Greetings from the students, faculty and staff who are spending the semester in Cuernavaca, Mexico with the Center for Global Education. Our program is called "Migration and Globalization: Engaging Our Communities." We are interested in issues of migration, globalization, gender, the environment, social justice, sustainable development, and peace. We look forward to sharing our insights and adventures with you throughout our semester abroad!
This week, students had the opportunity to learn more indepth about what life is like for a Mexican university student, as all participated in a week long academic exchange with a group of students from the National School of Social Work at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Throughout the course of the week, students got to know each other both inside and outside of class, as they listened to speakers, gathered in small groups to discuss social policies both in Mexico and the United States and shared stories about their lives as they enjoyed some delicious tacos.
While the week was focused primarily on themes relating to social work and learning about the differences in the profession and the policies between both nations, the migration and globalization students found that they too could relate to some of the students. Many walked away feeling as though their experience here in Cuernavaca had been enriched for having met and heard the stories of the UNAM students, many of whom travel many hours and confront many obstacles in order to pursue their education and subsequently achieve their professional goals.
As one of the UNAM students put it so eloquently when discussing the challenges of discrimination, as social workers they are determined to acknowledge the inequalities present in society and work positively to change them. Listening to her words, many of the students felt that they could relate to such a sentiment in their own efforts to combat the injustices faced by those forced to migrate in the hopes of finding a better life for themselves and for their families.
Overall, it was a wonderful week shared by all, as new friends were made and a new consciousness was gained about the experiences of university students here in Mexico.
Photo: The group poses together at the conclusion of the week-long exchange
This week we delved further into issues of globalization and migration as we heard from Irene Ortiz, a local feminist and community activist, about the feminization of poverty.As she began her talk, Ms. Ortiz told us that she would be presenting the point of view of real women, “mujeres de carne y hueso.”The main theme of the talk was the idea that even though globalization has brought much economic advancement to Mexico, women (in Mexico and elsewhere) are still very much second class citizens. Ms. Ortiz agued that globalization as a whole is a economic process that promotes mass impoverishment and funnels capital out of the pockets of the many into the hands of the few. She asserted that globalization has complicated matters for Mexican women in particular as they are forced into the workplace.
As we have seen throughout the course of the semester, NAFTA and neoliberal economics have made basic survival very difficult for Mexicans.We have learned that it takes four to five minimum wages for a Mexican family to buy just basic food products.Because of this, Mexican women are forced out of the home to work.While to many Americans this may seem like a liberating experience, Ms. Ortiz explained that this move into the formal workplace is simply a consequence of bad economic and political policies.Additionally, women are exposed to very poor working conditions; as in the United States, they don’t receive the same pay as men; in fact, 45% of working women receive 10% less pay than men for the same amount of work.Ms. Ortiz also explained that in cases where men and women do earn the same salary this is not because women’s salaries were raised to match men’s, it is because men’s salaries were dropped due to the Structural Adjustment Policies.
Beyond this, Latina women are subjected to harsh labor conditions in maquiladoras and other places of employment.Ms. Ortiz relayed an anecdote about a maquila in Guatemala in which the women employed there were encouraged to work triple shifts (18 hours straight).Because the factory was located so far away from the city center, women had to sleep on the floor in the hallways of the maquila in order to be on time for their next shift.Because of occurrences like this, Irene Ortiz explained that work has simply become another form of oppression for Mexican women, not an avenue towards economic independence as it is in the United States.
She furthered this argument by examining gender roles in the home.She explained that when they entered the workplace, women were forced to work a “double shift.”In addition to all their workplace responsibilities, they were also still responsible for cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children. Men are not expected to share in the work of the household.Furthermore, there is a huge emphasis on motherhood in Mexico.In order to truly fulfill one’s femininity, it is necessary for a woman to bear children.In many cases, both women and men see the inherent value of a woman as necessarily tied to her position as a mother or housewife.Unmarried women are looked down upon and discriminated against.Mexican women often have children very young and miss out on other social and economic opportunities.Because Mexico is a heavily Catholic country, there is little information available about family planning.In this way, Ms. Ortiz viewed motherhood (and the overemphasis on motherhood) as a type of forced repression.While the matriarch may be a powerful figure in the home, this power does not extend beyond self-sacrifice and caring for others and certainly does not extend into the public sphere.
Ms. Ortiz concluded her talk on a more positive note.She asserted that while the situation may look grim, great strides have been made.The internet and the media have drawn the world’s attention to the plight of women in developing nations.While the feminist movements of each country differ in many ways, people are beginning to mobilize and join together in the fight to promote women’s rights.This talk led me to several questions: What can we, as US citizens, do about the plight of women in Latin America? What are the struggles of minority women (particularly Latinas) living and working I the United States?How does migration affect gender roles?
Throughout the first half of this semester, we have been learning about Mexican immigration to the United States and the effect it has on family members who remain in Mexico. To further our understanding, we went to Amatlan for a four day rural home stay. We listened to an immigration panel, with three men from the community that had immigrated to the United States. Each panelist was able to share his story describing why he chose to go to the United States and for how long he was there. Of the three panelists, two were in the United States undocumented, and the third received a work visa to work in the tobacco fields in the summers. All three of the men worked in the United States to support their families back home in Amatlan. After our panel discussion, our host families from the community came to pick up their students and participate in small group discussions on immigration and how it has impacted their lives. In my small group discussion, three women talked to us. All three were directly impacted by immigration as their husband, child, or father had gone to the United States illegally and then returned. One of the women has most of her family living in the United States, and does not get to see them often because of their undocumented status. All of the women know at least one person living in the United States undocumented. I felt it was an honor to have the opportunity to hear these men’s and women’s stories.
During our stay we also heard from the matriarch of the community, Doña Irene Ramirez. Doña Irene is a 74 year old lady who never married and still works in her own cornfields. She took our group, up into her corn fields, and gave a talk on the impact NAFTA has had on her farming and the struggles it has caused her each year. She does not truly own these cornfields, as they are communal land, but she is the one who takes care of the farming and maintenance of the land. In Amatlan, there is no private property but rather communal land. This is due to the belief that land cannot be picked up and moved; instead the whole community shares the land.The NAFTA treaty called for all the farmers to pay a fee each year to farm their land, and in return they would receive help from the government for farming. Doña Irene has never paid the fee to farm her land and is very proud of that. She also told us that she has tried growing genetically modified corn, but found that the corn is not as rich and good as the natural corn she grows in her fields. Also because of NAFTA, she can not sell her crops because of the inflation of prices and how much she has to sell it for to make a profit.
The trip to Amatlan was a great learning experience and really opened my eyes to the struggles and the impact on families caused by immigration and the role of the NAFTA agreement in the community.The trip also caused me to think about certain questions such as: what should be done in Mexico to help the families that are forced to go to the United States?What can we learn from Doña Irene and her view on how NAFTA works with Mexican farmers?
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 Amatlánand 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 Cuernavaca or Acapulco. Because villagers only make a few pesos per weaving, many are impoverished and living in shacks with dirt floors, rod walls, and tin roofs. As Susan said, “There’s nothing romantic about being poor.” In order to combat the poverty and health issues of Tlamacazapa, Atzin conducted research and brought the results to the community in order to foster a “culture of inquiry, not just a culture of development.” Susan emphasized, “The people impacted by the problem need to own the solution.” So, when Atzin discovered that Tlamacazapa’s water was contaminated with arsenic and lead, Susan and other volunteers aided the community in forming bridge activities or safe places where people could voice their opinions. They have also trained adolescent “promoters,” to be midwives or teachers in the Atzin-sponsored school. Additionally, they have set up a palm weaving co-op, a quilt-making co-op, and a women-run store. I believe that by placing economic, political, and social power in the hands of the community, Aztin has enacted real change.
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 U.S. and Mexican policy and lobby for change. How can indigenous cosmovision and culture be protected in this era of globalization? How can U.S. citizens be conscientious consumers?
Photo: A Well at Tlamacazapa
[1] Agustin Perez Garcia, personal interview, Amatlán, Mexico, February 16, 2010. *Name has been changed to protect identity.
Today we had the great opportunity to listen to a guest lecture by the Mexican interculturalist author, singer, song-writer Betty Ramos, who did an excellent job of helping us develop new understandings of some of the similarities and differences of the multiple cultures of Mexico and the United States.
Lic. Ramos is the author of several books, including Negltiating Cuoltural Barriers and The Geo-Context: A Guide to Intercultural Understanding Between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Rather than simply giving us a list of "dos" and "don'ts" that would have limited value, Lic. Ramos not only introduced key concepts and theoretical frameworks from the field of intercultural communication but also shared several of her own personal experiences living in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, where she has facilitated countless workshops on intercultural communication.
During our time in Mexico, it will be helpful to remember her stories and suggestions regarding saying THANK YOU as many times as possible in as many different ways as possible and "decorating the truth" by always trying to be as polite and simpático as possible. Thank you, Betty Ramos!
This week we have been continuing our study of the high cost of living in Mexico (especially for the poor), and exploring the impacts of economic globalization and free trade on diverse sectors of Mexican society. Two of the books we've been reading are Globalization (Current Controversies), edited by Debra A. Miller (2007) and Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration & Criminalizes Immigrants by David Bacon (2008). The first explores opposing viewpoints on various aspects of economic globalization and the second one clearly takes a stance against neoliberal economic policies and makes links between them and migration, including undocumented migration to the United States.
It has been fascinating to read and hear a wide variety of viewpoints from different people, including a guest speaker named Andrés Santos, who talked to our group on Wednesday. What was especially interesting about Lic. Santos' talk is that he is a Mexican businessman who believes in free trade and is very articulate about the ways in which NAFTA benefitted his family business but also the ways in which economic globalization harmed it, as companies took their business to China. Rather than turning economic globalization into a simplistic "black and white" issue, he addressed the complexities of it and his opinion of the pros and cons of different aspects of the economic policies being implemented by the U.S. and Mexican governments, as well as others.
On Tuesday our class engaged in an experiential activity called the Market Basket Survey, which required us to split into small groups and go to the main market in Cuernavaca to purchase items from the basic food basket that most Mexican families need for survival. We were given money to purchase those items, which included beans, milk, tortillas, eggs, and cooking oil, among other things. It was a practical assignment since we later got to eat that food. However, we were also asked to check the prices of person items that we might consider "necessities," such as shampoo, toothpaste, tampons, and diapers (for those with children). It was a fun activity, as we got to walk to the huge main market that covers the span of several streat blocks and see rows and rows of beautifully arranged fruits and vegetables and other items and interact with the merchants in a meaningful way since we were buying their goods.
As we purchased items and checked the prices of others, we jotted down the prices in pesos. Afterwards, when we came back to our campus, we converted the prices to the dollar amounts, dividing the peso price by 13 since the current exchange rate is approximately 13 pesos to the dollar. In addition, we were asked to calculate the TIME COST for Mexican minimum wage earners - that is, the number of hours that a Mexican worker would have to work to purchase each item if s/he were earning minimum wage, which is approximately US $4.20/DAY, or slighlty over 50 cents per hour. Once we did that, we were shocked at the results, as we discovered that "necessity" items like tampons and diapers would take days of labor to purchase, and even the basic food basket exceeds what one earns on minimum wage! So what initially seemed to us like "cheap" prices when we simply converted peso prices to dollars are actually very expensive when we think about them in terms of wages. No wonder so many people feel pressure to go to the United States to find jobs where they can earn a lot more in one hour than they can in one day here!
In class we talked about the fact that in the cities most people earn more than minimum wage, whereas they often earn less than that in field labor in the countryside. Moreover, lots of people don't earn regular wages because, like taxi drivers and street vendors, they are self-employed and don't receive a paycheck, so earnings can vary from day to day. Obviously, the cost of living is a complex issue. Nonetheless, this exercise was extremely helpful to us in starting to get a sense of costs for the majority of the population here.
One simple example to illustrate the point of the high cost of living is the cost of a movie ticket - currnetly $46 pesos, which is only US $3.50. Seems cheap by U.S. standards, right? Well, if you earn Mexican minimum wage, you'd have to work for 6.7 hours in order to buy that movie ticket, and if you had 2 children to take to the movies, you'd have to work for 20.1 hours (nearly 3 days) just to buy the tickets, without including your bus fare to get to the movie theatre and back, much less popcorn or soda. So taking your kids to the movies is a luxury that Mexicans living on minimum wage could simply never afford. That really helped put things into perspective for me.
Do people who are strongly opposed to undocumented Mexicans working in the United States understand the economic challenges that they face here in Mexico? Also, what about minimum wages in different states of the U.S.A.? Can people really live on minimum wage in the U.S.? How much do you need to earn in the U.S. support yourself and/or a family with two children? I'd love to hear what you think! Please respond!
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