Sustainable Systems, pt. 3

"The way we eat determines, to a large extent, the way the world is used." -Wendell Berry-

Food in the States is cheap. That's partly due to those subsidies I talked about, but it's also because an estimated 80% of the agricultural workers are undocumented. They're underpaid and overworked at difficult and dangerous jobs. They're doing jobs that most of us don't want to do. If you balk at that claim, maybe you haven't heard about the United Farm Workers campaign to put good, hard-working Americans in those jobs instead of undocumented migrants. They have an easy sign-up form for you to become a farm worker on their website, TakeOurJobs.org, but very few people have taken the challenge.
I'm not saying that undocumented entry to the States is excusable. I am saying that if we want to change the systems that push people to cross the border without papers, we need to look deeper at our own national economic policies. We need to look at the people who do make the decision to cross, and see them as human beings whose lives extend beyond the five minutes it took them to climb the border fence or the two weeks they wandered in the desert. We need to look closer at our household purchases, too. Sounds overwhelming, doesn't it? I promise, it's not so bad. The first two of these issues warrant further conversation, but here are a few suggestions for what you can do at home:

• Cook fresh food instead of packaged. Processed food has a lot of preservatives, extra salt, and fillers that just aren't healthy. Prepare your own meals and make sure you like everything you're eating.
• Think of buying well, not cheap. One of the simplest ways we can vote on a daily basis is by changing our buying habits. We might not be able to vote Dole out of business, but we can certainly tell them that we'd rather have cleaner, safer food, and better working conditions for the people who grow it. Buying locally and organically is an investment in your health and global economic justice.
• Do you know where your food comes from? One of the non-migration effects of big-business agriculture is the breakdown of personal connections with our food. To me, it makes me wonder what I'm really eating. Local Harvest has a great tool for finding farmers markets and CSAs near you.
• Organic farms don't use chemicals. Even when you wash your produce, some of the chemicals used in food production are actually inside the cells of the food. Some of those chemicals are perfectly safe, some of them not, and some of them... well, we just don't know yet. I don't know about you, but I'd rather spend 20cents more on green beans that are just plain ole green beans. Even if you don't have access to a farmer's market, fresh, canned, and frozen produce are increasingly available at your everyday grocery store.
• Grow your own food! Not all of us have the space for a full garden, or the energy to manage one, but tomatoes can be grown on your front porch without much fuss. Herbs on your window sill. Lettuces need a little more space, but they're also really easy. 
• Sign the AgJobs Pledge, indicating your support of a bipartisan piece of legislation to improve working conditions for farm workers.

Additional reading, in case you're interested:
Food Politics Blog
Civil Eats
ObamaFoodORama

Thanks to Susana at BorderLinks for these statistics and action steps, and for the work she does with the Sustainable Foods project there.

Sustainable Systems, pt. 2

Meanwhile, in Mexico, a significant portion of the population is still growing corn. Did you know that Mexico has the world's largest genetic diversity of corn? Yep--not all corn is white and yellow, and a good deal of it is native to Mexico. Farms here continue to be small, where people do their best to keep their families fed, and hope to sell or trade the little extra they can produce to cover the rest. In fact, in some parts of Mexico, tortilla--not even all corn products, but just tortillas--continue to make up 70% of people's daily nutritional intake in 2011.

Sustainable Systems, pt. 1

I want to talk a little bit about corn. Corn, as an example, illustrates pretty perfectly the economic relationship between the United States of America and Mexico. It's kind of a long story, though, so I'm going to breaking this up over the next few days. Here we go.

Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. It's easily surpassed Halloween as my favorite holiday in recent years. My friend Anneli described the feeling of the holiday as being pure. Christmas gets all mixed up in worry about shopping and wrapping presents and making things equal, but Thanksgiving is only about food and family and being present at the table. So, last week was a little hard for me.
I knew we would have our dinner here in Cuernavaca on Saturday (which quickly became known, thanks to yours truly and my overabundance of enthusiasm, as THANKSFRIGGINGIVIN), but I still woke up sad on Thanksgiving Day. I couldn't help but think about who was up already, pre-heating the oven for the turkey. Who would be making the sweet potatoes? What would be forgotten until the last-minute scramble? The half hour I allotted to making a few phone calls home didn't help as much as I thought they would, since the holidays in both parts of my families were pretty drastically different from tradition this year. It was hard to think the holiday might go on without me. It was harder to realize that my family's holidays are changing, and that the Thanksgivings of my childhood might be gone for good.
All of us YAGM-Mexico volunteers are, I think, getting over our honeymoon with Mexico. I recently described the feeling to a friend as "Things are getting real." My enthusiastic "These fresh tortillas are delicious!" has changed to an aggravated "Why can't I just have some dense whole-wheat bread for once?!" We've had three months to get used to the major cultural differences, and now we're working on more nuanced expectations. It's a difficult time, even without the holidays. But I am trying to remember to be thankful for this experience, even through my sadness at being so far away from home. I am trying to remember that the most influential experiences I've had in my life were also difficult at times. But mostly, I am trying to remember the prayer we sing every day before eating dinner at Casa Tatic:
 Demos Gracias al Señor,                                   We give thanks to the Lord,
Demos Gracias.                                                   We give thanks.
Demos Gracias al Señor.                                   We give thanks to the Lord.
En la mañana, que se levanta                           In the morning, the rooster sings
El gallo canta,                                                      just because he's awake,
y yo canto al Señor.                                            and I also sing to the Lord.

Our THANKSFRIGGINGIVIN dinner, by the way, was amazing.

Respect

I mentioned in my newsletter that I asked a student "That's not respectful, is it?" This has become my personal teaching mantra. Respect is an idea that seems to be understood at a much earlier age here than in the US, and yet something that is so rarely enacted. Talking about respect has proven my single greatest tool in behavior management both in and outside the classroom.
A five-year-old snatches a crayon that doesn't belong to him away from another child. "That's not respectful, is it?" "No, maestra." 
An eight-year-old is talking loudly in class instead of paying attention. "That's not respectful, is it?" "No, maestra." 
A pre-teen throws a ball at a toddler to watch them topple. "That's not respectful, is it?" "No, maestra."


There is a four-year-old in the la estación kinder who introduces himself as "Luisito." His enthusiasm for chatting up his classmates is sometimes a source of frustration for us, since his work rarely gets completed, and he's behind his classmates in terms of motor skills, color and letter recognition. But he has one of the best memories I've ever seen; it reminds me of Caleb's movie-quoting. If you say something directly to Luisito, he will remember it. The other day when we were eating our lunches outside, a teenager (who didn't seem to have a connection to any of the kids in the kinder) threw an empty potato chip bag in the middle of the road when he was done eating it. This isn't uncommon in Mexico, and especially not in la estación, but nevertheless, Luisito tore off after him, screaming "¡Éso no es respeto, hombre!" The teen was so surprised by this public outcry that he picked up his trash and put it in a nearby bin. Luisito has a masterful strut for a four-year-old.

Pan de Muertos

This weekend, I got the chance to go make pan de muertos with Anneli and her host family. It was so much fun, both because we got to play with bread dough, and because Anneli's host family reminds me so much of my extended family in North Carolina. It felt surprisingly like home.

Delphilia, trying to show me the right way to shape my hand
so as to make the balls of dough smooth and even.

Anneli wrote a really beautiful post that I hope you'll read about the process and experience. I especially love the final paragraph:

We take home three large cardboard boxes full of bread. Golden brown and colorful, some of it will adorn our Día de los Muertos altar and be an offering to the dead. The rest of it we will share with neighbors and the rest of the extended family, and all will enjoy eating it for the next several weeks. For today, this tradition in honor of the dead has invited us to treasure life and remember those who have died. It has brought together three generations of the living and people and traditions from the north of the United States to the south of Mexico. As far as I can tell, that's what the Day of the Dead is about. 

Día de los Muertos

Today, 2 November, was Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Sam was here visiting after our monthly community gathering (which I was surprised to learn I'm alone in calling "community day," a throwback, I'm sure, to my BSC days), and we visited Ocutupec, a pueblo just north of Cuernavaca that is known for its celebrations on this holiday. Any household that has experienced a death within the last year opens its doors to visitors, who pass by an ofrenda to the deceased, heavy with flowers, littered with candles, and stacked with piles of sweets, breads, favorite foods, soda, and alcohol. Visitors bring a gift of candles or marigolds, the traditional flower of Día de los Muertos, to offer the family. In return, the family offers a snack, most commonly pan de muertos and ponche, a seasonal punch that tastes not unlike cider.
Visiting these ofrendas was such an exciting cultural experience, but also one that made me feel more like a tourist than I usually do. It was sometimes hard to get a feel for what was expected of visitors. Is it okay to take pictures? Should I clap when the mariachi band finishes a song? Is this a party, or a wake? I quickly found that the expectations, and the experience, varied from house to house. Some seemed happy to have so many visitors, honored to be able to offer hospitality, and glad to be celebrating life. Some were obviously still mourning their loss in such a personal way that I felt like an intruder into a very private space. I think it will be a long time before I have fully processed the evening.

Licha, my "mexomom," went to the cemetery yesterday to drop off some flowers, and again this morning, but she invited me to return with her after lunch today. She said the whole family would be there, hanging out for most of the afternoon and evening. I was a little unsure as to whether I would be intruding on an important family event, but I was curious to see a Mexican cemetery, so I agreed.
When we got there, I was surprised that they handed me two small chairs to carry in so we had a place to sit. There were people on the street selling more marigolds and candles. The graves were spaced close together, some at odd angles so as to fit another casket in between existing ones. It was impossible to walk between the graves, but it didn't seem to bother anyone at all to walk right on top of them, as long as they didn't disturb any of the decorations in the process.
Along the way, Licha pointed out her brother, mother, in-laws, cousins, family of her brother-in-law, and a son who died in infancy. She said we were going to sit near her husband's family, because there was more space. All of the graves of "our" family had already been decorated, but I noticed families all around us arranging silk flowers, weeding the top of the graves, and watering the potted marigolds. We greeted aunts and cousins and then sat for a while in contented silence; I remembered visiting my Mawmaw and Pawpaw's graves just before leaving for language school. I felt it should be a somber occasion for reflection and remembering, but the air felt so light, so full of life. Everywhere people were chatting or laughing or singing songs or saying prayers, but no one was crying. No one was kneeling by a grave whispering into the dirt. We were there, in the presence of those who have passed, but our attentions were turned to the living.

Yo soy maestra.

As my role of maestra (teacher) is further solidified here, more and more people have started talking to me about the educational system in Mexico. Everyone knows that their children need to go to school, that it's the most important thing they can do to help their kids have a better life. But they also know that their kids hate school, and they're not really learning anything.
I want to start off with a disclaimer and say that I'm working with some of the most under-privileged people of Cuernavaca. I don't know a thing about the schools in other places, or what it's like for wealthier children to attend school. I also know that there have to be good teachers somewhere, because their are highly educated people, but I spend most of my time tutoring kids, not observing teaching methods. That said, these are some of my reflections on what I've seen.
From what I've seen, the developmental milestones which were so helpful to me in my work in Las Cruces, that describe what most children are able to do and understand at different ages, aren't in place as guidelines here. Three-year-olds in the US  are encouraged to scribble on blank paper, hopefully in semi-vertical lines. Three-year-olds in Mexico are expected to color neatly within the lines. Most six-year-olds in the US are still learning to write their names. Four-year-olds in Mexico are asked to write theirs without help.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing to me, though, is that pre-school isn't mandatory in Mexico, but the level of knowledge first graders are expected to posses before entering is not only beyond their developmental reach in my opinion, but also impossible to obtain unless they attended pre-school for at least two years. In the US, I think it's hard to deny that children who attend pre-school are ahead of the game. But I also think we try hard not to teach anything essential until the point at which ALL children are attending--early childhood curriculum, while encouraging skills that will enable future learning of reading, science, and math, really tend to lean on motor skills and social development.
I'm thinking, especially, of reading; if, in Mexico, your child doesn't learn to read when they're four, in pre-school, very little is done within the standard school system to make sure they learn how. If your child can't read, your child can't do their homework in any subject, and this line is drawn from the word go. And if your child can't do their work, gets consistently bad grades, and you have little to no time or energy to help them (if you can even read), how will your child feel about school? They're not likely to like it. They're not likely to want to go. They're likely to feel frustration and embarrassment and shame.
I am fully aware that I went to public school in a state with notoriously bad public schools. But I am so grateful for the talented and patient teachers I had (although I also had my share of bad teachers, I think), and that I never had to doubt whether I would have the opportunity to go to school. I ask you to remember that, although I write about Mexico, there are also people in the US who don't have the same opportunities for education that you and I often take for granted. Please, please, support the DREAM Act, which would give undocumented minors who have been in the US for an extended amount of time a chance to go to college. It's not difficult to write a quick letter or email to your representatives, and it makes a huge difference in the outcome of legislation. I definitely don't think that the DREAM Act is perfect, but it's a step in what I consider to be the right direction; it's a step toward realizing the ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

Update on La Estación

Firstly, I wanted to thank all of you for the many messages of support and concern I got since I last wrote. It means more than words can say to know that you are all thinking of me and my community of service.
I wanted to share that the young woman I wrote about in my last post has been found, dead, in a different part of town. While it's horrible that she was taken from this community, the general feeling is of relief that at least now her body can be at peace, and we can rest in the knowledge of knowing where she is. There have been additional deaths, but Andrea, Fresvinda, and I are agreed that while we're not ready to change my work schedule back, there's still no reason to think I need to be removed from the place entirely.
I had a good conversation with Andrea yesterday in which I was finally able to voice my confusion, indeed my frustration, about my work placement (stick with me here--this is good news). I had hoped I wouldn't have to teach English this year. I had hoped I would be able to work more hands-on in women's issues. I had hoped.... for so much. It's impossible not to romanticize something that doesn't exist yet. I think it's only natural that upon arrival for a year of who-knows-what, we start to think "What am I DOING here?!"

La Estación - a prayer request

I wrote a lot in my last newsletter about the neighborhood where I spend most of my working hours, la estación. I feel it's important to share a news update, but I first want to stress that I am fine, that there's no reason to think I'm in any more danger now than I was when I first agreed to come to Mexico, and that there are lots of people spending a lot of time thinking about my safety.

image via google search, which took me here

The thrust is this: please be praying, in whatever way you can, for the people of this community. For their safety, for their peace, for their restored ability to trust one another, for the opportunity and the challenge we now face: to join one another in the small steps that can better our world.