I Count in Mexico

I was disappointed to miss the 2010 US Census. I wanted to be counted. Thankfully Mexico is willing to count me in their census. This afternoon when I opened the MCC office door, I feared it was one more person trying to sell me something. The census worker quickly showed me his official badge and asked if I lived here. Here was my chance. I decided that I had spent enough nights at the MCC office to qualify with a “yes” answer. The questionnaire was brief, asking for information related education, religion and the living quarters. In less than five minutes, our interview was over. I was counted.

Hot and Humid

Tapachula, Mexico’s southernmost city, was the next border town that I visited. After four or five days of the cold and rain of San Cristobal, the heat and humidity of Tapachula left me prostrate in bed to end my week long trip in Chiapas. I did, however, find enough energy to succeed in my reconnaissance mission.

In August, a family will be joining the MCC Mexico team and will be the first MCC workers to live in Tapachula. With the help of Luis Flores, a Guatemalan who works for the International Organization for Migration, I toured the city for all of the necessities of setting up a life such as housing, food markets, transportation and banking.

After one short day, I decided that I would not choose to live in Tapachula, but given the work of Arturo and Adrienne, the new MCC workers, it is important for MCC to have a presence on the southern border. Adrienne will be the regional policy analyst for Latin America, and the proximity to Central America will ease her extensive travel schedule. Arturo will be exploring and analyzing the issue of immigration as MCC Latin America works to have an integrated approach to the issue recognizing the realities on both sides of the border.

It is impossible to escape the reality of the border. Early this morning at Tapachula’s two gate airport, the police and security officials suffocated the area. Before I was allowed to check in, an official in army green meticulously reviewed my documents. Next, they screened all of my baggage. Only then was I able to proceed to the check in counter. Boarding pass in hand, I had to show my passport and all my documents to the immigration officials even though I had never left the country. Finally, I proceeded through one last security screening to reach the waiting area.

It’s good to be back home in Mexico City.

A Face of Hope

As a teenager, Malena remembers playing at the river and seeing the Honduran and Nicaraguan mothers clutching the hands of their children, a look of sheer terror on their faces. They did not know how to swim, but crossing the river was the only option to continue their journey. Growing up in Chamic, a border town with Guatemala, Malena lives the reality of the immigration struggle. Her three month old daughter will be the next generation.

Malena operates a quesadilla restaurant a few hundred feet from the Mexico / Guatemala border crossing of Chamic. She counsels the young women who eat at the restaurant who are caught in a vicious cycle of prostitution and addiction. These women work at local bars, lured by the false hope of higher wages and passage to the US. It begins with one drink, but it ends in a cycle of addiction and prostitution to pay the debt of their coyote or the bar owner.

After years of working at the restaurant, she can easily tell who the scared migrants are and where they are from. She engages them in conversation, very slowly shedding the layers of distrust in which they wrap themselves. She listens to their story. She offers advice. She helps.

The Guatemalans cross easily with a day pass. Their features are so similar to the Chapanecos (those from Chiapas) that they easily blend in and have fewer problems at the checkpoints further north in Chiapas, the most difficult area in Mexico to pass through for migrants. For the Hondurans, it is their features that are the death of them, but there is nothing they can do to change them. She has given some migrant men different T-shirts so that they look more like the men from surrounding villages. She has lent several a bicycle so that it looks like they are commuting to work. She counsels women to abandon the tennis shoes and dress up. She gives them makeup so that they look like they are out paseando.

I asked her how she began and why she does this type of work. “It’s the reality that I live. I’m surrounded by it and can’t avoid it.” Immigration is a fact of life in Chamic. Everyone knows who the polleros (people who migrants pay up to $5000 USD to help them cross) are as well as the narcotraficantes (drug traffickers). They bribe the border officials with sums of up to $20,000USD. But, nobody says anything.

In recent years, there is increased violence due to the rise of the Zetas, groups of organized crime. They are the unknown and the most dangerous. It is said that the originator of this group, a former army official trained at The School of the Americas, was named Zeta. His followers were there after named Zeta 1, Zeta 2… and so on; the birth of the Zetas.

Everyday Melena goes to work and is a face of hope to these many faces of fear. By listening, she exults the humanity of the migrants who all to often will be abused and caught in violence for not having the face of a Mexican.

I am Christian not Catholic

It rains in San Cristobal, but it is not the rainy season rain like other places in Mexico. It is a cold, all day rain. Yesterday and today’s rains forced me to take refuge in the numerous coffee shops that litter San Cristobal’s quaint streets, each advertising the renowned coffee of Chiapas. I normally would not choose a large, but completely empty café; however, the Biomaya Café sells exclusively biomaya coffee.

Four years ago when I lived in Motozintla, Chiapas, for the summer, I worked with ASIAC, a cooperative of coffee growers, who was trying to get their coffee, branded biomaya, to a larger market. It was exciting to see that as of six months ago, this coffee cooperative, through Potpo, another local nonprofit organization, had a coffee shop in San Cristobal exclusively dedicated to selling biomaya coffee.

Gilberto, the lone server this afternoon, brought me my café con leche (coffee with milk), and stayed for conversation despite my open novel. It could have been my look of desperation for warmth or that I was the only person in the coffee shop or that Gilberto was bored and saw me as a captive audience. He showed off his English when he found out I was from the US, and told me that he would never forget the people he met during his nine years living in Arizona. He proudly presented the business card, which he keeps in his wallet, of the professional painters that he worked for in Phoenix.

Like many who I meet, he found it difficult to understand what a single woman was doing in Mexico, alone. I explained as best and as briefly as I could about the work of Mennonite Central Committee, which prompted the question of religion. I tried to place Mennonites in a framework that he might understand; “I’m an evangelico,” (evangelical or Protestant). Since it was Sunday and we could see the main cathedral through the drizzle, I asked him if he was Catholic. “No, I am Christian not Catholic.”

It is not the first time that I have heard this sentiment in Mexico, but I am always frustrated by how the catolicos (Catholics) and evangelicos (Protestants) have found a way to create more division than unity. In a country steeped in religious conflict that includes the forced conversion of many indigenous by Cortes and the Spanish in the 1500s to the 1917 Constitution and its anti-clerical laws and the counter revolution, the Cristero War, in the 1920s, the conflict continues in Chiapas today.

Gilberto told me that unlike the Catholics, he reads the Bible and believes in God. He was not at all convinced that the Catholic religion is also based on the Bible and the belief in God. He shared a common conversion story. Life before being Christian included drinking, being unfaithful to his wife and ignoring the responsibilities of family, and now he spends time with family and provides financially for their needs, through God’s blessing. I appreciated his fervor and faith, yet I struggled to convey to Gilberto the potential for shared passion with Catholics, fellow Christians on this journey of life.

With this recent conversation in mind, I discussed with Ernesto Martin, director of INESIN, an organization that works for interreligious dialogue, this constant conflict and tension between the evangelicos and catolicos, especially in Chiapas. Keeping in mind that he is a Nazarene pastor, he said that for many years Catholics emphasized the rites and rituals. People associated the Catholics with the rituals and the Pope, rather than God and the Bible. The Evangelical movement began preaching from the Bible and emphasizing the personal relationship with God. Some suggest that the Evangelical upsurge pushed the Catholics to begin preaching from the Bible.

Similar to Northern Ireland, another conflict clothed in religious tension, the situation in Chiapas has become political, based in a struggle for power. Political candidates support education or medical programs sponsored by evangelicals with the hope of winning votes. In the last ten years el Ejercito de Dios (God’s Army), basically a paramilitary group, has taken up arms to further the evangelical agenda and its political power. While the state is still predominantly Catholic, Evangelicals hold key political positions, though with elections on July 4, time will tell which Christian group will occupy the elected positions.

Mundial Mania

Marooned in Mexico’s Mecca for European backpackers for the first game of the Mundial (World Cup), there was no shortage of cafes and bars in San Cristobal, Chiapas ready to host the 9:00am crowd to watch Mexico kick off the 2010 World Cup against host country South Africa. Breakfast conversation was impossible with the television volume on high and all attention of the standing room only café focused on the game. The energy and excitement of the crowd was intense. With every shot on goal and diving save, a roar rippled through the small café.

It is hard to imagine that in a country consumed by soccer that I would have a meeting at 10am on the initial morning of the sport’s world showcase, with Mexico in the opening game. Inconceivable though it may be, there are Mexicans that are not futból (soccer) fanatics, and one of them is Ernesto Martin, director of INESIN, one of MCC’s partner organizations that works to create space for interreligious dialogues.

With the score at zeros and one more half to play, I made my way to my meeting, the first of two. I realized that Ernesto, the chatty and cheerful director of INESIN, was doing a favor to Nataneal, the other organization’s administrator, by discussing with me all of the needed MCC business first. Nataneal did not make it to work today until noon, as probably much of Mexico’s work force, after Mexico’s 1-1 tie with South Africa.

Classrooms of Hope

In her early 50s, Guillermina Tinoco has been with MCC Mexico for almost fifteen years. Having the longest tenure in the organization, she is a living history of MCC Mexico’s work. She has interacted with her fair share of interesting and unique MCC workers and country representatives, but her generous spirit fails to ever convey a word of judgment or criticism, only kindness and compassion. She remembers working for MCC when the offices were in Cuernavaca in the 1990s. When she began as accountant, she came into the office about everyday to complete the extensive accounting requirements for Akron and for the state. While she continues to do the same work, I see her in the office only three days of each month, due to the changes in technology, speed of current communication and new operating systems.

When she is not in the MCC office, she volunteers in Naucalpan, an at risk neighborhood in the northeast of Mexico City, at least two hours from the MCC offices. She teaches literacy to adults at a Baptist church through the governmental program INEA (Instituto Nacional de Educación de Adultos, National Institute for Adult Education). In the fall, Guillermina, along with two other women, began Aulas de Esperanza (Classrooms of Hope) for children with different abilities. MCC is financially supporting Aulas de Esperanza through a monthly grant from MCC’s Global Family education sponsorship.

Aulas de Esperanza began after a discussion with Maria, one of the women who attended literacy classes with Guillermina. Unique to many in her situation, Maria is a devoted advocate for her son who is mostly deaf. She recounted to Guillermina the continual struggle that she has encountered to obtain a decent education for her son who is more than falling through the cracks of the public education system.

In cooperation with the local school, Aulas de Esperanza welcomes six to seven students in the small but adequate classroom twice a week in the morning. There is a brief group instruction time, and then individual work stations. The women volunteers receive daily petitions to participate in the program; however, due to limited resources, space and volunteers, Aulas de Esperanza can only attend to the fifteen students that currently attend.

Today as I shared lunch with Guillermina, I sat in complete disbelief as she shared with me the experiences of some of the students who attend Aulas de Esperanza. With my experience in the US public education system, my teacher training emphasized the importance of teaching to all types of learners and to accommodate students with special needs. Differentiated instruction was the phase du jour the last time I was in the classroom. I understood the mandate as a teacher to provide an equal education to all the students who walked through the door, and I was sure to receive a phone call or an email from the parents if I did not.

Maria’s son Luis understands school as a place where he is relegated to the back corner of the classroom. With no hearing in his left ear, and only partial in his right, Luis obviously needs special accommodations in order to learn. At best he is ignored. At worst, he is taunted by the other students, who have as their role model the teacher who is also insulting Luis, adding how stupid he is. He is not stupid, he simply can not hear like the other students. He is in third grade and can not read. He is passed along to the next grade because the teachers seemingly do not want to deal with him.

The 13-year-old Alejandro, one of the oldest children at Aulas de Esperanza, was expelled from school. He and his younger brother live on the streets doing odd jobs and getting food where they can as their mother has left to be with another man who does not want them. Carmen, labeled as dumb by those at school, has had excrement smeared on her by other students. And the stories continue. Since Aulas de Esperanza opened its doors in the fall, more students and concerned parents have emerged, each with their unique story.

Each of the students at Aulas de Esperanza has learning disabilities that hinder their learning in the standard school environment. I know from experience, that it is time consuming to plan and to teach to the diversity in the classroom, yet the treatment of these children is unacceptable. I do not doubt that there are dedicated teachers and administrators in the Mexican public education system. Unfortunately for the handful of students at Aulas de Esperanza, their few hours a week outside of the regular school system is their chance to learn.

What is the hope for these students? Guillermina hopes that they can attend a technical school or learn a trade so that they can eventually provide for themselves in dignity, and not resort to life on the streets that means violence, drugs and poverty. It is my hope that Aulas de Esperanza endures and grows so that more children have the encouragement and opportunity to learn.

Haz Sandwich

As I walked into the Plaza Hidalgo, one of the main plazas in the Coyoacán neighborhood this afternoon, I discovered several guys in the green Mexican soccer jerseys kicking around a soccer ball. There was a camera or two around, so my first thought was that they were going to film a commercial for the Mundial (World Cup) that is quickly approaching.

With Mexico playing in the opening game against host country South Africa on June 11, World Cup fever is alive in Mexico. A few weeks ago as I was wondering through the historic district, I came across the filming of a World Cup commercial with lots of people dressed as fans from Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and so on.

Today I decided to sit only a few feet from the action. As a spectator, there did not appear to be any direction to the action, and the guys continued to mess around with the soccer ball, showing off their ball handling skills. All of sudden a heavy beat boomed from the gazebo, and a young man and woman began a choreographed dance not five feet from where I was sitting. They were clearly invested in these dance moves. Several more apparent bystanders join them, and within 30 seconds the plaza was filled with dancers, swinging their arms and swaying their hips to the beat. It quickly dawned on me that I was in the center of a flash mob.

The photographer in red definitely has several pictures of me. He is standing where I was sitting before this all began.

I moved to a bench further back. A girl quickly jumped on my previous seat and continued the dance without missing a beat. A photographer that I had seen earlier was moving around the crowd taking pictures. He snapped several of me laughing at this experience. I laughed even more when an older woman who was walking through plaza decided to get in on the dancing action. She blended in pretty well until the end.

The last move of the dancers was to take off their shirt and swing it around their heads while doing some rebel yells of excitement. Before you get scandalized, all involved had a shirt that said “Haz Sandwich” underneath their top shirts. And as quickly as they appeared, they all scattered their separate ways.

“Haz Sandwich.” It did not click for me until on my walk from Coyoacán to San Angel, a neighboring area, I saw an advertisement at a bus stop for a popular bread brand, Bimbo.