|
Downtown Cuernavaca is filled with families who sell anything
from their own handicrafts to chewing gum on the streets. Most of
them are poor, indigenous people who come from the mountains of
the neighboring state, Guerrero. They live under bridges, in people's
patios, in cheap rented rooms, under stalls in the market or on
the street. Most speak Nahuatl as their first language , have no
access to bathrooms, exist on scraps of food, and are denied both
medical and educational services. For them, as with most Mexicans,
there is no social safety net. When they fail to sell, they do not
eat. It's as simple as that!
Since 9/11 the street-sellers plight has become
even more intolerable. People afraid to fly to Mexico, the worsening
economy both in the U.S. and Mexico and the efforts of the state
government to remove all street-sellers from the center of town
have all conspired to make their lives even more miserable than
before.
To respond to their needs, VAMOS! with the street
sellers founded CASA TATIC, an indigenous cultural center and school
in the middle of downtown Cuernavaca, a city of 1.5 million. Here
over 250 indigenous people, some children as young as a few weeks,
some men and women over eighty gather each day to study, play, sing,
dance, brush their teeth, take their vitamins and, most important,
eat.
Here VAMOS! has Montessori education, a computer
lab and the most modern reading programs. Here, too, are programs
for women seamstresses, for indigenous street artists and art classes
and music classes for talented children. Each two weeks a physician
holds a free clinic . CASA TATIC has three bathrooms, a big attraction
to the street sellers and their children who must pay two pesos
every time they use the public bathrooms.
71% of the people in and around Cuernavaca make
less than US$4.00 a day, not an hour, but a day. Prices for basics
are close to what they are in the U.S. Imagine yourself trying to
raise a family--food, medicine, rent, clothing--on less than US$4.00
a day!
To help struggling families, VAMOS! has worked
with ambitious people to form their own cooperative businesses.
CASA ROMERO is such a cooperative. Here men and
women from the mountains of the neighboring State of Guerrero gather
to produce striking indigenous folk art. For three years a talented
U.S. artist helped them refine their skills, design new products
and market them in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. In 2002 their work
was featured on the cover of one of the larger third-world handicraft
catalogues in the U.S.
THE CASA TATIC SEAMSTRESSES are another such
group. With the help of a U.S. seamstress, they have developed exciting
embroidered blouses, skirts, T-shirts, liturgical stoles and wall
hangings. They are sold in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.
In a poor colonia near Cuernavaca, the Tenth of April, VAMOS! has
sponsored a natural medicine clinic, a small store where basics
are sold to the poor at a reduced price, a seamstress' co-op in
addition to its education and feeding project for children and their
mothers.
Other cooperatives include a concrete block factory, a jewelers'
cooperative, a poor people's market, a tradesmen's cooperative and
more.
For ten years VAMOS! has recruited and trained poor people to take
charge of each of its projects. There are now over 60 poor people,
most with little formal education but with great native intelligence,
working in our projects. In August, 1998 VAMOS! formed a Mexican
non-profit corporation with some of these leaders as the incorporators.
Alicia is a widow and the mother of eight children. Her husband,
a taxi driver, was killed in an accident while her youngest was
a babe in arms. For a dozen years, she worked as a maid in the homes
of the rich until VAMOS! asked her to come to work in CASA TATIC.
She began as a reading tutor and cook for the first 12 street seller
children who attended the program. Today she directs the seamstress'
co-op where women are making clothes not only for sale but for their
own families as well. She is also the treasurer of our Mexican corporation.
Heriberto and Sylvina were once street sellers
until 1990 when we asked them to work in our traditional medicine
clinics and to teach younger children to read. Today she is in charge
of five of our projects and he is the sub-director of the whole
VAMOS! project in Mexico.
Juan and Carmen were leaders of a very fragile land occupation
on the edge of greater Cuernavaca when we first met them in 1992.
They worked with VAMOS! on various projects in their neighborhood
before joining the VAMOS! staff. They now direct two large projects
and assist in the supervision of others.
VAMOS! treats all who work with us as equals. We believe that each
person is endowed with different talents but that each talent is
a gift of the Creator. Thus, as long as a person uses his or her
talents, he or she should be rewarded in the same way. We also believe
that no work is beneath anyone. Thus, teachers sweep and clean and
help in the kitchen. Whether the workers are volunteers from the
U.S. or poor Mexicans, everyone is equal.
Nothing changes people's lives more profoundly than learning to
read, write and do simple arithmetic.
Imagine yourself in a foreign land where you cannot read the street
signs, understand which bus to take, read the newspapers, or tell
the time by reading a watch. Imagine yourself unable to count your
change or, if you were a street seller, trying to sell three bracelets
when you do not know how to multiply, add or subtract. That's what
it means to be illiterate.
With reading comes self-confidence and a belief you can take charge
of your life. Readers are the people who ask questions and believe
that their world can change. Learning to read is the most basic
revolutionary act.
VAMOS! sponsors nine literacy centers where children as young as
six and adults as old as 84 are learning the magic of the printed
word.
Demographers tell us that at least 80% of the
Mexican population do not have their basic human needs food, shelter,
medical and dental services, education, security in old age, etc..
In order to maintain order in such a situation, police and other
security forces often act in brutal ways. The poor have no way to
fight back.
VAMOS! works closely with the Independent Human
Rights Commission of the State of Morelos and sponsors educational
projects designed to alert the poor to their rights and the ways
to protect them.
Mexico's economic strategy to survive in today's global market
has called for the elimination of rural subsidies and the encouragement
of large-scale farming for export. While such policies may have
long-term benefits for Mexico, the social cost has been very high.
Millions of untrained rural families have had to leave the security
of their villages and immigrate to the cities. They leave a settled
life with more in common with medieval Europe than with Modern Mexico
and are plunged into an urban economy utterly unprepared to accept
them.
Most new immigrants live in squatter settlements on the edge of
cities like Cuernavaca in cardboard shacks without running water,
electricity, schools or employment. It is in areas like these that
VAMOS! has expended much of its energies and resources.
Our entry has been low-key, visiting with the people, talking with
them, dreaming with them. When they, with our staff's help, understand
what their new community needs, VAMOS! works with them to bring
their dreams to reality, whether it is a kindergarten, a school,
a meeting place, protection from marauding bands of hooligans, legal
papers for their residences or protection from corrupt police.
Many poor colonias have no public services and the unpaved, unlighted
street is the often the only place for a class or a meeting. Late
in the afternoon when the day's heat has begun to recede, people
will drag their own chairs into the street to study together or
conduct a meeting.
The Mexican government rarely builds public buildings in the poorest
areas. VAMOS! has helped build schools and multipurpose centers.
Always VAMOS! supplies the materials and the people supply the labor.
These projects help build community, teach group responsibility
and introduce the idea of accountability to poor people who have
never heard the words.
Most poor Mexicans cannot afford the modest fees doctors and dentists
charge or the medicine they prescribe. VAMOS! is helping in many
ways:
- Each two weeks, Dr. Ermilo Florez sets up a
free clinic with free medicine at each of our schools.
- VAMOS! provides free medicine and arranges
treatment for major illnesses free or at a reduced cost
- VAMOS! provides counseling on the management
of chronic disease
- VAMOS! encourages traditional and alternative
medicine and offers such medicine clinics in poor areas.
- VAMOS offers psycological
counselling and courses in self-awareness, child education and in combating family violence to the children and mothers of our projects.
- VAMOS! maintains a dental clinic in the
colonia of La Nopalera.
|
