MEXICO: Eco-Friendly Livelihoods for Women in the Sierra Madre

By Daniela Pastrana Reprint | | Print |

Daniela Pastrana

JALPAN, Mexico, Mar 1 2011 (IPS) - They live in a town with an apt name, Soledad (Solitude) de Guadalupe, of just 50 houses, most of which are inhabited by women on their own, in the Sierra Madre mountains in the small state of Querétaro in central Mexico.

Here, in a large converted shed that operates as a ceramics workshop, nine local women make pottery, selling an average of 1,000 hand-made pieces a month.

Bonifacia Coca Guzmán, 14, paints the pottery by hand while María Gabina Coca Chávez, 70, is hard at work molding the figures. “The other clay, the poor quality kind, can’t withstand the heat,” the older woman, who earns an average of seven dollars a day for six hours of work, says with a smile.

“When the clay is good,” two women can produce more than 100 pieces a week, María Isabel Trejo, the head of the workshop, told IPS on a day spent with local women in their workplaces in Soledad de Guadalupe, 200 km north of Mexico City.

The pottery workshop is part of a community improvement programme run by the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group, an environmental organisation active for more than 24 years in the eastern Sierra Madre mountains.

The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, in the eastern Sierra Madre mountains, is the country’s most biodiverse area.

The programme is focused on boosting the income-generating capacities of peasant women in this area, where most men leave at young ages, mainly to the United States.

It is involved in 40 mountain communities, through small productive projects that include the installation and management of rustic restaurants using sustainable energy sources in ecotourism spots.

The programme has also helped establish small-scale enterprises in the areas of craftmaking, herbs, sustainable production of rural products, embroidery and ceramics.

More than 100 women work in these rural community micro-enterprises, said Cristina Montoya, head of communications at Centro Tierra (the Earth Centre), where the Ecological Group holds workshops and courses for community facilitators and trainers.

She told IPS that because so many local men have left in search of work, and due to high levels of alcoholism among men who have stayed, most of the projects are led by women.

“The women are warm, friendly and enthusiastic,” she said. “Many of them are single mothers, and we have tried to tailor our training and know-how to their needs, although we don’t always manage to do so.”

The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, a protected area, is important as a carbon sink, a water “factory,” and a biodiversity conservation zone.

It covers 384,000 hectares, one-third of the state of Querétaro, and contains a wide variety of ecosystems with altitudes ranging from 350 metres to 3,100 metres above sea level: semi-desert, cloud forest, temperate forest and lowland jungle.

There are 360 species of birds, 130 mammals — including six felines, like the puma and the endangered jaguar — 71 reptiles, 23 amphibians and 2,308 plant species.

Numerous mercury mines operated in the region until the 1970s. When they shut down, the main source of jobs was lost. Men began to leave in droves for the United States, visiting home infrequently, and the villages and towns were left with women raising children on their own, and the elderly.

This area is now classified as a top priority in government programmes aimed at fighting extreme poverty.

In January 2007 a study found evidence of mercury pollution in the mountains. The research was carried out by three public Mexican institutions — the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, and the National Polytechnic Institute — and the Geological Institute of Hungary.

“I would take my husband his lunch at the mine,” said Beatriz Aguas, one of nine partners in the cooperative that runs a simple restaurant for tourists in the village of Cuatro Palos. “The men would take the liquid to sell, and the price depended on the weight of the litre. Now the men leave because there is no work here.”

The 67-year-old Aguas, who everyone calls Betty, had 16 children, only 10 of whom are still living. The rest died “of measles and whooping cough,” she says in a muted voice.

One of the Ecological Group’s 12 ecotourism projects, a campground located over 2,700 metres above sea level, operates in Cuatro Palos, a village of 30 homes outside the town of Pinal de Amoles.

Cuatro Palos has no running water or other basic services. To attend secondary school, youngsters have to go to the municipal seat. Mobile health units visit the village twice a month.

The restaurant is just a room that used to be the village chapel but was abandoned when a bigger chapel was built. Thirty women work there, including the nine members of the cooperative.

“We work in shifts. Sometimes people miss work, because they have to hike down from their houses (in the bush). Those of us who have the greatest need work the most,” Aguas explained to IPS.

The Ecological Group has promoted the use of alternative energies in the region of Sierra Gorda, which has a population of 100,000 people living in more than 600 villages and towns. But for now the organisation only works in 40 communities, and the process of change is slow.

“Community-based endeavours are not easy, because you run into different ways of thinking and living, and people don’t change their habits easily,” Perla Betanzo, head of the group’s ecotourism projects, says with an eloquent sigh.

Bringing about cultural changes in the local communities runs up against a number of difficulties, ranging from the breakdown of eco-friendly technological systems to the lack of an efficient municipal garbage service.

“And people from this area emigrate, so by the time you’ve trained a few, they leave and you have to start all over again,” Betanzo said.

Nevertheless, change is happening. In Cuatro Palos, for example, the women use a dry toilet in which lime, sawdust and solar energy are used to produce compost.

Another project currently being developed is the installation of solar panels.

“What we are doing now, before we embark on new projects, is to consolidate the ones already in operation,” Betanzo said. “Conservation doesn’t mean taking care of a tree, but changing human activities, and to do that you have to work from the roots up. And the most difficult thing is changing people’s mentalities.”