By Callan Elswick,
Davidson College
Through the help of Atzin, we traveled to Tlamacazapa and Amatlán last week in order to learn more about globalization’s effect on the environment, medicine, and indigenous cosmovision. Aztin is a non-profit organization that supports holistic community development in Tlamacazapa by providing clean water, investigating public health issues, and empowering women economically, socially, and politically. In addition to speaking with Susan Smith, the co-founder of Atzin, we also met with Agustin Perez Garcia*, a member of the Amatlan Communal Land Council, about community organizing and indigenous rights. Through our visits we experienced, albeit superficially, the poverty and the culture of both Amatlán and Tlamacazapa.
Amatlán is a small village that was founded 4,000 to 7,000 years ago. While it was the home to many illustrious revolutionaries and religious figures, it currently has 1,000 residents including Agustin. When we visited on Tuesday, Agustin spoke to us about pre-Colombian traditions and the indigenous struggle to protect these traditions from the Spanish conquest, economic imperialism, and globalization. He explained the importance of communal land to the indigenous population by recounting Mexican history and described how Emiliano Zapata’s demand for “Tierra y Libertad” under the Plan de Ayala became a reality in Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 by making indigenous communal lands inalienable and redistributing land into ejidos for the public. However, in order to appease its NAFTA partners, the Mexican government reformed Article 27 and permitted the privatization of ejido land without consulting the indigenous population or the campesinos.
Today, indigenous groups including the Amatlán Communal Land Council politically oppose and organize against the idea of private property which many feel is “just a tool that governments used to oppress people.”[1] While Amatlán has thwarted the development of many of the government’s megaprojects through community organizing, Agustin emphasizes that the point of this struggle is “to put tools in the hands of our peoples so that they may know their rights in the community” for “our land is also our capital because here lie the bones of our ancestors, here are our traditions.”
Tlamacazapa is another indigenous town, but unlike Amatlán, it has a population of 6,100, 40% of its children are not in school, and 50% of its young women are illiterate. Most of the community members are weavers who trade their art to vendors who, then, make a profit by selling them in places like
After speaking to Agustin and Susan, we traveled to Tlamacazapa and visited community members. We saw wells full of trash and green algae. In addition to carrying water down rocky and slippery slopes, we attempted to make tortillas and weave baskets. Although I cannot even begin to understand the poverty, the malnourishment, and the culture of either Amatlán or Tlamacazapa, I feel informed and empowered to question
Photo: A Well at Tlamacazapa
Great entry, Callan. I was particularly struck by the differences between Tlamacazapa and Amatlan. While the residents of Amatlan seemed very empowered, the residents of Tlama faced many more problems. In Amatlan, we learned about the preservation of indigenous traditions and language. In Tlama, the emphasis was more on basic survival and less on the maintenance of culture. While Amatlan had an active land counsel that worked to protect the land rights of its citizens, Tlama’s land counsel was dominated by several important men in the community and was not as active. Additionally, Amatlan did not appear to have as many (or as serious) problems with poverty or with water issues. I’m curious as to what Amatlan’s relationship with water is like and I hope to learn more about it next week during the rural homestay.
ResponderEliminarFinally, like Callan, the visits to Tlama and Amatlan left me with many questions about the role that we, as US citizens, have in providing these villages with solutions to their social and political problems. Because (in many cases) the US benefits economically due to the suffering of others, what is our responsibility to these individuals? What do the residents of Tlama and Amatlan expect from us?
-Martha Clarke
Excellent reflections, Callan and Martha. You raise very important points to consider. What do others who have been to Tlama and Amatlan think? Do you agree?
ResponderEliminar-Ann
Hi Martha,
ResponderEliminarMy name is Claire and I am a student on the CIEE Thailand: Development and Globalization program. While all of our units focus on some aspect of consumption, three units have focused on agriculture & organic farming, landfill communities, and dams. The agriculture unit taught us the importance of buying local and organic food, while the landfill unit showed us where our trash from everything we consume (food, anything packaged etc.) ends up, and the unit on dams really made us realize the world water crisis (no more bottled water!). After each unit, we were constantly feeling helpless and like there was nothing we as individuals could do to be a better consumer and make a change in the world of consumption. I have come up with a few tips on how to be a better consumer wherever you are…
• Use a reusable water bottle
• Use reusable bags rather than plastic bags
• Use a Tupperware container rather than getting food to-go in styrofoam
• Buy in bulk to avoid packaging
• Print double sided
• Eat vegetarian once a week
According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads.
The answer is not for everyone to drastically change their eating habits or consuming patterns, but to make small daily changes that have long-term affects. With these suggestions, do you see how easy it is to make a difference?
Callan,
ResponderEliminarLike CGE, us students in Thailand have many issues that we are confronted with after returning from communities. The overarching common ground is development and globalization. Although many positive attributes come from these two topics (how privileged we are to have many things we do today), they still leave many people exploited and marginalized along the way. The weaving that you mentioned seems to be a scenario that we have run into over and over again this semester. The farmers that provide all of Thailand and many other countries with rice and food have barely enough money to feed themselves, the villages surrounding gold mines have their lives ruined so that we can have jewelry and electronics, and villagers whose lives depend on their culture of making clay pots may have their water source depleted by a dam. It seems that there are infinite situations in which people are exploited by development.
Development is such a complex issue...sometimes seems too big to tackle. I enjoyed your post!
Maggie McLagan
University of Colorado at Boulder
CIEE Thailand
Interesting post. Many of the same issues that you discuss, we have studied in Thailand. As Claire points out, each issue that we have been introduced to deals in some way with consumption--electricity, food, minerals, and water. A number of development projects have been implemented throughout Thailand in order to extract and provide for consumers all over the world. In fact, many of these projects are not designed for the consumption of Thai people, but rather for the consumption of deep-pocketed Americans.
ResponderEliminarThe most obvious case is mining. As it turns out gold is not only used to make jewelry. In fact, it is in many of our electronics, including cell phones and computers. As consumers in the U.S., we walk into an electronics store or jewelry shop and our eyes dart from product to product excited at the prospect of purchasing a new item. The displayed goods shine both aesthetically and with all of there fancy tricks.
Yet, not once do we see a sign indicating that these items have minerals in them that come from developing countries. Not once do we see a warning label that offers information regarding the process of mining and how cyanide is used to separate gold from the ore. Never have I been told by a company that in buying this product I contribute to the poisoning of thousands of people and the contamination of gallons of water. Were the government to mandate that these labels be provided, demand for these harmful products would likely drop. Aside from government intervention, it is important to note that the enemy is not the consumer. In my eyes, the enemy is the company. In providing these products for people to buy, companies are literally killing people. Why is it that an individual can be charged for murder, when a company cannot?
Hey Callan,
ResponderEliminarMy name’s Abe, and I’m also studying in Thailand. Visiting communities is one of my favorite parts of this program. The people I have met are absolutely warm-hearted, despite the momentous challenges they face. But I wonder what pains they have, which they cannot show to us. A problem shared with Tlamacazapa and Amatlán is land ownership. May of the communities we visited are still fighting for land titles. Some communities have had their land titles seized for purposes of development, others have encroached on state property after losing their homes, and others simply live too close to state property, such as a railroad. Every day they face the prospect of losing their homes. Furthermore, without land titles, the price of water, electricity, and occasionally education and health care are more expensive. So in addition to being pulled into the global economy, where villagers have to take undesirable jobs with low wages, they must also find time to rally just to maintain their property, not to mention find some way to afford food every day. It is really wild how much land ownership shapes a community’s life. And both in Mexico, corporate or state ownership over land results in various hardships for these communities, despite the efforts of Zapata and past presidencies. I wonder why the hell it is that people don’t have the right to maintain independence over their land and lives, and also why a state’s development projects are more important than a healthy community. Thanks for sharing your experience in these communities; I have a lot of hope that more people will begin to see these families as their own through understanding their stores.
I want to continue what Liam was saying about mining. Mining (for gold, silver, coal, copper, aluminum, gravel, you name it) has been extremely harmful for the environment and for the communities around it. One really important step we as US consumers can take is with our money. We can vote with our dollar, and we can make a difference by choosing where we store our money. Mining companies need financing from banks. Citigroup and Bank of America both invest in coal mining companies. Once I get back to the US, I plan to terminate my account at Bank of America and invest in a local bank where I know where it puts its money. Many small banks are part of a network called Allpoint, which is an alliance around the country that does not charge a surcharge if your bank is in the network.
ResponderEliminarI would encourage everyone to research their own bank and see if they are financing mining companies. If they are and you decide to close your account, make sure to tell the bank that you are leaving because they fund mining companies. Spread the word!
Leslie O'Bray
Georgetown University