Covid-19|Education raises indigenous women income

Pandemic lockdown didn’t stop zapotec children to be part of our educational model, we recognize that all social intervention with gender perspective must  include children  in spaces of caring for achieve the strengthening of women education during any crisis. 

In our community  72% of the people is indigenous, 80% live in human deprivation and poverty. We found out that if children don’t understand the importance of preserving our culture, the opportunities of their territory and embrace the solution within their possibilities and interests the future generations will suffer a wider disparity between social, political and economical dimensions.  

One of our favorite interventions is the “Ruta Sabor y Arte” (Art and Flavor Route) , which children visit traditional craft workshops with guidance of important artisans of our region. The Route is full of colorful wall communitary murals made by artists of different origins. After 6 months of lockdown because of COVID.19, authorities allowed us to restart the children route but with small groups and all the measures.

During the mural route tours Paloma, a 9 years old girl was very surprised about this experience “I am happy because I haven't seen before any king of art in my town, nobody use to paint, and I didn’t know they were so many beautiful paints near me, I want to visit them all.”

 Children have to interview the guardians, and work on a compilation of videos in order we can document the incidence of guardians in the new generations. Every child that participates in the route gets a book of “Deshilar el Istmo” (Unravel the Istmo) with which children can learn more about the traditional crafts and the Art and Flavor Route. Last period the route had the participation of 106 children, who received a pedagogical book to introduce themselves to traditional crafts.  

After one of the routes Kevin, 11 year old, told us “When I heard we were going to meet a potter man, I thought doing potter must be very difficult, but when I tried I liked it so much, now I want to learn and be a pottery guardian.”

We consider that even though we have been working through two crises that have affected our community socially and economically (2017 earthquake, 2020 COVID-19 pandemic), we have achieved a horizontal way to create solutions that impact three generations of the community. We dream that all the children have the opportunity to visit the Art and Flavor Route, so they embrace our culture and fight to preserve our territory no matter what crisis they face next. 

In this picture my partner Aida is with our neighbours, she usually reads to them some short stories in the afternoon. She  has been a key bond for maintaining UMPO’s activities alive during these days, all the art, communication and every single photo of our media is all her creation. She told me:

“During the lockdown, UMPO has been like a time machine, that transforms negative ideas into positive solutions for facing adversities. We are all surrounded with news about loss and how hard life can be nowadays. But yet I percibe UMPO projects like seeds of love and hope for our communities. Since the COVID-19 lockdown started, we continued implementing productive workshops using digital tools. 

We are always creating programs that offer educational tools to become autonomous for creating our own laboral opportunities. We try to boost everyone's capacities for making their dreams come true. But this time  using digital platforms was such a big step! because one of our main objectives as an organization is to connect our community and make new bonds and sometimes technology doesn’t inspire this kind of authentic sensitive contact. What I can share is that I decided to participate  in the traditional herbal medicine workshop [I usually do not participate as a student in the workshops], there, I took the class with 30 different women from different latitudes, this never happened before. I attended the first multicultural UMPO’s workshop!  

On the other side, it's true that the pandemic has affected children too, because Mexico’s educational model is usually precarious and now, trying to pass it remotely is a huge challenge. That’s why I am amazed about our reading circles and with our children activities for learning about traditional crafts. I feel that even with the pandemic, we continue sowing the zapotec identity in the heart of the youngest ones. 

Finally I want to share that most of the people in our communities are elderly persons, many of them were abandoned and their economical situation is deplorable. These days I had the opportunity to share time with many zapotec grandpas because we started the “solidary baskets”. A program in which we buy products of many agriculturists of the zone in order to activate their economy, such as corn, coffee, cheese, totopo (corn tortilla), etc. We put together all these local products in a basket and  give them to the elders of our communities. We don’t know how long this will last, but what we know is that we have solutions to activate our communities, their economy, strengthen their bonds and also cover their basic needs.” 

Thank you for supporting us during this COVID-19 challenge, we start a new year and we hope you will be part of the next opportunities for boosting the zapotec communities economy.