Posted in Celebrations, Economics, History, Holidays, Labor, People, Politics, tagged Día de los Trabajadores, Día del Trabajo, Día Internacional de los Trabajadores, holiday, International Workers' Day, labor, Lila Downs, Mary Harris Jones, May Day, Mexico, Mother Jones, Oaxaca, video, workers on May 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Even though the significance of May 1, as International Workers’ Day, had its origin in the USA, it is not celebrated there (for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here). However, like most countries in the world, Día del Trabajo is a national holiday in Mexico. To honor labor everywhere, here is Oaxaca’s favorite daughter singing her song, “Mother Jones.”
“Pray for the dead, but fight like Hell for the living.” — Mary Harris Jones (aka, Mother Jones, the miners’ angel)
Posted in Agriculture, Economics, Food, Immigration, Labor, People, tagged articles, California, David Bacon, farmworkers, immigration, indigenous peoples, labor, Living Under the Trees, Mexico, migrants, Oaxaca, workers, Young at Work in the Fields on April 5, 2014| 1 Comment »
According to the Indigenous Farmworker Study (IFS), there are approximately 165,000 indigenous Mexican farmworkers and their children living in California — with a significant percentage coming from the state of Oaxaca. Writer and photographer David Bacon has been photographing and interviewing indigenous Mexican migrants working in California’s agricultural fields for many years. The following Truthout article is from his photo-documentary project, Living Under the Trees, sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities and California Rural Legal Assistance.
by David Bacon
(Photo: Bacon/After Image)
Most young farm-workers in California are migrants from Mexico, especially the south of the country, where many people share an indigenous culture and language. Ricardo Lopez, living in a van with his grandfather in a store parking lot in Mecca, a tiny farmworker town in the Coachella Valley, says working as a migrant without a formal home was no surprise:
This is how I envisioned it would be working here with my grandpa and sleeping in the van. It’s hot at night, and hard to sleep well. There are a lot of mosquitoes, very few services, and the bathrooms are very dirty. At night there are a lot of people here coming and going. You never know what can happen; it’s a bit dangerous. But my grandfather has a lot of experience and knows how to handle himself. With the money I earn I’m going to help my mother and save the rest. I’ll be attending college in the fall at Arizona Western College—my first year. I want to have a good job, a career. I’m not thinking of working in the fields. Not at all. I look at how hard my grandfather has worked. I don’t want to do field work for the rest of my life because it’s so hard and the pay is so low.
Lopez describes the reality for farmworkers in California in a way that gives tangible meaning to the facts and numbers describing farmworker life. There are about 120,000 indigenous Mexican farmworkers in California. Counting the 45,000 children living with them, that is a total of 165,000 people. They are the most recent migrants from Mexico. They speak twenty-three languages, come from thirteen different Mexican states, and have rich cultures of language, music, dance, and food that bind their communities together.
<snip> Click HERE to read full article.
This project is therefore a reality check. The idea is to give indigenous migrant communities a vehicle they can use to find support for dealing with the social problems they face, such as housing, low wages, and discrimination. This documentary work is not neutral. Its purpose is to help provide a means for people to organize and win support in a world that, at best, treats them as invisible, and at worst demonizes them. I used to be a union organizer, and this work is very similar. Social documentation not only has to have an engagement with reality, but should try to change it.
Click HERE to read full article.
Posted in Holidays, Labor, Politics, Protests, Weather, tagged current-events, demonstrations, El Grito, Frente Único de Lucha, Mexico, Oaxaca, photographs, photos, politics, protests, San Juan Copala, Triqui on September 14, 2013| 2 Comments »
Yesterday, as today’s article in Noticias states, “with great dignity and head held high” the Triqui families from San Juan Copala pulled up stakes and moved to temporary housing in Colonia Reforma. The 105 displaced families had been occupying the front of the Government Palace for several years, but reached an agreement with the state government to relocate.
Meanwhile, on the east side of the Government Palace, the band played on… September is “La mes de la patria” (the month of the motherland). Tomorrow night, governor Gabino Cue will repeat El Grito de Independencia (the Cry of Independence) from the balcony of the Government Palace and Monday, an hours-long patriotic parade will pass in front of the Palace.
Today, the scene has changed. Members of the Frente Único de Lucha (FUL), the new incarnation of APPO, have taken up positions in front of the Government Palace and vowed to remain until those arrested in clashes with the federal police, on December 1 and yesterday in Mexico City, are released. Hmmm… I wonder what will happen tomorrow and/or Monday.
Just remember, when you read, hear, or watch the news… Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca are the most indigenous and poorest states in Mexico. And now, the tears of Mother Nature are raining down on Oaxaca.
Posted in Economics, Immigration, Labor, Politics, tagged David Bacon, economy, immigration, immigration reform bill, Mexico, NAFTA, Oaxaca, politics, United States legislation on August 3, 2013| 2 Comments »
Another revealing article by one of my favorite journalists, David Bacon…
Clue: It’s Not a New Guest Worker Program
By David Bacon
Oralia Maceda, an immigrant mother from Oaxaca, asked the obvious question recently. At a meeting, talking about the Senate immigration reform bill, she wanted to know why Senators would spend almost $50 billion on more border walls, yet show no interest in why people leave home to cross them.
This Congressional blindness will get worse as immigration reform moves to the House. It condemns U.S. immigration policy to a kind of punitive venality, making rational political decisions virtually impossible. Yet alternatives are often proposed by migrant communities themselves, and reflect a better understanding of global economics and human rights.
Rufino Dominguez, who now works for the Oaxacan state government, describes what Maceda knows from experience: “NAFTA forced the price of corn so low it’s not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the U.S. to work because there’s no alternative.” The reason for the fall in prices, according to Timothy Wise of the Global Development and Environment Institute, is that corn imports to Mexico from the U.S. rose from 2,014,000 to 10,330,000 tons from 1992 to 2008.
Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork in 1995, the year NAFTA took effect, and 811, 000 tons in 2010. This primarily benefited one company, Smithfield Foods, which now sells over 25% of all the pork in Mexico. Mexico, however, lost 120,000 hog-farming jobs alone. The World Bank says extreme rural poverty jumped from 35% to 55% after NAFTA took effect due to “the sluggish performance of agriculture, stagnant rural wages, and falling real agricultural prices.”
Read full article HERE.
Posted in Agriculture, Economics, Food, Immigration, Labor, People, tagged articles, California, David Bacon, farmworkers, Madera, Mexico, migrants, Oaxaca, The Only Job I Can Do, workers on January 17, 2013| 2 Comments »
Sunny, warm, and dry, Oaxaca’s sidewalks, mercados, restaurants, and zócalo are filled with “snowbirds” (the human variety) escaping the bone-chilling and wet wintry weather of el norte. Alas, almost immediately after the previously mentioned “big move” next week, I’m heading in the opposite direction — to the bleak gray north for several weeks to visit family and friends in California (it’s not all bikini beaches and blue sky) and then east to celebrate my first grandchild’s first birthday — the best and maybe only reason to visit upstate New York in the dead of winter! And, if previous return trips to el norte are a predictor, I’ll be missing the warmth and color of Oaxaca almost from the minute I step off the plane.
The “snowbirds” and I have the luxury of coming and going. Some people do not. One of my favorite journalists interviews a young Oaxaqueña trying to support her young daughter by working the fields in Madera, California. As the title suggests, it is a poignant story…
Editor’s Note: Lorena Hernandez is a young farm worker and single mother from Oaxaca, Mexico. Today she lives in Madera, Calif., with her daughter and aunt. She told her story to David Bacon.
Lorena Hernandez picking blueberries [photo by David Bacon]
MADERA, Calif.–To go pick blueberries I have to get up at four in the morning. First I make my lunch to take with me, and then I get dressed for work. For lunch I eat whatever there is in the house, mostly bean tacos. Then the ritero, the person who gives me a ride to work, picks me up at 20 minutes to five.
I work as long as my body can take it, usually until 2:30 in the afternoon. Then the ritero gives me a ride home, and I get there by 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. By then I’m really tired.
Costs of Rides, Childcare on Little Pay
I pay $8 each way to get to work and back home. Right now they’re paying $6 for each bucket of blueberries you pick, so I have to fill almost three buckets just to cover my daily ride. The contractor I work for, Elias Hernandez, hooks us up with the riteros. He’s the contractor for 50 of us farm workers picking blueberries, and I met him when a friend of my aunt gave me his number.
<snip>
No Vision of My Future
I don’t have friends, just acquaintances from work. They don’t have responsibilities like I do, so they go out on the weekend. They share their stories with me because since I have a daughter, I don’t go out. I just stay at home.
I wash my daughter’s clothes on the weekends because during the week I’m so tired. There isn’t time to clean the house during the week either. That’s what we do on the weekends.
I don’t have a vision of my own future. I don’t really think about it. I know I want to work every day. I don’t think I’ll ever return to school because of my age. My job will be working in the fields. I’m at peace with my current situation. I would love to go back to school, but it’s too late for me. Perhaps one day.
Please read full story HERE.
Posted in Buildings, Labor, Restaurants, tagged building renovation, Casa Oaxaca, cement mixing, construction workers, Galeria Quetzalli, labor, laborers, Mexico, Oaxaca, photographs, photos, workers on August 28, 2012| 4 Comments »
Need a facelift?
Apparently, Casa Oaxaca and neighbor, Galeria Quetzalli, both do.
You might want to consider these guys.
They work hard.
And, all work is done with care and by hand!
Posted in Culture, Economics, Environment, Labor, Politics, Protests, tagged Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, David Bacon, environment, Mexico, mining, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Oaxaca on July 25, 2012| 1 Comment »
As most of you have gathered, I love the music and people, life and color, and food and ferias, not to mention the year-round sun and warm weather of Oaxaca. However, as I’ve mentioned before, there is much going on beneath the surface and it isn’t pretty. So, even though it’s the middle of Guelaguetza (or, maybe because the spotlight is on the music, dance, and costumes of Oaxaca’s indigenous communities), I feel compelled to share today’s article by one of my favorite labor photographers and journalists, David Bacon.
Wednesday, 25 July 2012 00:00 By David Bacon, Truthout | Report Email
An assembly last fall in Oaxaca of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations that called for a sustainable development policy that would support farmers as opposed to mega development projects. (Photo: David Bacon)
Oaxaca, Mexico – For over two decades in many parts of Mexico, large corporations – mostly foreign owned but usually with wealthy Mexican partners – have developed huge projects in rural areas. Called mega-projects, the mines and resource extraction efforts take advantage of economic reforms and trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Emphasizing foreign investment, even at the cost of environmental destruction and the displacement of people, has been the development policy of Mexican administrations since the 1970s. When the National Action Party (PAN) defeated the old governing Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) in 2000, this economic development model did not change. In fact, the PAN simply took over the administration of this development policy and even accelerated it, while in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies the two parties cooperated to advance its goals.
But while these projects enjoy official patronage at the top, they almost invariably incite local opposition over threatened or actual environmental disaster. Environmental destruction, along with accompanying economic changes, cause the displacement of people. Families in communities affected by the impacts are uprooted and often begin to migrate. Nevertheless, the projects enjoy official support and are defended against rising protests from poor farmers and townspeople by the federal government. [Please read the full article HERE]
Posted in Education, Labor, Protests, tagged ACE, Alliance for Quality Education, current-events, diane ravitch, education, Mexico, Nancy Davies, No Child Left Behind, Oaxaca, Seccion 22, Section 22, Teachers, Teachers union on June 5, 2012| 4 Comments »
Recently, I was on the US east coast visiting with family. Most of the time was spent with three teachers; my sister-in-law who retired after 30+ years of teaching in the Massachusetts public school district, my daughter-in-law who, after teaching in a public school in Connecticut, is currently a teacher in New York, and my son who is a college assistant professor. They, along with all — not most, all — of my teacher friends in the US, decry the damage No Child Left Behind has wrought. And, even one of its major proponents, Diane Ravitch, has done a 180 and is now leading the charge against it. If you are interested, take a look at the Terry Gross interview with her in April 2011.
One of the issues the teachers of Oaxaca are protesting is the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE), modeled after No Child Left Behind. Thus, the following thoughtful post on the Oaxaca Study Action Group website by Nancy Davies, resonated.
I applied for a my first teaching job in Boston. First I took the universal teacher evaluation test, by which the highest scoring were first hired for positions. Then I waited.
By October (school began in September) it was clear that although my score for Boston applicants was third from the topmost person, something fishy was happening. I called the school department. All apologies, they assigned me a school the very next day,from which another teacher had just resigned. It was in an all black (pre-integration) neighborhood of all black kids whose school had no new textbooks and few old ones. There were no functioning bathrooms for the kids, at times of the month when adolescent girls seriously wanted a bathroom and a place to get clean, they stayed home. The boys were often recruited by the male teachers to buy dope. The best joke: the kids put a family of newborn rats in the desk drawer of one teacher. Another joke: hang a fellow student out the window over the asphalt yard by holding his ankles.
I survived, the kids maybe survived. I learned a couple of things: 1) hungry badly treated kids don’t study. 2) teacher tests don’t mean shit.
So here I am surely one of few who supports what Section 22 is doing and saying. Yes, I know the union was corrupted by PRI governors and caciques; and abuses, such inheriting a teaching job, are numerous. I also know that for 27 years Section 22 has been pushing for better salaries but simultaneously for shoes, paid-uniforms, books, bathrooms, breakfasts. I visited the current encampment in the zoc and spoke briefly with a newly graduated normal school teacher, a first-job guy who does not speak any indigenous language, and is not moreno (brown-skinned). He was sitting under a tarp playing cel phone games. Bored, I would say, and happy that somebody spoke to him. He’s not specially political and doesn’t know too much about his union’s history either. In 2006 he was an adolescent in secondary school, and rarely came into the capital. His first classroom is primary grade kids. I asked him if he likes teaching. Yes, he replied, I am learning so much from the kids! He smiled broadly.
Right away in my book he qualifies as a teacher. His Spanish is good; he graduated from a five year university level program where pedagogy is emphasized as well as content information. He’s better prepared in 2012 than I was in 1968 with a Masters degree from Boston College and accreditation in three areas including Spanish which I couldn’t speak. I learned a lot from my students too, and most of it, since I came from a middle class neighborhood, was initially incomprehensible. One boy was clearly psychopathic. Two were dyslexic but had never been tested, merely promoted. They were wonderful at memorizing everything they couldn’t read. One girl got pregnant during the year and I didn’t have a clue what to say to her, I still grieve over my stupidity and lack of empathy. One girl told me her grandmother was burned up the night before in a home fire. Another’s boyfriend had been shot dead on the street. So I can sum up what I learned from my students as the stuff nightmares were made of, and it probably radicalized me more than any movement of the time. The Section 22 kid who was hired legitimately when he applied, tested only by his normal school (and why should we assume they pass youngsters who don’t know either their subject or how to teach it?) told me he learned from his kids and he smiled. I wept.
Section 22 has pushed Cue to accept the fact that one size does not fit all, neither for teacher evaluation nor for curriculum. They decline to walk away from the 26 unprosecuted murders of 2006 and the half dozen since. They champion the indigenous protests over mining and land grabs. They understand the word “neoliberalism”. They understand ghost towns, towns where the remaining people live off family remittances from the USA. They understand impunity and corruption, caciques who stole towns’ entire education budgets, governors who ignore an education level now the worst in Mexico. Blame the teachers? Not me. Been there, done that.
No one likes being held hostage to issues they don’t understand. As I walked past a blocked registry office an angry woman turned to me and shrieked, Lazy bunch of bastards! Her frustration undoubtedly was caused not just by being unable to enter a state office, but also I imagine by having kids at home driving her (and her mother) nuts because there’ve been no classes for two weeks. Maybe she knows that with all public classes open, her kids still may not be able to go to the public university since there are not enough seats, and very likely they will settle for semi-menial jobs. Or maybe there will be no jobs. Maybe they will try to cross the desert in Arizona. Or maybe her story is entirely different, I don’t know.
I ask myself why in 2006 500,000 adults spontaneously came out to march with these very teachers. Why the PRI was voted out and will not recover this state. Why now, in 2012 what the media publish are photos of blocked access and uncollected garbage. Cue is backing down, item by item on 22’s demands. Good for him. He’s neoliberal, but he’s not stupid. His education department head has resigned, and thus far no tear gas has been launched.
Posted in Celebrations, Economics, Holidays, Labor, Protests, tagged Confederación de Trabajadores de México, CTM, Día de los Trabajadores, Día Internacional de los Trabajadores, demonstrations, holiday, International Workers' Day, labor, May Day, Mexico, Oaxaca, photographs, photos, workers on May 1, 2012| 4 Comments »
Like 80+ countries in the world, International Workers’ Day is a national holiday in Mexico. Early this morning in Oaxaca, streets were closed as contingents began gathering and then marching toward the city center. And for hours, they poured into the Zócalo and Alameda for speeches, music, and bottle rockets, all of which will, no doubt, continue for hours more.
FYI: CTM stand for the Confederación de Trabajadores de México, the largest confederation of Mexican labor unions. Think, AFL-CIO in El Norte (though with some significant differences).
¡Feliz Día Internacional de los Trabajadores!
Update: For a more nuanced view of yesterday’s march, see the report by longtime resident, Nancy Davies.
Posted in Economics, Immigration, Labor, tagged economy, Guanajuato, immigration, Mexico, Sara Miller Llana on April 9, 2012| 6 Comments »
And now a pause in the Semana Santa coverage…
The following article is part of the cover story project in the April 9 issue of The Christian Science MonitorWeekly magazine. It’s long, but I encourage you to click on it and read the full article.
Tiny Tamaula is the new face of rural Mexico: Villagers are home again as the illegal immigration boom drops to net zero
By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / April 8, 2012
Tamaula, Mexico – At this time of year in this tiny rural outpost that sits on a mountainside in Guanajuato State, most able-bodied men are gone. They’re off plucking and cutting chicken in processing plants in Georgia or pruning the backyards of Seattle.
But this year, Pedro Laguna and his wife, Silvia Arellano, are clearing rocks from their yard to prepare a field for corn. They’ve returned home to Tamaula, Mexico, with their four young children, after 20 years in the United States working illegally. Pedro’s cousin Jorge Laguna and his brothers are planting garbanzo beans in the plot behind their father’s home. Their next-door neighbor Gregorio Zambrano is also home: One recent morning he badgered a visiting social worker for funds to start a honey=production enterprise.
Since the Monitor last visited here in 2007, a major demographic shift has transformed this dusty village of 230. Migrants have come home, and with them have come other important changes. In 2007, there was no running water, no high school, no paved roads. A simple water pipeline, installed in February, runs to each of the 50-some homes. On a recent day the first high school class, including eight students ages 15 to 40, was finishing up math homework. And now, the main roads are paved.
“We can turn on the water and wash our clothes,” says Pedro’s uncle, Rodolfo Laguna, who spent 12 years working illegally in a chicken plant in Athens, Ga., before returning home in 2010 after both he and his son lost their jobs.
This is the new face of rural Mexico. Villages emptied out in the 1980s and ’90s in one of the largest waves of migration in history. Today there are clear signs that a human tide is returning to towns both small and large across Mexico.
One million Mexicans said they returned from the US between 2005 and 2010, according to a new dem-ographic study of Mexican census data. That’s three times the number who said they’d returned in the previous five-year period.
And they aren’t just home for a visit: One prominent sociologist in the US has counted “net zero” migration for the first time since the 1960s.
Experts say the implications for both nations are enormous – from the draining of a labor pool in the US to the need for a radical shift in policies in Mexico, which has long depended on the billions of dollars in migrant remittances as a social welfare cornerstone.
“The massive return of migrants will have implications at the micro and macro economic levels and will have consequences for the social fabric … especially for the structure of the Mexican family,” says Rodolfo Casillas, a migration expert at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Mexico City. [Read full article]
Posted in Celebrations, Holidays, Labor, People, tagged history, International Women's Day, Mexico, Oaxaca, triangle shirtwaist factory on March 8, 2012| 6 Comments »
Today is International Women’s Day, established by V. I. Lenin in 1922, revived by women in the USA in 1968, and recognized by the United Nations in 1975. Here’s to the beautiful, strong, and all around amazing women of Oaxaca!
¡Feliz, Día de la mujer!
The librarian in me can’t help but include a few resources, I put together a few years ago, chronicling the history of International Women’s Day:
Posted in Creativity, Labor, tagged caution, colibrí, creatures, critters, graffitti, hummingbird, Mexico, Oaxaca, street rubble, wall art on February 17, 2012| 2 Comments »
I knew it was going to be a good day when a colibrí greeted me on an early morning stroll up to the weekly organic market.
There were other critters and creatures in plain sight…
and peering out from their hiding places.
However, you must proceed with caution because, most dangerous of all…
there are men at work!
Posted in Economics, Labor, Politics, Protests, tagged David Bacon, encampment, immigrant rights, indignados, labor, Mexico, Mexico City, NAFTA, oakland ca, occupy, Occupy Mexico City, Occupy movements, Occupy Wall Street, plantón, Unions and Immigrants Join Occupy Movements on January 31, 2012| 1 Comment »
The Occupy movement continues… clashes with the Oakland, CA police on Saturday are making headlines. And, when I was in Mexico City two weeks ago, an indignado planton (encampment) was firmly established in front of the domed building that houses the Mexican stock mark. Please note the biblioteca (library).
I must admit to feeling right at home, as plantons are an almost ubiquitous part of Oaxaca’s zócalo. For more on plantons, David Bacon provides a cross border historical context to the planton/occupy movements in his article, Unions and Immigrants Join Occupy Movements,
Posted in Buildings, Labor, Renovation, tagged buildings, Mexico, Oaxaca, painters, renovation, SINFRA, workers on January 20, 2012| 2 Comments »
A clean-looking Oaxaca, brought to you by Oaxaca’s Secretary of Infrastructure.
According to the state government’s website, a 45 million peso project was launched to “visually rehabilitate” 94,000 buildings in 25 urban communities. Begun in July in San Bartolo Coyotepec (14 miles south of Oaxaca City), it has now reached my ‘hood.
Ladders, paint buckets, and painters up and down the block.
By the way, because this is the Centro Histórico, the colors are selected from a previously approved palette. Baby blue? I wonder if the owners of the buildings have any say…
Posted in Economics, Immigration, Labor, tagged braceros, David Bacon, farmworkers, Human Rights, immigrant rights, labor, Mexico, migrants, Oaxaca, Rufino Dominguez, workers on January 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »
David Bacon, one of the most perceptive labor and immigrant rights writer/photographers, interviews Rufino Dominguez, director of the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants (in English). Let’s hope this isn’t another program that is all talk, no action.
OAXACA, MEXICO — The Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants, and its director Rufino Dominguez, called for a new era of respect for the rights of migrants, in commorating [sic] the International Day of the Migrant in the Palacio del Gobierno, Oaxaca’s state capitol building. Representing the newly-elected state government, Dominguez paid tribute to the contributions of the braceros, the first of Oaxaca’s migrant workers to travel to the United States. from 1942 to 1964, and to the women who cared for the families they left behind.
Around the balconies of the palacio’s courtyard hung photographs showing the lives of current migrants from Oaxaca, working as farm laborers in California. Migrant rights activists, artisans and public officials spoke about the important role migration continues to play in Oaxaca’s economic, social, political and family life. The state, in southern Mexico, is the source of one of the largest waves of migration from Mexico to the U.S.
Dominguez, the former coordinator of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, which organizes indigenous migrants in both Mexico and the U.S., was appointed director of the IOAM by Oaxaca’s new governor, Gabino Cue Monteagudo. Cue defeated the PRI, the party that governed Oaxaca for the previous 80 years. In an interview with David Bacon, Dominguez described the different road the new government is taking to ensure social justice for Oaxacan migrants today:
We can’t tell the U.S. government, or the governments of California and other states, to respect the rights of our people who are living there, if we ourselves are not respecting the rights of migrants here in Oaxaca. Many migrants passing through Oaxaca from Central America and other places suffer systematic violations of their human rights.
Have we just paid attention to migrants in the U.S. because they send dollars home? Sometimes the problems of migrants within Mexico are even greater than those we have in the U.S. [Read full article]
Mexican Peso Converter
View From Casita Colibrí 