Final Thoughts From Chiapas

Today I had my last site visit of my trip and for that I had to travel one-hour south to Comitan. Comitan is where the organization Educación por la Paz (Education for Peace) more often called EduPaz was founded ten years ago, focusing primarily on supporting Guatemalan refugees in Chiapas. Now EduPaz has evolved to an organization that focuses mainly on 2 areas: health and economic development though microcredit.

EduPaz's health program is focused on mental health as they felt that the issue of addressing people's traumas after having lived through a conflict was missing in many indigenous communities. Maria Elena, the director of EduPaz's health program, studied Gestalt therapy when she was in Argentina years ago and now has shared her knowledge with other community members to provide a space for families who need more psychological support.

Jose, an indigenous man who comes from a community that speaks Tojolabal, manages the economic development program. He is the son of indigenous farmers who used to work on a large finca back in the day. He told me how when he used to be a young boy of 8 years old that he would talk Tojolabal with all the other children on the finca and that his father would discourage him from doing so and told him he should only speak Castilla (Spanish). So he did and he lost most of his Tojolabal until he was in his 20s and when he began interacting with Tojolabal-speakers outside of the finca and gained it all back. Now, as director of the microcredit project in EduPaz, he speaks Tojoloba all the time.

EduPaz has a more personalized way in managing its microcredit program than many other non-profit organizations. Before a group of community members can receive microcredit, EduPaz will have a dialog with them 3 times to make sure everyone understands the conditions and why these conditions exist. All members of the group have to become responsible for the group members to pay back their loans. A board of directors is selected and then Jose, with the support of Javier, EduPaz's executive director, will check one by one all the microcredit proposals and budgets to ensure that the proposed income-generating project will be guaranteed a positive result.

EduPaz will also assist the groups by providing financial administration training to each group. But they do not organize workshops and then ask people to come. Instead, they go to each of the groups they work with, one by one, and give each group the necessary training to build everyone's capacity to administer their loans.

Before, EduPaz used to offer many workshops such as training in agroecology and seminars on NAFTA and the World Bank but they discovered that not many would attend and people were just not interested. They decided to stop offering the workshops and focus on giving more personal attention to each group.

EduPaz's office includes a collective store on the first floor where group members involved in the microcredit program can sell their products. The store is focused on offering products that are both organically made and qualify as fair trade. The main product they sell is organic coffee as EduPaz has given a microcredit to organic coffee collectives.

EduPaz has only three staff members and all of them are constantly traveling, mostly to the communities in the Zona Selva and Fronteriza, that border with Guatemala. In spite of the small staff they seem to be covering lots of neglected areas and the advantage of having a Tojolabal native on staff makes a lot of difference.

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After finishing this visit, I feel sad and happy that my work in Chiapas has been completed. I am sad to leave Chiapas as this has been a magical place to be and for me it has been quite an eye-opening experience where I have witnessed the hard work that is being done on the ground with the financial support IDEX has provided. This is a place where you can meet many activists, many community members and people living with another type of government. I am happy to be able take all that I saw and learned back with me to San Francisco to do a better job in raising more funds and working harder to make my small contribution to supporting the various groups that IDEX supports there.

I hope you have all enjoyed reading about my trip and has encouraged you to visit Chiapas and/or learn more about the work that is being done there.

Until the next trip.... Peace out!

Kat

Growing Mushrooms

Today I went to San Rafael, a community near Comitán to visit a training workshop that IDEX partner, DESMI, was facilitating together with the collective living there.

San Rafael's collective is a new group that started one year ago with DESMI. In this brief period, they have already established their own training center that teaches community members in the region how to grow a type of mushroom called zeto.

When I got there, they were already sowing the mushroom seed in bags filled with olote (corn without their kernels). The training had started yesterday and I was joining them in their last phase. They encouraged me to participate and it looked like fun, so I did. I felt like a surgeon as I wore my mask, hat and latex gloves. The gear was to help prevent contamination on the seeds, so they can grow better. Once the bag of seeds with olotes was completed, it was placed in a separate dark room covered with plastic to foment the mushroom to grow.

After the training workshop the trainees, two of DESMI staff and I sat down together and had a good talk about their experience in working collectively, the projects they're working on and their hopes for their communities. The trainees were representative leaders that their communities had elected to promote organic agriculture. When I asked them what their hopes were for themselves and their communities, many responded that they wanted health among community members to improve and that everyone should have a balanced diet. One young man, promoter of organic agriculture in the community of Nuevo Tepeyac said, "I'm hoping to change the world." Everyone cried in unison that this was really the ultimate goal, to show that there is a better way to live in this world.

Don Juan, member of San Rafael's collective, used to own the land where the training center now stands. He sold the land to the collective so that the center could be owned and used by the collective members. He offered to show me his plot of land after the meeting, where he just harvested his milpas (corn). He's been practicing organic agriculture for 4 years now. Everything he grows has been primarily for his family's consumption, and whatever remains, is sold at the central market in Comitán.

It was a great experience to be among the people at the training today. All of them had the intention to go back to their communities to demonstrate how to grow mushrooms and if they are motivated enough, San Rafael's collective will go directly to them to train them and give suggestions. A couple of the trainees today were 14-year-old, young girls, who are already working to support their community.

They have all shown how much they care for their land, for their Mother Earth. They've all come here to be part of something bigger, because they want a better life, a better world for themselves and their communities. One cannot help but witness their dedication to achieve this wonderful goal!

Kat