How can I not feel inspired?

As a follow-up to that last blog about the neo-Zapatistas being over-romanticized, I realize that I am a hypocrite. Why? Because I find myself admiring and idealizing the people of Atenco, themselves supporters of the neo-Zapatistas. Maybe it was just because I met them. I already wrote about Atenco, but I didn't explain it well, perhaps.

How they stood up, at the signal of fireworks, against the people who wanted to buy parcels of land for the price of a Coke. How the government was willing to stop at nothing to get this land, including the cemetery, before finally changing its mind.

How they went on to help flower vendors in Texcoco defend their space from a coming Wal-Mart. Sure it turned brutal, they had gasoline bombs with them then, I won't lie. Yet these were people defending their space that they used. I can admire their conviction, even if I have doubts about their claims to "non-violence."

How the police (or possibly army dressed as police) took its vengance on the town. All the accusation (not explained in detail at the time, but easy to find on the web) of rape and sexual torture. All to defend a Wal-Mart. How the government placed a toxic waste dump there, out in the Atenco fields, literally.

I saw the land they were fighting for, from up on a hill. It's too bad my camera wasn't working well. Sure it looked like desert, where once it had been the swamps surrounding the lake. Yet that was it for them, the Mexico City people were trying to expand here to take their water. That was the real purpose of the airport in some peoples' view.

Okay, Okay, I need to chill out. I already wrote about Atenco, didn't I? Well, that was a bit too long, and too dry in terms of only presenting information. What struck me in Atenco was the sense of a community rising.

It's a far cry from the U.S. world of web petitions, or of Che Guevarra's "vanguards" coming in and waiting for the people to support them. Or of people back at Warren Wilson College being "in solidarity" with people that they may not have even met.
Anyways, in short, I am a hypocrite who can't help admiring rebels in other countries, even if their cause, I know, is not truely mine. I'll write about something more calm next entry, I promise!

Dirty Politics (imported from CGE Blog entry by me).

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.