and rabbits. The lekil kuxlejal (good life) in that place was very nice because there were a lot of people. 

Occasionally, they got mad because they had to fight for land, just to go for a walk or to grow things.

But one day there wasn’t any water in the land and there wasn’t electricity. They came to San Cristóbal because of that. They brought their things from their community like seeds, trees, clothes, and animals like chickens, ducks, and dogs.  

So, they went to live in San Cristóbal but first they sold their land in the community and bought new land here in San Cristóbal. They bought groceries and a small shop and started to sell things.  

The people in the city treated us badly because they said things like “Don’t buy land here!”

The city people bothered us because they wanted to buy land in the community and because we planted trees and seeds in a small piece of land.  

Finally, we were going to school. We didn’t eat any vegetables or beans, only chicken. 

*Nahua: traditional women’s skirt made from sheep’s wool

This is Rocio's story. By writing and illustrating the history of his family, he recognizes his identity and the identity of his family and begins to understand who he is in a whole new light. 

The pictures below were drawn by Rocio to accompany the history of his family.

As you know, the educational sessions that we give to working children in the markets of San Cristóbal form one of the pillars of Melel Xojobal’s work.

We began this year's activities on February 21. Since then, we have been implementing the project “Getting to know our History” with girls and boys who work at the José Castillo Tiélemans market. 26 girls and 19 boys are participating in the project, all between the ages of 1 and 13 years old with the average level of education being between grades 1 and 6 of primary school. The objective of this project is to recognize the individual and collective identities of working indigenous boys and girls through their family history. So far, we have completed 23 educational sessions where the participants have learned about the history of San Cristóbal and written short stories about their own personal history.

In the group “Learning Circles” at the Melel offices, we have implemented 5 educational session to date, with 6 girls and 5 boys between 5 and 15 years old participating. The educational level of the participants ranges between grades 3 and 7. We are also implementing the “Getting to know our History” project with the Learning Circles group; currently the boys and girls are learning about the history of San Cristóbal de las Casas.

In the Southern Popular Market (MERPOSUR), we are completing a participatory diagnostic about the Right to Education. We have currently completed 25 sessions with 24 girls and 20 boys participating, all between the ages of 5 and 13 and an educational level between 1^st and 6^th grade. In the sessions the participants have discussed their fears, dreams, and what makes them happy or sad at school.

At the same time, during the month of April we visited 9 scholarship recipients in their homes to continue monitoring their educational and family situations. In these visits we were encouraged to find that the girls, boys, and their families are very aware of the importance of staying in school, even though they face many difficulties, such as: falling behind in coursework because classes aren’t given in their native language, school expenses (such as school uniforms, textbooks, notebooks, shoes, etc.) are high, and in many cases, they do not have anyone at home to help them with their homework.

Links:

• http://www.melelxojobal.org.mx