Zapotec Post-Earthquake Reconstruction | Oaxaca MX

The territory in which we live changes every day, because foreign projects have arrived and they are disarticulating our communities. Projects that pretend to bring work, but have brought more inequality and violence. That’s why at UMPO we continue to look for ways to create communities that demonstrate that our livelihoods are valuable and that they can provide us with a dignified life. 

Thus we had a beautiful experience led by our colleague Rosario, who is good at bringing together the collectives of traditional trades. This time we had the pleasure of sharing workshops with 35 food producers. The objective was to be able to strengthen ourselves, as food producers, to make our products more valuable. One of the main problems we experience when producing and selling food is first, that when everything is homemade and handmade it is difficult to standardize what we do. Second, it is hard for us to price our products, and third, to maneuver in our kitchens so that we can produce and have quality products. But what we realized during this program is that we all do the best we can, and that it is only a matter of meeting other people to talk about our lives as food producers to realize that our self-criticism is very high.

When we made the call to this program, we noticed that the general feeling of the collectives and entrepreneurs who came was that although each producer prepares different foods, listening to the stories of other artisans gave them a lot of encouragement to continue along the path of self-employment, which is not easy. Many of the women who participated were the economic pillar of their families and had also chosen these jobs to be able to perform care activities at home.

 We learned about food labeling regulations from consultant Itzel. And it was very nice, because we demythologized the myth that just because we are artisans, we cannot comply with these standards. There were debates, yes, because we questioned a lot if we want to sell our products in the kind of store that asks for labeling or if we just want to sell them locally. However, the juicy thing was just that, to see that we all have different perspectives, and that at least in terms of characterizing our products we all felt excited. 

Then we were joined by Uriel and Abigail, who have a brand of cosmetic and natural products, whom we invited to inspire us, as they have been entrepreneurs for almost a decade and now have a very successful project in the capital of Oaxaca. 

With them, a lot of "dirty laundry" came out, as we say in Mexico, because we went deep to see how much we know about our products and the scariest part, to know if we are making a good profit or losing badly in the sale of our products. 

Sometimes telling what we do in UMPO is complicated, but this experience tells us a lot, and reinforced in our hearts that big changes come in the livelihoods of our daily lives, as the cooks and food artisans live. Thank you for promoting the life of the Istmo de Tehuantepec, which we walk day by day, and which allows us to live a dignified life.

The way we adults look at the territory determines the consciousness with which the children inhabit it. We have reaffirmed this in the town of Chihuitán, where since July we began our program for children, youth and the territory to strengthen the roots and identity of our people. Today we want to talk about how we lived the approach to the livelihoods of the people, with the help of Perseida who shared part of our educational program focused on agroecology.

The first thing we did was to make a visit to the territory, where the children told us how sad it was to see the "Rio chiquito" completely dried up. They were very sad and even though many children came from a violent family context and were not very willing to participate in the program, but as they experienced the collective reflections, their attitude changed positively.

The second event was very powerful, although it reminded us of the responsibility we have as an organization regarding risk prevention, we do not want to leave it unmentioned because the effect on the children was impressive. The children's group, made up of children from 7 to 11 years old, decided to create a vegetable garden within their school.

However, the first day we planted at the school, a lot of smoke started coming from the neighbor's land, caused by the "controlled" burning of garbage. There was a horse on the land very close to the flames and this distressed us all, and we could not stop coughing. We had to stop activities, we called the authorities and although the owner showed up and identified himself, the burning did not stop, the police did not act and the owner did not take responsibility. The children began to demand that the fire be put out by shouting, but when we saw that there was no response, we decided to end the session so as not to put them at risk. It was painful to recognize that if our voices are hardly heard, the voice of the children regarding the care of their territory is completely silenced and ignored. The frustration was too much, then the authorities offered us apologies and the story didn't go much further. What did happen was that our group of children changed, everyone's disposition increased and they were very committed, teamwork improved a lot and we felt very inspired and grateful for this attitude.

The children made a manifesto letter in which they gave a message to their community:

"We want the people to respect the rules, the plants, take care of the water because the fish are dying. We don't want them to throw garbage, we want the signs to be respected, let's take care of the town, don't cut down the trees, don't kill the animals, the deer, the iguanas, the armadillo because they give us life and joy. We want to tell the people that the trees let us breathe. We Chihuitejo boys and girls, guardians of nature, want there to be more trees, we want the water to be free of garbage. We write this letter so that they will respect the people, the beautiful culture we have in Santo Domingo Chihuitán and that there will be no violence towards nature."

The children showed us that they understand the importance of caring for the territory and the environment, but the generation gap makes dialogue impossible. We are convinced that continuing to open spaces such as this program will allow us to give children a voice, give them the tools to trust their voices and sensitize us as adults to recognize that the territory belongs to everyone and to the future, not just the present. Thank you very much for trusting and promoting learning spaces for children and youth.