Mother Earth, the territory

The territory was not a commercial object historically, but rather a sacred element, in its most generic conception, on the level with divinity, the mother goddess from which we are born and on whom the lives of men depended, everything in interrelation and interdependence. This devotion is manifested in many agrarian cultures around the world, as a result of the relationship between man and his natural environment, from the direct and intimate contact with nature as a source of life, work, existence itself.

Andrés: “This view of being part of something much larger like Mother Earth, where you have to respect everything, is very difficult to maintain if you are not a peasant man or woman, when you are not working closely to nature. The noble Mixtec who were not peasants had the same problems such as the elites from any culture, manipulating things to have more power and more control, but what survived was not the culture of elites, but rather the culture of community, democratic values, with very strong links to the earth”.

For the Mixtec the relationship between the peoples -ñuú- and the land -ñuhú- symbolizes a nearly religious act, in which its use was subordinate to the social organization. ^{López-Bárcenas (2013a)} mentions: “If we are all children of Mother Earth, nothing that is in it belongs to us because we are passing through life and, finally, we will return to its midst; therefore, the least we can do is to share what is on loan or what is available that belongs to all”.

The territory as a sacred space is lined by signs, codes and languages where the sacredness of the places corresponds to the connection with other worlds, the world in the way in which deities are fed, and the underworld to maintain that balance (^{Restrepo, 2002}).

Alfredo: “Very few people pour pulque or liquor before working. When the harvest is picked a meal is made, pozol is prepared, a chicken or hen is killed, a small hole is made and they slash the terrain which was farmed, you feed it as an offering, now very little. Now the people are losing that custom”.

Andrés: “There is this idea that we are not alone in this world, that there are also endless living beings, some that we can see and others we cannot, so that is why permission is asked for things to go well, and if we are going to disturb much an apology is given for hindering mother earth and the spirits”.

The community and community relationships

The good life is conceived in community, that extensive family that represents a framework of protection, attachment and solidarity. On the basis of Mixtec society, the extensive family was not only integrated by the father and the mother, but also included the parents’ ancestors (grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents) and relatives (cousins, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces) that gave origin to many different lineages among them (^{López-Bárcenas, 2013a}).

The actions that correspond to this type of connections have a collective sense, which for the Mixtec people is the Ndoo which means us and refers to two or more people, but without immolation one of the other, without superimposing; it is individual-community, I-others, everyone, conforming in this way the “our” voice: my voice is in that voice and that voice is in me, because in the end the community is for me and I am for the community; then, it is a matter of thinking collectively, what the child of the people thinks and does (^{Huamán, 2006}).

Octavio: “One needs to get along with everyone because we are family, we are neighbors of the town and we all know each other, so we cannot rob each other, we support each other by loaning things, serving each other, being careful with animals for them not to harm the neighbors’ plots. That is respect! And it is necessary to avoid having conflicts among one another.

Andrés: “From the vision of the indigenous peoples, you do not start with the individual, you begin with the community and within it we find our personal identity, happiness, and the way of relating to the world, to living beings. In the community we can grow in the sense of vision, liberty, responsibility, and therefore this vision is important for this time, it is revolutionary, and it is true development”.

The festivity of the people

It has great social importance, not only for the political stability of the community, but of the region itself. The festivity is a privileged space where the public and the private intersect, where the relationships and the commitments of the social groups that participate in it are expressed, where community belonging and the production of order and sense for successive generations are affirmed, but also recreated (^{Lameiras, 1990}; ^{Medina, 1995}; ^{González, 2006}).

There is always one group that organizes the enjoyment of all inhabitants of the community, as well as of the guests from neighboring towns, or those who arrive voluntarily. In some zones of the Mixtec region, those who are in charge of doing it are called mayordomos, respected because it is up to them for people to have a good or bad festivity. The festivities create an environment favorable for coexistence and many times they allow the solution of conflicts, which secures the social organization and strengthens the links of identity and unity (^{López-Bárcenas, 2013a}).

Andrés: “Mayordomías that come from a long time ago, from the Catholic church, possibly have Pre-Hispanic community roots, because they recognize that even when someone has many more resources and that there are others who do not have enough, then those who have are invited to offer food and drink to the whole town; the festivity is a way of economic redistribution”.

The concept of the community festivity has been transformed, integrating elements of modern society, influenced by a migrant lifestyle that is distancing itself in cultural terms from the local community. The festivity is disconnected from its religious senses and traditional agricultural rhythms, conferring it another sense, in which young people cease to understand and share the beliefs, meanings and traditional values that were expressed in the patronal festivity (^{Arias, 2011}).

The work of the people: the Tequio and the charges

The social organization of the Mixtec towns is based on the normative system known as “uses and customs”, which includes the collective values of social and political representation, and privileges consensus for the election of authorities and representatives who occupy the charges.

^{López-Bárcenas (2013a)} mentions that the type of public organization is manifested in two ways: in the mandatory work that benefits the people -tiñu ñuú- and in the charges within the organizational structure, where men in charge or who are invested in authority are called tee iso tiñu ñuú siki or yoso tiñu ñuu siki.

Andrés: “The tequios are not just going to repair the road, they represent the belief that we owe something to the community, that we have responsibilities to the community, and although it is irritating to go out to weed the road, it is something that we have to do to live here, and it is fair”.

Participating in the charge system is not a right but rather an obligation, which is why it is called “charge”. These are classified from higher to lower importance; among them there are Topil, policemen and their commander, rod mayor, secretary, treasurer, mayor, municipal agent, councilors, and the commissary of communal or ejido goods.

The General Assembly of the People

The main government organ is the Community Assembly or General Assembly of the People -nda tu´un yoo (let us talk), which is the main instance to make decisions that affect the life of the community, which are collective and consensual, although sometimes they are also voted on.

The authorities are elected, but the power is not in their hands, but rather in the popular “us”, whose consensuses have to be executed by the authorities. If they do not, they can be revoked (^{Lenkersdorf, 2008}). The imposition of agendas that respond to the government’s interests and to the dominating political parties, and the entry of various churches, have fragmented the community life and its forms of self-government.

Antonio: “Slowly, we are losing what used to be done, where we would look for people to have some sort of trajectory before they reached the most important charge, where a service career was generated that began from the lowest charge and by the time you reached the highest one you were already prepared to be the authority. Now with modernity these processes no longer work because now the projects, the public funds, have to do with whether you use a telephone, a computer, if you have the contacts, with knowing how to read and write, almost with knowing the laws and another series of things, so then many of the people who had based themselves on local knowledge to serve the community no longer work, they are left outside, then the authorities that are taking on the charges are people who somehow are able to talk to the government, to make documents, they are made to be able to discuss with one another and not with their people”.

According to ^{López-Bárcenas (2013a)}, in the assembly men and women can participate indistinctly, although it is customary for single women to participate exceptionally and married women only when their husbands are not there, situation that has been transforming because of men migrating. According to data gathered by the National Feminist Millennium Network (Red Nacional Milenio Feminista), of the 570 municipalities of Oaxaca, 418 are ruled by uses and customs, and between 80 and 100 of them do not allow the participation of women in community assemblies, and much less vote or be candidates to contend for any charge of popular election.

Solidarity, mutual and reciprocal help: the Gueza or Mano Vuelta

Na chindee: let us support one another, is the pillar of brotherhood, the solidarity is of the Ñuu savi. Material or moral help is given when someone needs it, assuming the problem that is taking place as their own. This help is reciprocal; whoever receives it has the moral commitment to return it. Not doing it is an ill-conceived behavior because it breaks the ties of community solidarity. The saá, gueza or mano vuelta is a job performed among the members of the tan´a, where the person benefitted is obliged to reward the work received freely (^{López-Bárcenas, 2013a}).

Alfredo: “Doing gueza, we each share what we cannot have, we do not charge anything but give support, a favor is paid with a favor, all within the trust we have with each other”.

Andrés: “To plant cajete maize, in the capitalist system you need to pay workers to do the extra work that sowing it represents, in the culture of the Mixtec community it is not so, because they have the gueza where they help each other; this is not only something that sounds nice morally, but a strong, powerful and important economic factor for the communities. This type of maize will disappear in a capitalist system because its yields are not enough to pay workers, but in a Mixtec community it functions well; seven people go to the fields and in a short time we have all the work finished, then you come to my plot and we do the same thing”.

This community practice has been waning through time, permeated by the individualism characteristic of western culture.

Alfredo: “here people do not, first they ask how much you can pay and if not, they don’t have time… Here, when there is a wedding, a dance, any party, the people are alone, killing themselves to find a way to pay for the expenses; they have to sell their animals, their plots for the festivity”.

The material life: the economic life

Experiencing a good life cannot be described as a state of comfort to be reached, but rather having available enough to live austerely but with autonomy. The value of use takes precedence over that of change. Goods such as a car, a house, are not related to the spirit of accumulating but rather to having an element that helps attaining wellbeing in the family or performing a job more easily. It is not possible to enjoy the goods if there is not an affective, subjective and spiritual realization with nature and people.

Migration, conventional education, communication media, and development projects, among others, are changing the way in which Mixtec people perceive and value money, which is evidenced in the changes in dress, diet, and way of behaving and feeling in the community.

Celerina: “When you return from the United States, you bring a different way of thinking…, now you see on the mountains huge houses US style that nobody lives in, and the family members who are taking care of them are not used to living like that, but rather in their small houses, next to the burner, where it is more intimate, where you are near each other. Why would you need such a large house if there are no people? A large house that is difficult to clean because the work of a peasant man or woman is very tough. How will they find time to upkeep a mansion? Then you need employees to help you: that is the western concept and that does not exist in our culture; naturally, you can now find people who think that way, but it is not our culture”.

The elements of the worldview and the experience that give sense to a Ñuu Savi good life are found in a terrain broken between dialogue and dispute, transformed and affected by aspirations of their own and imposed, and the opportunities offered by the western world.

Development as seen from CEDICAM

Although the argument of modern discourses is that it is not possible to conceive economic development as a single, linear and certain path, and although solutions are presented that consider new issues such as the increase in capacities or sustainability, other forms of culture, thinking, feeling, relating to nature and to human beings, indigenous peoples no not really feel represented in these concepts because they still stem from the same fundamental principles, and the same model of thought, representation and identity of western life, in the end based on economic growth and the appropriation of nature.

The life parameters from which development is measured are western, they contemplate just one form of knowledge, so that health, employment, housing, education, continue to be part of development regardless of its last name, affiliated to institutions created with the principles and logics of a western, capitalist model. ^{Esteva (2013)} suggests that breaking these relationships of dependency and alienation requires for these nouns to become verbs: learn, work, inhabit, heal, etc., from these other ways of being present in the world, such as those of indigenous peoples.

Antonio: “There are many studies about what is related to improvements in quality of life, with infrastructure, with matters of services, food… but we don’t agree that it should be focused solely on the indicators of human development, based on a mentality of developed nations, which establish a series of things about which they evaluate whether people have human development or not.

They treat all of us as equals, indigenous, peasants, mestizos, and they want us to have the same type of life, as if in a series; if you do not have this, you are below the standards of quality of life. Many of these indicators can be outside of what we as communities, as peoples, want: justice, respect for local organizations, to the internal forms of organization of the towns. If a guy (a person) did not study, it is as if he didn’t have knowledge or capacities… that is how they measure it, who is under, who is above… they do not take into account how environmental issues influence the quality of life of people… There is a matter of dignity in these people who have planted trees, who have changed arid landscapes into green landscapes… that qualitative aspect is important and not only the quantitative on which almost everything is based: how much do you earn, how many rooms does your house have, how many of them have floors, if you have piped water.

Without a doubt these people have contributed much more to the quality of life of people and of themselves by saying: I can make a difference, I can make changes to improve my territory; I can leave a positive footprint for the coming generations instead of a negative one. How do you translate the peace, tranquility, pride of generating this? Self-esteem as part of the quality of human life. There are many people who have self-esteem when they have money, but to see that where there was nothing now there are trees of 15 meters height, I feel at peace, like a useful person to the region, to the space where I intervene”.

External actors, development agencies

The meeting of cultures that takes place in the case of the projects, whether of NGOs or government institutions, happens fundamentally for economic reasons. If the peasant organizations had the possibility of having the resources to finance their work autonomously, the approach and, therefore, the product of their work would surely be different from what is done today, and the meeting between cultures would happen under quite a different logic and conditions. There would be the possibility of carrying out projects with more flexibility, adapting them to the advancement and the concrete needs of the processes, and not to the rigid framework of the goals of a specific project, generally designed under the logic of foreign experts in solving other’s problems. The stable permanence of the peasant organization in the territory would favor the advance of the processes in harmony with the time periods and dynamics of the people, emphasizing their work not only in quantitative aspects with the subsequent pressure for fund allotment, delivery of capital, technology and infrastructure, but rather in stable and progressive changes of qualitative nature, in the construction of capacities that require local staff and time.

Time to generate awareness, persuasion, commitment, to carry out durable and broad objectives in productive improvement, the cohesion of community strength, the recovery of Mother Earth, objectives that need to be developed with patience, perseverance, time and constant effort, different from the tight times of western projects.

Antonio: “Each person has their own vision of development depending on where they live; we Mixtec have our own vision of the world from where we are, from our life conditions, from the resources we have, from the information available, from our origins or our history. Financial sources also experience this: they base their idea of development on the logic of where they are. In the projects we find an idea of development with a vision of development that is different from ours; that is where the capacity to organize, to see where there are coincidences and what is needed to negotiate to adapt them to the realities. A local organization or one which has an indigenous view and which could also finance would have a different vision, but it doesn’t exist. That is why you do a project that is not so western and not so Mixtec, as an integration of the two visions, of local and global development of the livelihoods.

Among these things that are negotiated there is, for example, this matter of gender, which is of much interest now for financers, and which at the beginning was difficult to approach in a culture such as ours. Sometimes the foundations want it to be an immediate reality in the projects, but for that to happen we need some patience, to carry out work with sensibility, dialogue between men and women to learn about their rights, to change the way power is exercised by men and submission by women. Some agencies want to see women become authorities, and for men to put on the apron; we agree with the need for this, but we have to search for the mechanism, the strategy is what needs to be discussed. We cannot come tomorrow and tell the men to make tortillas and the women to start plowing; it’s not about changing roles in a culture such as ours, but about recognizing the value of these roles in community and family life.

In sustainable agriculture there are also some financers that see the traditional way of production as the cause for the backwardness of peasant communities, because they use backward, not modern, systems that do not contribute to the needs for production present at the moment; and, therefore, we have to discuss that it is important to innovate, to make changes, adjustments, but that we also need to conserve and maintain the balance between the traditional knowledge and forms of production, and the innovations, improvements and technology transfers, which is what they seek, changes from one day to the next, to see that if the peasant could produce for six months, for the next two years he could produce his own food for the 12 months, but also generate surplus for the market. These are the things that we need to discuss because there are others that are not similar to the logic of the people who donate the money”.

The work of CEDICAM and the Mixtec good life

Using the documental, historical, experiential evidence and the interviews carried out in this study, we identify the following elements as part of the construction that CEDICAM has contributed to the Mixtec good life, strengthened when the backing and the cooperation from external agents have conjugated with the principles, social norms, philosophy and own values that persist in the Mixtec culture.

Recovery of Mother Earth: The rebirth of life in the soil, the ravines, the pronounced hillsides, and all the community spaces on which the peasant depends, with the promotion of agroecological, organic practices, the implementation of conservation and reforestation tasks, particularly in the spring heads, thus reviving the agroforestry landscapes, restoring the ecological balance, biodiversity and the hope of many people who do not want to migrate from their territory (^{Velásquez and León, 2013}).

Persistence of peasant agriculture: In the Mixtec region, the sacred connection of the peasant with the land persists; the peasant is aware of the value when producing a healthy food that is respectful to nature and people’s health; CEDICAM supports this vision and seeks alternatives to reduce the use of chemical inputs, moving in the process towards a form of agriculture that is non-dependent, sustainable and respectful to life.

Defense of the collective heritage, biodiversity and life: When sowing, selecting, improving and conserving native seeds, maize as axis of life and the peasant-indigenous worldview is part of a sacred sphere, in the ancestral knowledge that made it possible and in the autonomy that sowing it for auto-consumption gives. The seed is the first link in the food chain and when the peasant shares and inherits the seed, he reproduces his culture, takes care of the family and the community.

Liberation of the human spirit: One of the key factors in the success of CEDICAM’s work is its experience in the training of peasant promoters in the processes of agricultural promotion, learning and innovation, promoting with this a philosophy that dignifies, recognizes and uplifts the work of peasant families. Methodologies such as Peasant to Peasant (Campesino a Campesino) and Field Schools for Farmers (Escuelas de Campo para Agricultores) have managed to reinforce the trust of the peasant as knowledgeable subject, who understands his craft, skilled from his relation and daily contact with life, with nature, which gives him a deep comprehension about it. The pride of achieving a new result makes people become passionate and wish to teach and transmit each discovery with freedom, being empowered by simple and sustainable solutions that give real satisfaction and coin the collective triumph. The promoters feel proud of the knowledge they acquire and of the possibility of being of service to their people.

For the strengthening of community and family life: The personal values, awareness and social abilities that promoters develop facilitate processes of organization and communication to mediate and help in conflict resolution. The example gives authority and encourages others. Women promoters reach and take on spaces of representation and decision in the public life of the community, they earn the respect and recognition of men because of their social work, particularly single women, who are socially stigmatized due to their condition. The processes have fostered the civil power that individuals and communities have inside them to do things, which is evidenced in the results achieved in the recovery of their common goods. The works are agreed upon and carried out in collaboration with the community authorities, taking the information from the projects to the assembly for the community to be informed and decide what is best for the town.

Antonio: What CEDICAM contributes has to do with the environment, with means of production, with the concept of food security and food sovereignty, with equity between men and women… We recover the good traditional practices of agriculture and restore coherent practices, compatible with the modes of production in the region, because if we wait for these people to become productive depending on machinery, inputs, it can happen, but: What will the economic, environmental, cultural, genetic effect be when we promote strongly dependent systems that displace the local? And, how do you connect all of this to a happy way of living? It should be considered, discussed. Like when a landscape changes, when nature becomes again the fundamental part of the territory and the space, people feel happy. Like when the family has food security, water availability, different soils, etc., people have a different state of mind, and how does this connect in the community…

Somehow we promote a safer diet, more diverse, we have introduced 16 different types of vegetables, but they demand organic fertilizers, water, and a series of things, and we don’t think of the local vegetables: nopal (prickly pear), purslane, greens, creole zucchinis, all of this that has an important food potential and that people have in their plots… and that were part of the diet of our ancestors.

I don’t know if the changes that we are generating are leading to a modern way of life… If in CEDICAM’s work we find that people have a lifestyle that they want and not one that is imposed, then we will be contributing to what you are calling the good life, but we need to evaluate it because it depends on whether people understand that taking care of nature has to do with yourself, that food security is basic and key, and that your wellbeing depends on it and not on bringing food from outside; if you understand this you will farm the land and you will take care of it and you will love it, you will manage it in a way that guarantees food for you and for the next generations. There is a need to discuss where we want to go next…