costa chica

last week I went to the Costa Chica in the state of Guerrero. Costa Chica is the coast on the Pacific Ocean south of Acapulco, and actually some of the costa chica is in Oaxaca, which is the state south west of Guerrero.

the main objective of going to this area was to learn about the afro-mexican community there. In that region there are a lot of people with African blood, a legacy of slavery, but the government and educational curriculum do not recognize Africans as the third root of "mestizaje" or the mixing of races that was a result of the Conquest. And it is really true. We mainly stayed in the city of Cuajiniciulapa and when we walked along the streets there, it really looked like pictures that you see of Cuba or the Dominican Republic, whose people also have African roots. but it was Mexico... just goes to show the great amount of diversity in all countries.

We also learned about indigenous communities and cultures. One of my favorite visits over this week was to a bilingual school that teaches Spanish and Mixteco, an indigenous language from the area. the teacher was an amazingly strong woman.. she left her village in the mountains after second grade so she could continue her education. She worked in a woman's house as a maid and with her sister's help, they finished high school. The great thing about the school was that it was giving kids a positive sense of indigenous identity. The families moved from their small villages to the city and often when that happens, indigenous culture and pride in their traditions is lost. but this school helps kids learn Spanish while retaining Mixteco culture. And its true too, when we were playing a tickling game with the kids - it was basically everyone run around and try to tickle each other. my friend kelsey got taken down by a group of seven kids all at once.. she ended up curled in a ball on the floor - anyway, I heard the kids speaking Mixteco to each other.. they weren't ashamed of speaking their native language, as is too often common in Mexico. here's a picture:




another favorite visit of mine was to a beach near Tierra Colorada, where they help endangered baby sea turtles hatch and keep track of the sea turtle migration. what was great about this project was how much Enrique (the man who talked to us) understood that environmental conservation is linked to social issues. People raid the eggs to sell them, only because there is often no other viable employment. A really cool thing that they have done is set up a temporary employment program so people can earn a little bit of money working with the sea turtles, and they have actually employed some previous hueveros (egg hunters). Also, the sea turtles are a large part of culture and religion in this area, and if the turtles go extinct, we do not just lose biodiversity, but cultural diversity as well. and then at the end we got to liberate baby sea turtles! The mother leaves here eggs in the sand and when the babies hatch, they have to make a trip across the beach to get into the ocean. Well, we got to carry them across the beach and set them down in the sand, then watched then go into the water so no birds ate them along the way. it was so amazing!! The babies knew that they were near the ocean as we walked with them in our hands, and started making swimming motions trying as fast as they could to get into the water. how’s that for natural instinct. I have no pictures of the actual act, but here's one of the encampment and the ocean:



whew, the last favorite visit (which is actually my favorite one) was with a group of people organizing against a mega-dam "La Parota" that was to be built in their region. This dam would have flooded several municipalities upstream, displacing farmers and communities and would have cut off the water supply for those downstream, effectively displacing them too because they could no longer grow food to eat. and if all that isn't bad enough, the benefits of the dam were not going to help the communities around the area, but was going to be sold to California. so people can watch their TVs 6 hours a day. Bullshit.

they organized in opposition to the dam for several years, and it was a huge struggle. 4 people died, many were thrown in jail, and others were beaten by the police. the CFE, which is the electrical commission here, infiltrated their ejido council meetings and set up police barricades so people who opposed the dam couldn't participate. They forged people's signatures who had died, couldn't write, or migrated to the United States. Its a really long story, but even with all of this deception and lying by the government, in 2007 they stopped their effort to build the dam. The organizers, who are actually just farmers and community members, spoke very strongly about water being life, the earth granting food, and the history and culture that is rooted deep in their land. Each person said something to this effect: "We are willing to die defending what is ours, our woods, our water, and our land." They also said that they are not opposed to development, only a development that rips them away from their land and their culture. They want development of their lands so they can keep working them.

What impacted me most about this visit was that they were extremely wary of letting a group of people from the United States on to their land and to share with them their story. We were still welcomed and they fed us lunch before the talk, but this is the first time that we had experienced a welcome that did not grant us a privileged status because we came from the United States, in fact that is what made them not trust us at first. They asked us why we came, why we wanted to listen to them, and we all responded. Through these responses -- that we want to work for social change, that we want to organize in our own communities, that we hope to have the same strength that they did -- we gained their trust, which felt extremely gratifying. At the end, they took us to see the Papagayo River (the one which would have been flooded) which I think was a really good sign that we had gained their trust, because they wanted to share their most valuable resource with us.

also, there was amazing graffiti and murals in the community and along the roads as we drove by. phrases such as "La tierra no se vende. Se ama y se defiende." (The land is not for sale. Love it and defend it). or "Zapata vive, la lucha sigue." (Zapata lives, the struggle continues). Here are some pictures:






(hell yeah.. I'm sure this was intentionally over Coke's name, as a symbol of outside impositions and corporate America)

and just one last picture to leave you with a beautiful image of the coast: