lunes 20 de abril de 2009
Dirty Politics?
By Ben Pounds
Please note: the version on the CGE blog has pictures, which I'm to lazy to include here. Also because of the more academic nature of this entry, I only dealt briefly with being attacked by bees after getting briefly separated from the group. My arm was swolen for a while after that.
That blog has a strict policy of having to ask permission of people before showing their faces, a rule that I should have followed here.
We were going to see Cuernavaca’s new landfill. We had left the edge of the city and now saw cows grazing. Then we hit what could only be described as a homemade checkpoint. A barb wire fence stretched across the street. After a few residents serving as guards opened the gate and our van passed, I had no clue what to expect.
The farmer who owned the land was happy to show us around. He opened yet another fence and let us walk through.
So, without setting foot in the landfill itself, we saw it. A grey hill above the canyon with trucks coming and going.
The gate had not been meant to stop us from entering government property. It had been built to stop the government or its allies from coming in and coercing the residents out of their land. Really its main purpose, now that I look back was to prevent trucks with garbage from coming in.
I had not intended for this entry to be about politics primarily. Our partners, the bloggers in Thailand, had been writing about human rights and government accountability rather than environmental concerns. Politics here though is tricky as is politics everywhere. It may involve bribery, alliances, networks, and (if I am to believe what some people have told me with regards to the landfill) physical threats. In short it is like politics everywhere else. I would hate for what I write here to be misinterpreted as an insult to Mexican politics particularly. However, one can broadly say that the “perfect dictatorship” described during the years of one-party domination continues in some ways in today’s multi-party Mexico.
The landfill was itself an improvement on the previous open-air dump near an indigenous community. Not everyone has access to the services of the privatized, new garbage collection company, PASA (the privatization of garbage collection was a controversial move on the part of the government in recent years).
The rivers in some ravines, already places for dumping sewage, hold a great deal of garbage put there by the residents whose houses cannot be reached by garbage trucks. In some ways one could say that the landfill is an improvement over that system.
Studies say that the soil is too porous to protect the below-ground aquifers from possible leaching. Thus, the project deprives neighboring communities of the right to clean water as their water is now contaminated. The local government representatives that we met with countered by saying the lands do not contain very much fertile soil. They may not be very fertile although that does not stop people from raising corn, cattle, chickens, and (as I found out the hard way) bees.
Despite the vocal opposition all the political parties are in favor of the landfill, including the “Ecological Green Party” (a party here famous for its support of the death penalty).
When they proposed other sites, government officials said “go research them yourselves.” Perhaps the greatest motivation for the current site is that the contamination that results from the landfill flows into smaller, poorer communities and doesn’t directly affect the city of Cuernavaca.
Some local citizens have found their own solution in setting up recycling centers and small-scale water-treatment plants. Despite, or possibly because of, their general distrust of the city government, these people have received some government support, including the filming of a public service announcement. Yet they remain cynical. When asked about the sewage treatment plants in Cuernavaca created directly by the government, the creator of a small scale plant at a local school was quick to point out that they did not work.
As I watch the local citizens in the Cuernavaca area so actively engaged in their communities, I remain aware of my role here as a foreigner. The last thing I want to be is another invader in this country, so my own involvement has limits. However, in learning about the struggles of this place and of the people here working for a more just world, I am convinced that my involvement back in the U.S. will always be affected and inspired by the activists of Mexico.
Showing posts with label farming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farming. Show all posts
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Atenco
This Thursday and Friday we went to Atenco, a place of resistance in the face of brutal government actions, of love for the land and compadres. It happens to be located near Mexico City, but it remains semi-rural ejido land.
Basically the government wanted to build an airport right over their fields, houses, even their cemetary, while negociations about water and schools were already underway. They were accused of kidnapping public officials, a charge that many in the town say was false. Protesters took to the street with machetes shouting Tierra Si, Aviones No! The protesters avoided violence except in self defence, and even then their weaponry was limited to machetes. The government decided to put their airport elsewhere.
In addition to attracting visitors from other resistance movements (including Subcomandante Marcos and other neo-Zapatistas) Atenco began to help other nearby towns. In a particular case they were trying to help flower vendors in another town who stood in resistance to a Wal Mart being built over their flower market. To make a long story short the state police came in, possibly with some national military dressed as State Police, and led a campaign of arrests, rape, and in one case literally beating people to death. Some of the people in prison from that time still have yet to be released.
Touring Atenco, I was amazed by how the people could still remain smiling, and determined (right now freeing prisoners is the main concern) after all that happened. They no longer vote in elections, but to me they seemed more engaged than anyone I had met in the U.S.
Barack Obama was in Mexico City at the same time, and we saw his heiliocopter passing. What struck me here was that, unlike elsewhere in Mexico, here I actually found cynicism about Obama, rather than indifference, or (rarely) hope, as I've found elsewhere. They considered him to be the same as Bush, which to them made him at least something of an enemy. Like me, they were concerned about the troops in Juarez, although theirs was in some ways the opposite of my concern. While I worried that the army would encounter hatred, violence, and endless war (another Columbia, or another Iraq) they were worried that it would be another Puerto Rico! It's not too surprising to hear that kind of sentiment in what history has taught me is the Polland of the Americas. Yet no one else seems to have any problem with the foreign troops. It could be their own experience has made them distrust armies, while in Cuernavaca, one still finds tanks patrolling Holy Week processions.
I worry about writing entries like this. I worry that I will be blacklisted here in Mexico, or that dissidents will get unwanted exposure. For that reason I did not give names.
Basically the government wanted to build an airport right over their fields, houses, even their cemetary, while negociations about water and schools were already underway. They were accused of kidnapping public officials, a charge that many in the town say was false. Protesters took to the street with machetes shouting Tierra Si, Aviones No! The protesters avoided violence except in self defence, and even then their weaponry was limited to machetes. The government decided to put their airport elsewhere.
In addition to attracting visitors from other resistance movements (including Subcomandante Marcos and other neo-Zapatistas) Atenco began to help other nearby towns. In a particular case they were trying to help flower vendors in another town who stood in resistance to a Wal Mart being built over their flower market. To make a long story short the state police came in, possibly with some national military dressed as State Police, and led a campaign of arrests, rape, and in one case literally beating people to death. Some of the people in prison from that time still have yet to be released.
Touring Atenco, I was amazed by how the people could still remain smiling, and determined (right now freeing prisoners is the main concern) after all that happened. They no longer vote in elections, but to me they seemed more engaged than anyone I had met in the U.S.
Barack Obama was in Mexico City at the same time, and we saw his heiliocopter passing. What struck me here was that, unlike elsewhere in Mexico, here I actually found cynicism about Obama, rather than indifference, or (rarely) hope, as I've found elsewhere. They considered him to be the same as Bush, which to them made him at least something of an enemy. Like me, they were concerned about the troops in Juarez, although theirs was in some ways the opposite of my concern. While I worried that the army would encounter hatred, violence, and endless war (another Columbia, or another Iraq) they were worried that it would be another Puerto Rico! It's not too surprising to hear that kind of sentiment in what history has taught me is the Polland of the Americas. Yet no one else seems to have any problem with the foreign troops. It could be their own experience has made them distrust armies, while in Cuernavaca, one still finds tanks patrolling Holy Week processions.
I worry about writing entries like this. I worry that I will be blacklisted here in Mexico, or that dissidents will get unwanted exposure. For that reason I did not give names.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Last Week´s Homestay (in summary).
Last week we had the rural homestay. I stayed with fellow-student ¨Goose¨ (real name Josiah) at the house of Raul, a former migrant to the U.S. (he worked at Wendy´s during his time there) and current repairer of electric appliances. He was happy to have us stay with him, so that he could review his basic English vocabulary.
His son-in-law, also named Raul, was the commissioner for the ejido. A note of explaination: An ejido is a piece of land given by the government to rural residents. Under current laws they can be bought and sold. Raul´s job is to co-ordinate local and national policy´s governing the ejido. He always followed our group wherever we went and whomever we talked to during class sessions in his town.
In short the groups that we talked to and visited included government officials, small-scale commercial farmers (of shugarcane, figs, and, tomatos) and cooperative workers who raised various animals, most notably organic chickens. We talked with a group of people who had migrated (with varying legal statuses) to the U.S. It struck that the one who had worked in Agriculture in Salinas had never heard of Cesar Chavez, but he did say that he hadn´t worked there very long.
At the town center I played basketball with some local children. It struck me also that basketball seems more popular here than in the U.S.
The town was generally supportive of PAN (Mexico´s more ¨right-leaning¨ party, which encourages trade with the United States). It wasn´t for any large reasons though, mostly just because of the loans for tomato greenhouses they had recieved. Antonio, one of my professors explained that Mexican politics is very personal and paternalistic, relying on what we in the U.S. would call ¨handouts.¨
We also met with some recipients and local leaders Madres de Opportunidad, a group of mothers who recieve government assistance. They cannot recieve money if they have children in the United States. This has less to do with legality and more to do with money. Due to the rate of the peso to the dollar, people can work for very small amounts in the U.S. and come back with more money in Pesos for their family.
My own host family (perhaps due to work in the U.S.) had a synthesizer (keyboard) a DVD burner and a PS2, but no shower. It was alright with me. I learned to prefer bucket baths anyway.
His son-in-law, also named Raul, was the commissioner for the ejido. A note of explaination: An ejido is a piece of land given by the government to rural residents. Under current laws they can be bought and sold. Raul´s job is to co-ordinate local and national policy´s governing the ejido. He always followed our group wherever we went and whomever we talked to during class sessions in his town.
In short the groups that we talked to and visited included government officials, small-scale commercial farmers (of shugarcane, figs, and, tomatos) and cooperative workers who raised various animals, most notably organic chickens. We talked with a group of people who had migrated (with varying legal statuses) to the U.S. It struck that the one who had worked in Agriculture in Salinas had never heard of Cesar Chavez, but he did say that he hadn´t worked there very long.
At the town center I played basketball with some local children. It struck me also that basketball seems more popular here than in the U.S.
The town was generally supportive of PAN (Mexico´s more ¨right-leaning¨ party, which encourages trade with the United States). It wasn´t for any large reasons though, mostly just because of the loans for tomato greenhouses they had recieved. Antonio, one of my professors explained that Mexican politics is very personal and paternalistic, relying on what we in the U.S. would call ¨handouts.¨
We also met with some recipients and local leaders Madres de Opportunidad, a group of mothers who recieve government assistance. They cannot recieve money if they have children in the United States. This has less to do with legality and more to do with money. Due to the rate of the peso to the dollar, people can work for very small amounts in the U.S. and come back with more money in Pesos for their family.
My own host family (perhaps due to work in the U.S.) had a synthesizer (keyboard) a DVD burner and a PS2, but no shower. It was alright with me. I learned to prefer bucket baths anyway.
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