Sunday, November 13, 2005
false government vs. true education
The Secretariat of Agrarian Reform (SRA) in the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez finally confirmed the appointment with Martha Cecilia Díaz Gordillo, Special Representative for Chiapas. So Friday morning (Nov. 4) my colleague Mariana and I set out for Tuxtla around 9:00, arriving in time for a quick coffee and last-minute strategizing before the 11:00 appointment.
Inside the fortress, we're escorted from the generic secretary to the private secretary to the communications guy, and finally in to see the Licenciada herself. She greeted us as though she had known us for years--a breezy "Hi Mariana, how are you?," using the familiar "tú"--making small talk while assistants ran in and out with coffee and Powerpoint projector, interrupting to take calls on various cell and satellite phones and fire off instructions to subordinates, returning with a gracious smile and apology. She made a point of letting me know at the beginning that she knew I had spent time in Nicaragua, tried to pin Mariana down on how long she had been living in San Cristóbal, and halfway through the interview a photographer appeared and took so many pictures of us it made my eyes hurt. All in all she gave us three hours, quite to our surprise, and the whole encounter had an air of theater about it.
After the initial pleasantries we were treated to a long Powerpoint presentation. The most interesting thing there was that she scarcely mentioned the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, presenting her role instead as resolving conflicts arising from settlements on the larger land tract granted in 1972 to the "Lacandón Community." She readily admitted that that land grant was a blatant political maneuver and an economic sweetheart deal for the lumber companies, but claimed that the Fox administration was motivated now by a sincere desire to straighten out the legal tangle of property conflicts and fulfill its obligations to indigenous communities under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.
It's a nice thought, but I'm not convinced. It's more than a little suspicious that the government claims to be concerned about indigenous rights and poverty only in an area that just happens to be rich in resources that the multinationals want--with no similar concern, say, for equally blighted communities in a desert state like Zacatecas. And why privilege the property claims of a few dozen "Lacandón" families over tens of thousands of other indigenous settlers in the region (who just happen to be less politically malleable)? And if the government were so concerned about its Convention 169 obligations, why don't they implement the San Andrés accords on indigenous rights which they signed with the Zapatistas in 1996? Instead they passed a sham "indigenous rights law" in 2001, which the UN Rapporteur for Indigenous Issues in Mexico (the highly regarded Mexican anthropologist Rodolfo Stavenhagen) noted did not meet the standards of Convention 169. But we were in listening mode, here to understand the official line rather than debate it.
As the Special Representative described the process of persuading communities to accept relocation, we learned that this operation cost the government a whopping $20,000 per relocated family, so clearly this is a major priority. The Lacandón region is one of 14 "focos rojos" or "red light" zones of high agrarian conflict identified by the Secretariat throughout the country, of which 5 are in Chiapas. According to Martha Cecilia, there are 196 communities in various phases of resolution of conflict with the "Lacandón Community," with 123 of those so far resulting in agreements and 8 relocated commuities. One example she gave of an agreement involved an $8,000 indemnization per family. Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation: If indemnization (the most common outcome) costs the government $8,000 and relocation $20,000 per family, let's say the weighted average is $10,000; times about 200 communities, and if we guess an average of 50 families each, that would make $100 million--not small change. She said the European Union grant of 31 million euros for Lacandón regional development doesn't cover this "conflict resolution," so the government is investing heavily in trying to pacify this region; presumably for foreign investment, as well as counterinsurgency, complementing what must be an even more expensive military occupation.
The related PROCEDE program, to get agrarian reform beneficiaries to opt out of their collective ejidos and acquire individual land titles, costs $30-40,000 per community just for land measurement and legal certification. Most interesting of all was the explanation of the way the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform (SRA) deliberately bypasses peasant and indigenous organizations, instead negotiating directly with community members with offers and promises and training workshops for selected interlocutors. Martha Cecilia presented this as much more democratic than community decision-making, as it left everything to individual choice.
An alternative interpretation would be that this is a strategy to divide communities and demobilize their independent organizations. It's a good example of the neoliberal philosophy in which everyone is just an individual market actor making "free" market choices; overlooking all the structural inequalities that vitiate the logic. It also reflects the ideology of neoindigenismo, a revamped version of the old paternalistic and assimilationist policies toward indigenous peoples. She complained that indigenous people don't take advantage of the health services offered by the government; implying that ignorance and superstition were holding them back, instead of thinking about how the government doctors and their approach might be offensive or provoke suspicions in the communities. The Special Representative of the SRA assumed that indigenous people "should" prefer the opportunity for individual enrichment offered by private property and markets (leaving aside the question of how widely attainable the dream of enrichment really is). The next assumption is that the only thing holding them back from progress is the lack of the right kind of modern knowledge--so presto, send in lawyers and money (keeping the guns mostly out of sight), and you'll get photo ops of grateful Indians accepting government gifts (like in Martha Cecilia's Powerpoint slides). The state gives special training to a coopted stratum of leaders, an indigenous bureaucracy, who constitute their designated partners, bypassing community traditions of decision-making and leadership.
Martha Cecilia said they were pressing full speed ahead with the land titling and relocations in the hope of finishing the "territorial reordering" (a nice bit of bureaucratese) in the Lacandón Jungle in the next 8 months, so it won't get "complicated" by the electoral cycle. That was pretty close to an admission that they're concerned the hardliners represented by PRI presidential candidate Madrazo (and gubernatorial candidate Albores Guillén) might win, and not bother with the niceties of legal advice and indemnizations and resettlement resources. (Hard to say whether the strategy with smiles is any less destructive in the long run.) She also allowed herself a comment on the Zapatistas in the closing small-talk: She thought the Zapatistas were losing supporters because of their inability to deliver scarce legal titles to land, something that her agency with their teams of lawyers conveniently had the power to do. That may be a rather simplistic analysis of the motivations of the Zapatista social base, but it was a revealing commentary on the government's counterinsurgency strategy.
All in all it was definitely a worthwhile interview, and she proved to be just as capable a political operator as everyone had said. We learned in fact that she has degrees in law and political science as well as a Master's in agrarian history, and that she worked for four years at the Chiapas branch of the anthropology think tank CIESAS, so she is fluent in academic and legalistic and political idioms. Now we have a follow-up appointment on November 14 at the Agrarian Attorney General's office (Procuraduría Agraria), to get more specific data on PROCEDE and the dismantling of ejidos through individual titling.
It's strange to be dressed up sitting in an office with maps and charts and Powerpoint and a laser pointer one day, hearing legalistic arguments about the jungle and its indigenous inhabitants, then to be out there actually chewing on jungle dust the next day. After only four hours of sleep, I catch a 6:00 a.m. combi to the city on the edge of the jungle, a place with a kind of border-town feel, full of veterinary supply outlets and hardware stores selling machetes and lassos. I get my bus ticket, have some breakfast, and go stake a claim to my seat. Today's bus has a dashboard decorated with a Jesus draped in the Mexican flag, two Virgins of Guadalupe, a Santa Claus decal, and a picture of a very stern-looking jaguar. Rainy season mud has given way to dry season dust, great billowing clouds that coat us all with a layer of fine tan grit as the bus bounces and creaks its way down the dirt road. My seatmate is an older man who came to town to visit his schoolteacher son. He dozes most of the way, and I try to catch up on sleep too, but it's hard with all the bouncing.
Later in the journey a young guy from Mexico City sits across the aisle, the only other kaxlán aboard, and it turns out he's a university student in linguistics doing six months of social service teaching at a prep school in a large priísta town in the jungle. He's apparently not very political, but he notes that the kids have low motivation because there are few prospects for indigenous graduates, and most are only there so their mothers can get the per-student payment to poor families under the government's Oportunidades program (which requires school attendance, not performance). He's frustrated that the kids are surly and the parents uncooperative. Fifteen of the 18 students in his class have family members working in the U.S., and he confirms that Oportunidades winds up facilitating migration of the men by giving the women a subsistence income (i.e., the opposite of the government's rhetoric about the program).
Along the way a bunch of teenagers get on, and I recognize some of them from the teacher training school at El Conejo, so it seems they're starting to assemble for the beginning of the new session. Six hours later we're in Trébol, and the community pickup truck from El Conejo is there waiting. I climb on with the gang of education promoters and we head down the road. Soon we get a flat tire under the weight of 22 people in one tiny Nissan pickup, and of course there's a piece missing from the tire-changing gear. After much unsuccessful grunting and sweating, someone bends one of the tools to make it work, the tire is changed and we're back on the road, arriving around 6:00 p.m. The kids join the other education promoters who have been arriving from surrounding communities, and soon there is a summer-camp atmosphere of laughter and cooking-fires and guitar strumming. I stretch out my sleeping bag on the wooden slats of the bed, hoping the municipal authorities won't call me in until tomorrow so I can crash early.
I wake up Sunday morning around 7:00 to the sounds of a bouncing basketball, laughter, and music. The dorms are buzzing with the excitement of re-encounters with friends and anticipation of the start of a new school session, the final month in their two-year course. One of the education promoters kindly brings me some boiled black beans and tostadas for breakfast. They pass the day alternating between planning meetings, clean-up chores and recreation. I spend the day working on a conference paper (tough without a computer or coffee, but I manage to get a bit of writing done), waiting for the municipal authorities to show up so I can request permission for some of the work I'd like to do. I'm hoping to be able to interview the teacher trainers, observe the classes, and also do a little survey among the education promoters (teachers).
Around 6:00 p.m. the teacher trainers arrive from Mexico City. More hubbub. This is why I had hoped to arrive a few days earlier, to get everything squared away with the authorities before the commotion of the start of the school session. But it was worth the delay to interview the agrarian reform official.
I wake up at 6:00 a.m. Monday to the squawking of the communications radio next door. It rained off and on during the night and into the morning, so I guess the dry season is still inching its way into the jungle, but at least it wasn't one of those rainy season driving downpours. A compa drops by and says "We'll talk in a little bit," which is a sign that the authorities have registered my presence and set aside some time for me in the midst of the busy preparations for the start of the teacher training school. At 7:30 a.m. the authorities gather the young education promoters in the schoolhouse for some serious-sounding opening words in Tzeltal. Eleven years after the initial Zapatista uprising, there is a real consciousness that education will be vital to the future of the movement. Another compa comes by to tell me the authorities will be meeting with me al rato, "in awhile." He says they came by last night to chat around midnight, but I was already asleep. Oh well, it's hard to coordinate when there's no schedule, but at least now I know there's a meeting al rato. Not that I'm going anywhere. The rain starts up again, soft but steady.
The councilmembers come by around 9:00 a.m. They tell me I can observe the classes, but I'll have to stay for the whole session each day, they don't want the disruption of people coming in and out, which is understandable. I can also talk to the trainers. Regarding the survey, they're going to review the questionnaire and get back to me. At 10:00 a.m. I join all the student teachers who are lined up on the basketball court to salute the Mexican and Zapatista flags (with the traditional Zapatista left-handed salute) and sing the two anthems. Then we go into the schoolhouse, where six trainers from Mexico City (five women and one man, all in their mid- to late twenties) welcome them to the final session of their two-year course. These promoters are the second graduating class since the school was founded in 2001, and already some of them from the first generation are preparing to become trainers, so the Mexico City volunteers will phase themselves out.
I chat with the trainers during one of the breaks and learn that they are part of a team of twenty that meets twice a week back in Mexico City when they're not here in El Conejo. They are not professional educators--there is one undergrad education student and a history student from the Metropolitan University, a journalist, a biologist, an unemployed graduate in rural development, and a student of history and anthropology at the national university (UNAM). The UNAM student tells me he got politicized during the year-long university strike a few years ago, when the government tried to follow neoliberal "free market" prescriptions and impose tuition and curtail autonomy at the free public university. Mexico's revolutionary Constitution of 1917 guarantees free public secular education, so this was the equivalent for students of what the agrarian counterreform of 1992 represented for peasants, a line in the sand. In the end the government made concessions but brought in riot police to remove the occupiers, a violation of university autonomy that shocked and woke up many people.
The idea for the school at El Conejo came from the autonomous municipal authorities, who drew up a detailed plan of the kind of "true education" they wanted, then went to one of the NGO coordinating groups to ask them to find volunteer trainers. The original five had just met each other and had two weeks to put together the first classes. They say they've learned a lot in the four years the project has been running, and they attribute its success to the political clarity and organization of the autonomous authorities, who work closely with them to keep the project true to the objectives of the communities.
The session opens with the trainers outlining the lesson plan for the month with the promoters. The first two and a half days will be devoted to pedagogy and educational philosophy ("true education"). Then there will be a day on "recovery of knowledge," with promoters reporting back on how their respective communities are overcoming obstacles to obtaining the Zapatistas' 13 demands. Then the rest of the month will be spent on the four substantive teaching areas--languages, history, math, and life sciences ("life and environment"). The pedagogy and community knowledge parts sound particularly interesting to me, so I'm glad I'm able to be here for the start of the session.
It rains more, and harder, throughout the day. People here hope it keeps up, since the dry season had started too early and they need another week of rain to get their next crop planted. It reminds me of something I read in a development studies text about the Tswana people of South Africa, who define poverty in terms of people's reactions when the hordes of locusts come. It seems that the rich are distraught, because the locusts wipe out the grasses on their pasture lands so their cattle all die. The poor on the other hand, who have no land or cattle, are happy because they can eat the locusts. People here live close to the edge of subsistence, and a well-timed week of rain can make all the difference in how their year goes.
There is a break in classes in the afternoon, resuming for a couple of hours in the evening. The 40+ teenage education promoters, including six women (one with her 5-year-old son in tow) and six trainers share benches and desks, gathered under a single bare low-watt bulb. Men and women sit together, a rarity in these communities. They work with enthusiasm, sometimes breaking into groups, sometimes working on a problem and coming back together for discussion. The trainers periodically call on one of the promoters to translate complicated ideas into Tzeltal and Ch'ol. They do a brainstorming session to list "educational tools," including everything from pencils and chalk to lesson plans and interactive exercises to community knowledge, then discuss applications. They talk about different phases of organizing the teaching process, then read a story about two community educators and identify the different parts of their work in the story. There is a long discussion about the importance of teachers understanding the community context--whether it is a divided or unified community, whether there is a military base or water source nearby, what plants grow in the area--so that lessons and examples are relevant to people's actual experience and needs. The first day's class ends around 6:30 p.m., just as another rain rolls in. There is an evening "reinforcement" session for those whose literacy and other basic skills need boosting.
Dinner is sugary rice water cooked in a big vat over a wood fire. People wander in and out with their bowls and spoons to serve themselves, eating standing outside or squatting inside the smoky kitchen. The autonomous municipality scrapes up money to feed the promoters, who have a sign-up sheet for cooking shifts. In the evening I start reading Balún Canán, the classic 1950s novel by Chiapas writer Rosario Castellanos about the disintegration of a wealthy landowner family from Comitán as class and ethnic relations are changing during the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), sort of a Chiapan Gone With the Wind.
Tuesday morning the sun is out and it's probably in the mid-70s. Class starts at 7:00 a.m., with group work focusing on understanding the purpose of various educational tools and exchanging ideas on how to implement them. After 9:00 a.m. breakfast (rice and beans), I move to the library where 7 graduates from the first generation (including 2 women) are preparing to become trainers of future promoters. They discuss concepts such as resistance, autonomy, dependencies created by the government, and "leading by obeying," the Zapatista ideal of leaders as humble representatives who take instructions from their communities. Lunch is pasta with a bit of hot peppers and, thankfully, coffee. I take advantage of the lunch break (12:00-3:00) and sunshine to go down to the river to bathe and wash clothes. In the afternoon session the trainers-in-training rejoin the promoters, each taking charge of a group exercise in examining the reasons behind each of the principles of "true education" that the community assemblies have outlined. The Mexico City trainers help guide each group, and discussion flows back and forth between Spanish, Tzeltal and Ch'ol. After dinner (coffee and crackers) I exchange Tzeltal and English lessons with one of the promoters who is keen to learn some English and wants to understand phrases he has seen, such as "Quaker State motor oil" and "made in China." I learn Tzeltal phrases such as "Binxi awotan," literally "What does your heart say?," i.e. "How are you?" Afterwards I stay up awhile listening to some compas with an old guitar belting out rancheras, then I read a bit more of Balún Canán before turning in.
Wednesday's early morning session concludes the workshop on pedagogy. After mid-morning breakfast of rice and beans, the trainers-in-training lead a session on "recovery of knowledge" gathered in the communities by the promoters over their break. After working in groups, one team presents their ideas about community issues in song, in the form of a corrido (traditional Mexican ballad). After lunch (pasta and beans) the group presentations continue, followed by a simulated meeting with the President of the Republic in which representatives raise issues troubling indigenous communities, then with a government official offering aid. The role-play was followed by an analysis of how easily people are deceived and demobilized by crumbs from the government table. Then there is an exercise in drafting a community denunciation of abuses. Class lets out a bit early so the trainers-in-training can do an evaluation of their efforts. There is a spirited basketball game (a contact sport around here), then dinner of sugary rice water and crackers. I finish reading Balún Canán and stringing up my hammock, as I've been moved to another dorm to make room for some of the municipal authorities who have come in to the county seat for a meeting. People are always on the move between communities, as the business of Zapatista government is conducted largely in face-to-face meetings and assemblies and personally delivered messages. It rains off and on throughout the night, at times quite hard, drumming on the tin roofs.
Thursday morning the rain tapers off. Class moves into the first of the four subject areas, language. The focus is on comprehending not just random vocabulary words, but key concepts in the Zapatista struggle: leading by obeying, resistance, autonomy, independence; collective rights of self-determination, sustainability, and self-governance of indigenous communities. More fluent promoters are called on to translate complex ideas into Tzeltal and Ch'ol to be sure everyone understands. After breakfast is a history lesson, starting with brainstorming about current forms of dependence created by the government in indigenous communities, then applying the concept of dependency to the time of the Spanish invasion, the independence era, and the Mexican Revolution. In the afternoon I attend the class on environment, which covers not only natural resources but also human and social relations. The class is on how to explain to schoolchildren the relation between natural resources and building autonomy. After dinner (sweet coffee) there is another sing-along with guitar by the kitchen fire. In between songs the promoters are trying to explain to the kaxlanes the local marriage customs and expectations. Most kids in the communities marry around age 15. Many of these promoters say they would like to wait until age 25 or 30, but they know they would be made fun of and perhaps be considered past marriageable age. They continue gossiping and singing, and I call it a night. Again it rains most of the night and into the morning.
Friday morning the municipal council tells me I have permission to do the survey. With little time left before my departure the following evening, I consult with the trainers about the best way to conduct it without disrupting the flow of classes, and they say they'll discuss it at breakfast. Meanwhile, the morning math class is on resistance and community participation. Math? Yes, they learn about sets and sub-sets, such as individual communities within the larger body of indigenous peoples. There is a group exercise, holding hands in protective rings around the person representing autonomy, with people representing government programs trying to charge through the circles of organization and solidarity to attack autonomy.
At breakfast the trainers decide the best time for the survey is Saturday afternoon after the last session. I let the authorities know, so they can pass the word through the education coordinators to the promoters. For the midday session I attend history class, where the promoters work on designing and discussing a timeline of the 500 years of domination and indigenous resistance. The promoters have made drawings of a tree which are now used to represent history--the roots as the ancient Maya, the trunk as history of resistance, the branches as parents and grandparents, and the leaves and fruit represent the current generation. The trainers-in-training (formadores) take over the explanation and discussion, then the drawings and timelines are taped together in a triptych and added to the promoters' materials to use in their community schools. Quite different from a government textbook about Columbus discovering America. Then the formadores distribute a collection of short narratives (in Spanish) of indigenous resistance, which the promoters discuss in groups (in Tzeltal and Ch'ol) and then come back together to report. The rains finally stop at lunchtime and everyone runs to the river to bathe, even though it's muddy and turbulent.
Language class in the afternoon begins with an exercise in reading comprehension, identifying central ideas in a text on autonomy and independence. The class discusses the difference between normative systems (laws and prescribed punishments) and customary or consuetudinary law (community customs, which the government is supposed to recognize as the basis for self-rule in communities). The government only wants to give token acknowledgment of indigenous customs as quaint museum pieces and tourist attractions, but not recognize community rights to make rules that are binding on their members. Discussion then turns to the terminology and concepts associated with "low-intensity warfare" (LIW), the counterinsurgency strategy being applied against the Zapatistas. The class uses "people's newspapers" prepared from clippings and commentary by the previous session of promoters, to define LIW and explain its logic. Then they give examples including government projects that aim to divide communities (disinformation, conditioned distribution of goodies), undermine self-organization, denigrate indigenous identity (e.g. through the official schools), intimidate (e.g. military bases and roadblocks throughout the Zapatista support region), reinforce anti-Zapatista groups (civic and paramilitary), selectively assassinate Zapatista local leaders, manipulate the legal system to unjustly jail Zapatistas, destroy the material base of subsistence communities (including introducing genetically modified/sterile seeds, spraying defoliants, promoting monocropping such as African palm and eucalyptus), using the pretense of "environmentalism" to evict subsistence communities and sell the natural resources to commercial interests, etc. The promoters have no trouble pouring out a list of destructive government policies--which may be a clue as to why so many remain in the resistance, even when alternative Zapatista projects are still incipient or short of resources.
Friday evening the municipal authorities tell me they've reconsidered the matter of the survey, and now they want me to run the questionnaire by the Junta first. I'm not sure I'll have time in the next few weeks to get back and forth to the Caracol and back here before the end of the session, we'll have to see.
Saturday morning, the last day of my visit, it's raining again. There is a 7:00 a.m. formation on the basketball court to salute the Mexican and Zapatista flags and sing the anthems (after shy volunteers are found to lead in song). Math class starts with solving a problem: There are 2 hectares left over from the collective cornfield, yielding 1500 kilos of corn, of which 606 are fed to the chickens and the remainder sold at 3 pesos a kilo. How much is earned, and how would you explain the different mathematical operations to your students? Then language class reviews the terminology of low-intensity warfare. There is another semantic clarification of the difference between autonomy (internal self-governance of peoples) and independence (i.e. external, from other countries), lest an inexact phrase in a declaration be distorted to accuse the Zapatistas of wanting secession from Mexico. The language classes emphasize writing skills in drawing up community declarations and denunciations of abuses.
After breakfast, the life sciences/environment class discusses a series of narratives about government-promoted "ecotourism" and other projects established in indigenous territory without community consultation. The projects generally have adverse environmental impact, provide little benefit to the community at large, and are often a cover for biopiracy (stealing and patenting the genetic variations found in this biodiverse region) or other exploitative schemes. The afternoon class was given entirely by the formadores, graduates of the training programm, in their first "solo flight." It was mostly in Tzeltal and Ch'ol so I didn't get much of the content, but they were fluid and confident and the students were engaged, and the trainers were proud.
In the evening I hang out talking with visiting representatives from a community a few hours away, who have come to invite folks in El Conejo to a party on November 20th, Mexican Revolution day. They offer me some of their suxiwah, tortillas with beans mixed into the corn mass, and explain to me how they've tried to mitigate some of the divisions in their communities by inviting the more moderate non-Zapatistas to participate in some of their programs and activities. Then someone from the municipal council comes over to tell me there is a vehicle leaving for Trébol if I want to catch a ride which will save me a two-hour walk. I pack up my things and say a quick round of goodbyes, and set off on the 12-hour journey in three stages that will get me back to San Cristóbal around 9:00 the next morning.
It has definitely been an interesting week at the autonomous teacher training school. I'm impressed by the community conception and control of the project; the dedication and sacrifice of the young education promoters; and the coordination between autonomous municipal authorities, solidarity groups helping in the training, and the Greek collective that financed the construction of the schoolhouse and dorms. The school serves a variety of functions including socialization, modeling of egalitarianism and respect for diversity, and passing along values to the new generation. It is also important for the formation of leadership cadre, developing their self-confidence and skills in public speaking and participation. It provides an alternative to the government's demobilizing and demeaning system of education in indigenous communities. In the process of learning how to teach, the promoters are also engaged in a participatory process of creating new curriculum and didactic material, in interaction with their communities.
After this long description of the autonomous education project, this is a good time to remind you, dear reader, of how you can help:
Inside the fortress, we're escorted from the generic secretary to the private secretary to the communications guy, and finally in to see the Licenciada herself. She greeted us as though she had known us for years--a breezy "Hi Mariana, how are you?," using the familiar "tú"--making small talk while assistants ran in and out with coffee and Powerpoint projector, interrupting to take calls on various cell and satellite phones and fire off instructions to subordinates, returning with a gracious smile and apology. She made a point of letting me know at the beginning that she knew I had spent time in Nicaragua, tried to pin Mariana down on how long she had been living in San Cristóbal, and halfway through the interview a photographer appeared and took so many pictures of us it made my eyes hurt. All in all she gave us three hours, quite to our surprise, and the whole encounter had an air of theater about it.
After the initial pleasantries we were treated to a long Powerpoint presentation. The most interesting thing there was that she scarcely mentioned the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, presenting her role instead as resolving conflicts arising from settlements on the larger land tract granted in 1972 to the "Lacandón Community." She readily admitted that that land grant was a blatant political maneuver and an economic sweetheart deal for the lumber companies, but claimed that the Fox administration was motivated now by a sincere desire to straighten out the legal tangle of property conflicts and fulfill its obligations to indigenous communities under Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.
It's a nice thought, but I'm not convinced. It's more than a little suspicious that the government claims to be concerned about indigenous rights and poverty only in an area that just happens to be rich in resources that the multinationals want--with no similar concern, say, for equally blighted communities in a desert state like Zacatecas. And why privilege the property claims of a few dozen "Lacandón" families over tens of thousands of other indigenous settlers in the region (who just happen to be less politically malleable)? And if the government were so concerned about its Convention 169 obligations, why don't they implement the San Andrés accords on indigenous rights which they signed with the Zapatistas in 1996? Instead they passed a sham "indigenous rights law" in 2001, which the UN Rapporteur for Indigenous Issues in Mexico (the highly regarded Mexican anthropologist Rodolfo Stavenhagen) noted did not meet the standards of Convention 169. But we were in listening mode, here to understand the official line rather than debate it.
As the Special Representative described the process of persuading communities to accept relocation, we learned that this operation cost the government a whopping $20,000 per relocated family, so clearly this is a major priority. The Lacandón region is one of 14 "focos rojos" or "red light" zones of high agrarian conflict identified by the Secretariat throughout the country, of which 5 are in Chiapas. According to Martha Cecilia, there are 196 communities in various phases of resolution of conflict with the "Lacandón Community," with 123 of those so far resulting in agreements and 8 relocated commuities. One example she gave of an agreement involved an $8,000 indemnization per family. Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation: If indemnization (the most common outcome) costs the government $8,000 and relocation $20,000 per family, let's say the weighted average is $10,000; times about 200 communities, and if we guess an average of 50 families each, that would make $100 million--not small change. She said the European Union grant of 31 million euros for Lacandón regional development doesn't cover this "conflict resolution," so the government is investing heavily in trying to pacify this region; presumably for foreign investment, as well as counterinsurgency, complementing what must be an even more expensive military occupation.
The related PROCEDE program, to get agrarian reform beneficiaries to opt out of their collective ejidos and acquire individual land titles, costs $30-40,000 per community just for land measurement and legal certification. Most interesting of all was the explanation of the way the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform (SRA) deliberately bypasses peasant and indigenous organizations, instead negotiating directly with community members with offers and promises and training workshops for selected interlocutors. Martha Cecilia presented this as much more democratic than community decision-making, as it left everything to individual choice.
An alternative interpretation would be that this is a strategy to divide communities and demobilize their independent organizations. It's a good example of the neoliberal philosophy in which everyone is just an individual market actor making "free" market choices; overlooking all the structural inequalities that vitiate the logic. It also reflects the ideology of neoindigenismo, a revamped version of the old paternalistic and assimilationist policies toward indigenous peoples. She complained that indigenous people don't take advantage of the health services offered by the government; implying that ignorance and superstition were holding them back, instead of thinking about how the government doctors and their approach might be offensive or provoke suspicions in the communities. The Special Representative of the SRA assumed that indigenous people "should" prefer the opportunity for individual enrichment offered by private property and markets (leaving aside the question of how widely attainable the dream of enrichment really is). The next assumption is that the only thing holding them back from progress is the lack of the right kind of modern knowledge--so presto, send in lawyers and money (keeping the guns mostly out of sight), and you'll get photo ops of grateful Indians accepting government gifts (like in Martha Cecilia's Powerpoint slides). The state gives special training to a coopted stratum of leaders, an indigenous bureaucracy, who constitute their designated partners, bypassing community traditions of decision-making and leadership.
Martha Cecilia said they were pressing full speed ahead with the land titling and relocations in the hope of finishing the "territorial reordering" (a nice bit of bureaucratese) in the Lacandón Jungle in the next 8 months, so it won't get "complicated" by the electoral cycle. That was pretty close to an admission that they're concerned the hardliners represented by PRI presidential candidate Madrazo (and gubernatorial candidate Albores Guillén) might win, and not bother with the niceties of legal advice and indemnizations and resettlement resources. (Hard to say whether the strategy with smiles is any less destructive in the long run.) She also allowed herself a comment on the Zapatistas in the closing small-talk: She thought the Zapatistas were losing supporters because of their inability to deliver scarce legal titles to land, something that her agency with their teams of lawyers conveniently had the power to do. That may be a rather simplistic analysis of the motivations of the Zapatista social base, but it was a revealing commentary on the government's counterinsurgency strategy.
All in all it was definitely a worthwhile interview, and she proved to be just as capable a political operator as everyone had said. We learned in fact that she has degrees in law and political science as well as a Master's in agrarian history, and that she worked for four years at the Chiapas branch of the anthropology think tank CIESAS, so she is fluent in academic and legalistic and political idioms. Now we have a follow-up appointment on November 14 at the Agrarian Attorney General's office (Procuraduría Agraria), to get more specific data on PROCEDE and the dismantling of ejidos through individual titling.
It's strange to be dressed up sitting in an office with maps and charts and Powerpoint and a laser pointer one day, hearing legalistic arguments about the jungle and its indigenous inhabitants, then to be out there actually chewing on jungle dust the next day. After only four hours of sleep, I catch a 6:00 a.m. combi to the city on the edge of the jungle, a place with a kind of border-town feel, full of veterinary supply outlets and hardware stores selling machetes and lassos. I get my bus ticket, have some breakfast, and go stake a claim to my seat. Today's bus has a dashboard decorated with a Jesus draped in the Mexican flag, two Virgins of Guadalupe, a Santa Claus decal, and a picture of a very stern-looking jaguar. Rainy season mud has given way to dry season dust, great billowing clouds that coat us all with a layer of fine tan grit as the bus bounces and creaks its way down the dirt road. My seatmate is an older man who came to town to visit his schoolteacher son. He dozes most of the way, and I try to catch up on sleep too, but it's hard with all the bouncing.
Later in the journey a young guy from Mexico City sits across the aisle, the only other kaxlán aboard, and it turns out he's a university student in linguistics doing six months of social service teaching at a prep school in a large priísta town in the jungle. He's apparently not very political, but he notes that the kids have low motivation because there are few prospects for indigenous graduates, and most are only there so their mothers can get the per-student payment to poor families under the government's Oportunidades program (which requires school attendance, not performance). He's frustrated that the kids are surly and the parents uncooperative. Fifteen of the 18 students in his class have family members working in the U.S., and he confirms that Oportunidades winds up facilitating migration of the men by giving the women a subsistence income (i.e., the opposite of the government's rhetoric about the program).
Along the way a bunch of teenagers get on, and I recognize some of them from the teacher training school at El Conejo, so it seems they're starting to assemble for the beginning of the new session. Six hours later we're in Trébol, and the community pickup truck from El Conejo is there waiting. I climb on with the gang of education promoters and we head down the road. Soon we get a flat tire under the weight of 22 people in one tiny Nissan pickup, and of course there's a piece missing from the tire-changing gear. After much unsuccessful grunting and sweating, someone bends one of the tools to make it work, the tire is changed and we're back on the road, arriving around 6:00 p.m. The kids join the other education promoters who have been arriving from surrounding communities, and soon there is a summer-camp atmosphere of laughter and cooking-fires and guitar strumming. I stretch out my sleeping bag on the wooden slats of the bed, hoping the municipal authorities won't call me in until tomorrow so I can crash early.
I wake up Sunday morning around 7:00 to the sounds of a bouncing basketball, laughter, and music. The dorms are buzzing with the excitement of re-encounters with friends and anticipation of the start of a new school session, the final month in their two-year course. One of the education promoters kindly brings me some boiled black beans and tostadas for breakfast. They pass the day alternating between planning meetings, clean-up chores and recreation. I spend the day working on a conference paper (tough without a computer or coffee, but I manage to get a bit of writing done), waiting for the municipal authorities to show up so I can request permission for some of the work I'd like to do. I'm hoping to be able to interview the teacher trainers, observe the classes, and also do a little survey among the education promoters (teachers).
Around 6:00 p.m. the teacher trainers arrive from Mexico City. More hubbub. This is why I had hoped to arrive a few days earlier, to get everything squared away with the authorities before the commotion of the start of the school session. But it was worth the delay to interview the agrarian reform official.
I wake up at 6:00 a.m. Monday to the squawking of the communications radio next door. It rained off and on during the night and into the morning, so I guess the dry season is still inching its way into the jungle, but at least it wasn't one of those rainy season driving downpours. A compa drops by and says "We'll talk in a little bit," which is a sign that the authorities have registered my presence and set aside some time for me in the midst of the busy preparations for the start of the teacher training school. At 7:30 a.m. the authorities gather the young education promoters in the schoolhouse for some serious-sounding opening words in Tzeltal. Eleven years after the initial Zapatista uprising, there is a real consciousness that education will be vital to the future of the movement. Another compa comes by to tell me the authorities will be meeting with me al rato, "in awhile." He says they came by last night to chat around midnight, but I was already asleep. Oh well, it's hard to coordinate when there's no schedule, but at least now I know there's a meeting al rato. Not that I'm going anywhere. The rain starts up again, soft but steady.
The councilmembers come by around 9:00 a.m. They tell me I can observe the classes, but I'll have to stay for the whole session each day, they don't want the disruption of people coming in and out, which is understandable. I can also talk to the trainers. Regarding the survey, they're going to review the questionnaire and get back to me. At 10:00 a.m. I join all the student teachers who are lined up on the basketball court to salute the Mexican and Zapatista flags (with the traditional Zapatista left-handed salute) and sing the two anthems. Then we go into the schoolhouse, where six trainers from Mexico City (five women and one man, all in their mid- to late twenties) welcome them to the final session of their two-year course. These promoters are the second graduating class since the school was founded in 2001, and already some of them from the first generation are preparing to become trainers, so the Mexico City volunteers will phase themselves out.
I chat with the trainers during one of the breaks and learn that they are part of a team of twenty that meets twice a week back in Mexico City when they're not here in El Conejo. They are not professional educators--there is one undergrad education student and a history student from the Metropolitan University, a journalist, a biologist, an unemployed graduate in rural development, and a student of history and anthropology at the national university (UNAM). The UNAM student tells me he got politicized during the year-long university strike a few years ago, when the government tried to follow neoliberal "free market" prescriptions and impose tuition and curtail autonomy at the free public university. Mexico's revolutionary Constitution of 1917 guarantees free public secular education, so this was the equivalent for students of what the agrarian counterreform of 1992 represented for peasants, a line in the sand. In the end the government made concessions but brought in riot police to remove the occupiers, a violation of university autonomy that shocked and woke up many people.
The idea for the school at El Conejo came from the autonomous municipal authorities, who drew up a detailed plan of the kind of "true education" they wanted, then went to one of the NGO coordinating groups to ask them to find volunteer trainers. The original five had just met each other and had two weeks to put together the first classes. They say they've learned a lot in the four years the project has been running, and they attribute its success to the political clarity and organization of the autonomous authorities, who work closely with them to keep the project true to the objectives of the communities.
The session opens with the trainers outlining the lesson plan for the month with the promoters. The first two and a half days will be devoted to pedagogy and educational philosophy ("true education"). Then there will be a day on "recovery of knowledge," with promoters reporting back on how their respective communities are overcoming obstacles to obtaining the Zapatistas' 13 demands. Then the rest of the month will be spent on the four substantive teaching areas--languages, history, math, and life sciences ("life and environment"). The pedagogy and community knowledge parts sound particularly interesting to me, so I'm glad I'm able to be here for the start of the session.
It rains more, and harder, throughout the day. People here hope it keeps up, since the dry season had started too early and they need another week of rain to get their next crop planted. It reminds me of something I read in a development studies text about the Tswana people of South Africa, who define poverty in terms of people's reactions when the hordes of locusts come. It seems that the rich are distraught, because the locusts wipe out the grasses on their pasture lands so their cattle all die. The poor on the other hand, who have no land or cattle, are happy because they can eat the locusts. People here live close to the edge of subsistence, and a well-timed week of rain can make all the difference in how their year goes.
There is a break in classes in the afternoon, resuming for a couple of hours in the evening. The 40+ teenage education promoters, including six women (one with her 5-year-old son in tow) and six trainers share benches and desks, gathered under a single bare low-watt bulb. Men and women sit together, a rarity in these communities. They work with enthusiasm, sometimes breaking into groups, sometimes working on a problem and coming back together for discussion. The trainers periodically call on one of the promoters to translate complicated ideas into Tzeltal and Ch'ol. They do a brainstorming session to list "educational tools," including everything from pencils and chalk to lesson plans and interactive exercises to community knowledge, then discuss applications. They talk about different phases of organizing the teaching process, then read a story about two community educators and identify the different parts of their work in the story. There is a long discussion about the importance of teachers understanding the community context--whether it is a divided or unified community, whether there is a military base or water source nearby, what plants grow in the area--so that lessons and examples are relevant to people's actual experience and needs. The first day's class ends around 6:30 p.m., just as another rain rolls in. There is an evening "reinforcement" session for those whose literacy and other basic skills need boosting.
Dinner is sugary rice water cooked in a big vat over a wood fire. People wander in and out with their bowls and spoons to serve themselves, eating standing outside or squatting inside the smoky kitchen. The autonomous municipality scrapes up money to feed the promoters, who have a sign-up sheet for cooking shifts. In the evening I start reading Balún Canán, the classic 1950s novel by Chiapas writer Rosario Castellanos about the disintegration of a wealthy landowner family from Comitán as class and ethnic relations are changing during the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40), sort of a Chiapan Gone With the Wind.
Tuesday morning the sun is out and it's probably in the mid-70s. Class starts at 7:00 a.m., with group work focusing on understanding the purpose of various educational tools and exchanging ideas on how to implement them. After 9:00 a.m. breakfast (rice and beans), I move to the library where 7 graduates from the first generation (including 2 women) are preparing to become trainers of future promoters. They discuss concepts such as resistance, autonomy, dependencies created by the government, and "leading by obeying," the Zapatista ideal of leaders as humble representatives who take instructions from their communities. Lunch is pasta with a bit of hot peppers and, thankfully, coffee. I take advantage of the lunch break (12:00-3:00) and sunshine to go down to the river to bathe and wash clothes. In the afternoon session the trainers-in-training rejoin the promoters, each taking charge of a group exercise in examining the reasons behind each of the principles of "true education" that the community assemblies have outlined. The Mexico City trainers help guide each group, and discussion flows back and forth between Spanish, Tzeltal and Ch'ol. After dinner (coffee and crackers) I exchange Tzeltal and English lessons with one of the promoters who is keen to learn some English and wants to understand phrases he has seen, such as "Quaker State motor oil" and "made in China." I learn Tzeltal phrases such as "Binxi awotan," literally "What does your heart say?," i.e. "How are you?" Afterwards I stay up awhile listening to some compas with an old guitar belting out rancheras, then I read a bit more of Balún Canán before turning in.
Wednesday's early morning session concludes the workshop on pedagogy. After mid-morning breakfast of rice and beans, the trainers-in-training lead a session on "recovery of knowledge" gathered in the communities by the promoters over their break. After working in groups, one team presents their ideas about community issues in song, in the form of a corrido (traditional Mexican ballad). After lunch (pasta and beans) the group presentations continue, followed by a simulated meeting with the President of the Republic in which representatives raise issues troubling indigenous communities, then with a government official offering aid. The role-play was followed by an analysis of how easily people are deceived and demobilized by crumbs from the government table. Then there is an exercise in drafting a community denunciation of abuses. Class lets out a bit early so the trainers-in-training can do an evaluation of their efforts. There is a spirited basketball game (a contact sport around here), then dinner of sugary rice water and crackers. I finish reading Balún Canán and stringing up my hammock, as I've been moved to another dorm to make room for some of the municipal authorities who have come in to the county seat for a meeting. People are always on the move between communities, as the business of Zapatista government is conducted largely in face-to-face meetings and assemblies and personally delivered messages. It rains off and on throughout the night, at times quite hard, drumming on the tin roofs.
Thursday morning the rain tapers off. Class moves into the first of the four subject areas, language. The focus is on comprehending not just random vocabulary words, but key concepts in the Zapatista struggle: leading by obeying, resistance, autonomy, independence; collective rights of self-determination, sustainability, and self-governance of indigenous communities. More fluent promoters are called on to translate complex ideas into Tzeltal and Ch'ol to be sure everyone understands. After breakfast is a history lesson, starting with brainstorming about current forms of dependence created by the government in indigenous communities, then applying the concept of dependency to the time of the Spanish invasion, the independence era, and the Mexican Revolution. In the afternoon I attend the class on environment, which covers not only natural resources but also human and social relations. The class is on how to explain to schoolchildren the relation between natural resources and building autonomy. After dinner (sweet coffee) there is another sing-along with guitar by the kitchen fire. In between songs the promoters are trying to explain to the kaxlanes the local marriage customs and expectations. Most kids in the communities marry around age 15. Many of these promoters say they would like to wait until age 25 or 30, but they know they would be made fun of and perhaps be considered past marriageable age. They continue gossiping and singing, and I call it a night. Again it rains most of the night and into the morning.
Friday morning the municipal council tells me I have permission to do the survey. With little time left before my departure the following evening, I consult with the trainers about the best way to conduct it without disrupting the flow of classes, and they say they'll discuss it at breakfast. Meanwhile, the morning math class is on resistance and community participation. Math? Yes, they learn about sets and sub-sets, such as individual communities within the larger body of indigenous peoples. There is a group exercise, holding hands in protective rings around the person representing autonomy, with people representing government programs trying to charge through the circles of organization and solidarity to attack autonomy.
At breakfast the trainers decide the best time for the survey is Saturday afternoon after the last session. I let the authorities know, so they can pass the word through the education coordinators to the promoters. For the midday session I attend history class, where the promoters work on designing and discussing a timeline of the 500 years of domination and indigenous resistance. The promoters have made drawings of a tree which are now used to represent history--the roots as the ancient Maya, the trunk as history of resistance, the branches as parents and grandparents, and the leaves and fruit represent the current generation. The trainers-in-training (formadores) take over the explanation and discussion, then the drawings and timelines are taped together in a triptych and added to the promoters' materials to use in their community schools. Quite different from a government textbook about Columbus discovering America. Then the formadores distribute a collection of short narratives (in Spanish) of indigenous resistance, which the promoters discuss in groups (in Tzeltal and Ch'ol) and then come back together to report. The rains finally stop at lunchtime and everyone runs to the river to bathe, even though it's muddy and turbulent.
Language class in the afternoon begins with an exercise in reading comprehension, identifying central ideas in a text on autonomy and independence. The class discusses the difference between normative systems (laws and prescribed punishments) and customary or consuetudinary law (community customs, which the government is supposed to recognize as the basis for self-rule in communities). The government only wants to give token acknowledgment of indigenous customs as quaint museum pieces and tourist attractions, but not recognize community rights to make rules that are binding on their members. Discussion then turns to the terminology and concepts associated with "low-intensity warfare" (LIW), the counterinsurgency strategy being applied against the Zapatistas. The class uses "people's newspapers" prepared from clippings and commentary by the previous session of promoters, to define LIW and explain its logic. Then they give examples including government projects that aim to divide communities (disinformation, conditioned distribution of goodies), undermine self-organization, denigrate indigenous identity (e.g. through the official schools), intimidate (e.g. military bases and roadblocks throughout the Zapatista support region), reinforce anti-Zapatista groups (civic and paramilitary), selectively assassinate Zapatista local leaders, manipulate the legal system to unjustly jail Zapatistas, destroy the material base of subsistence communities (including introducing genetically modified/sterile seeds, spraying defoliants, promoting monocropping such as African palm and eucalyptus), using the pretense of "environmentalism" to evict subsistence communities and sell the natural resources to commercial interests, etc. The promoters have no trouble pouring out a list of destructive government policies--which may be a clue as to why so many remain in the resistance, even when alternative Zapatista projects are still incipient or short of resources.
Friday evening the municipal authorities tell me they've reconsidered the matter of the survey, and now they want me to run the questionnaire by the Junta first. I'm not sure I'll have time in the next few weeks to get back and forth to the Caracol and back here before the end of the session, we'll have to see.
Saturday morning, the last day of my visit, it's raining again. There is a 7:00 a.m. formation on the basketball court to salute the Mexican and Zapatista flags and sing the anthems (after shy volunteers are found to lead in song). Math class starts with solving a problem: There are 2 hectares left over from the collective cornfield, yielding 1500 kilos of corn, of which 606 are fed to the chickens and the remainder sold at 3 pesos a kilo. How much is earned, and how would you explain the different mathematical operations to your students? Then language class reviews the terminology of low-intensity warfare. There is another semantic clarification of the difference between autonomy (internal self-governance of peoples) and independence (i.e. external, from other countries), lest an inexact phrase in a declaration be distorted to accuse the Zapatistas of wanting secession from Mexico. The language classes emphasize writing skills in drawing up community declarations and denunciations of abuses.
After breakfast, the life sciences/environment class discusses a series of narratives about government-promoted "ecotourism" and other projects established in indigenous territory without community consultation. The projects generally have adverse environmental impact, provide little benefit to the community at large, and are often a cover for biopiracy (stealing and patenting the genetic variations found in this biodiverse region) or other exploitative schemes. The afternoon class was given entirely by the formadores, graduates of the training programm, in their first "solo flight." It was mostly in Tzeltal and Ch'ol so I didn't get much of the content, but they were fluid and confident and the students were engaged, and the trainers were proud.
In the evening I hang out talking with visiting representatives from a community a few hours away, who have come to invite folks in El Conejo to a party on November 20th, Mexican Revolution day. They offer me some of their suxiwah, tortillas with beans mixed into the corn mass, and explain to me how they've tried to mitigate some of the divisions in their communities by inviting the more moderate non-Zapatistas to participate in some of their programs and activities. Then someone from the municipal council comes over to tell me there is a vehicle leaving for Trébol if I want to catch a ride which will save me a two-hour walk. I pack up my things and say a quick round of goodbyes, and set off on the 12-hour journey in three stages that will get me back to San Cristóbal around 9:00 the next morning.
It has definitely been an interesting week at the autonomous teacher training school. I'm impressed by the community conception and control of the project; the dedication and sacrifice of the young education promoters; and the coordination between autonomous municipal authorities, solidarity groups helping in the training, and the Greek collective that financed the construction of the schoolhouse and dorms. The school serves a variety of functions including socialization, modeling of egalitarianism and respect for diversity, and passing along values to the new generation. It is also important for the formation of leadership cadre, developing their self-confidence and skills in public speaking and participation. It provides an alternative to the government's demobilizing and demeaning system of education in indigenous communities. In the process of learning how to teach, the promoters are also engaged in a participatory process of creating new curriculum and didactic material, in interaction with their communities.
After this long description of the autonomous education project, this is a good time to remind you, dear reader, of how you can help:
Make checks out to ICPJ (write "Chiapas Education" in the memo line) and send to:
Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice
730 Tappan St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
phone: 734-663-1870
fax:734-663-9458
email: info@icpj.net
www.icpj.net
ICPJ is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible and will be used 100% for school supplies, purchased in Chiapas and brought directly to the autonomous jungle region. I'll be in the U.S. (Dallas) from December 8-16 and will bring down funds collected by that point to buy the school supplies in Chiapas.
# posted by Richard Stahler-Sholk @ 8:21 PM 
