Wednesday, December 2, 1998 Friends, I am troubled by the discussion started by Aram and Wendy’s posting on “ethnic” biological warfare because I believe there are underlying issues that have so far been largely avoided. Even Herb Fox’s constructive “Let’s have more light, less heat” note, suggesting a path away from the conflict, did not try to understand WHY the rancor developed, aside from referring to a sense of frustration among some of us. I hope at some point we can take the time to ask WHY, and explore the underlying reasons that fueled the tension. At the moment my own priorities are pushing me to do other things first, and that’s probably the case for many of us. Recently I got involved with a fairly widespread popular education movement in the southern state of Oaxaca in Mexico, and am looking for ways to support these efforts. One such effort aims at establishing a communal university, as described in the account following this note. If any of you have ideas or know of others who may be helpful, I would appreciate hearing from you. Currently I’m putting together a list of individuals and groups who may be willing to help grassroots educational efforts. George ======================================================================== Totontepec, a dream to be realized in the mountains of Oaxaca High on the steep slopes of the northern Sierra in the Méxican state of Oaxaca lies a small village, a "pueblito". Totontepec is a Mixe village. The Mixe is an indigenous group, I was told, that has never been conquered, not by the Aztecs nor by the Spanish. Oaxaca is the second most southern state, just north of Chiapas, one state removed from the Guatemalan border. It is also the second most impoverished state of México, Chiapas holding first place. But in eithnic diversity Oaxaca is number one, with no less than sixteen distinct indigenous peoples living there and many more languages, considering that even within one ethnic group the dialects spoken in different villages are not uncommonly incomprehensible to inhabitants of other villages in the same group. Surely this is a result of the extreme isolation, until recent times, of many of the villages. A village of "maíz y frijoles", corn and beans, it is poor, dirt poor but not destitute. And probably has been this way since before the time of Columbus. I arrived Friday evening, October 23, 1998, after a tortuous six-hour bus ride snaking endlessly up (and sometimes down) those cliffs and steep slopes that enabled the separate dialects to develop. The rain was ceaseless, the road, with rock, gravel and mud slides, problematic. By chance, when I boarded the bus in Oaxaca city, an elderly man befriended me. Poking me gently from across the aisle with his knurled walking stick to catch my attention, this intensely sociable "abuelo", grandfather, was curious about an obvious gringo embarking on a second-class bus ride into the mountains. "¿Donde va?" Where are you going? Totontepec, I answered, and his face lit up. "¿Porque?" Why? To visit Juan Arelí, I responded. Ah, "¡Mi hijo!" My son! And from then on it was a love affair "entre los dos abuelos", between the two grandfathers. His son, Juan Arelí Bernal Alcántera, had founded a school in Totontepec, an autonomous Mixe school with a curriculum oriented to the needs of the community, and after years of effort, finally succeeded in getting state authorities to recognize the validity of the indigenous- oriented course of study. With that accreditation students could then continue to more advanced studies in state schools after completing their prepatory years in Totontepec. But Juan Arelí's goals didn't end with that achievement. He wants to build a university in Totontepec, and has actually begun to do it. Why a university in the mountains? When students leave to pursue their professional studies in distant large cities, even cities no more remote than Oaxaca, they usually do not return to their home communities. What Juan Arelí hopes to achieve is a professional school in which students from Totontepec and other mountain communities will become technically skilled, as engineers, computer specialists, biologists, and so on, but whose orientation will be to use their professional training to serve the immediate needs of their communities, i.e. they will not lose their campesino roots. To me it is a profoundly important direction in which to move. Only by making life in the world's villages better, by making it possible for young people to have not only materially decent lives but culturally rich and fullfilling experiences in their communities, only in this way is there a hope of reversing the disastrous flood of impoverished peoples to the growing slums of the world's already-inundated and suffocating metropolises. I was lucky, of course, to meet my immediate friend on the bus. Otilio Bernal Reyes had worked as a farm laborer for three years in the U.S. and he knew a few English words, like Com'on! when he instructed me where in the rain we should get off the bus. My name: "Jorge", George. He called me Meester George, and I called him Señor Otilio. I managed to wriggle into my poncho before we got up to leave the bus, and I followed him the few streets -- rivulets -- to his house. He took me right to the table where his son Juan Arelí was working, a space was cleared of some papers, and the visit began with hot coffee. "Mi casa es su casa", My house is your house, Juan Arelí said. And it was. Generous hospitality. That night I awoke at about 2am and for over two hours could not go back to sleep -- my mind racing with excitement over the dream of Juan Arelí. What a fantastic idea! To have a university that combines scientific and technical expertise with a profound respect for the Mixe culture, in fact, which is grounded in that culture and its ecological perspective. We worked pretty much all day Saturday. And Sunday morning I got on the bus, accompanied, to my surprise, by Señor Otilio, a gracious host beyond reason. This note is by way of introduction. I would like to explore whether there is enough interest in the possibility of establishing a sister-university relationship between the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the proposed University of Totontepec to justify pursuing it. Because of the multiplicity of indigenous languages in Oaxaca the "lingua franca" there is Spanish. Within our university there is much talk about diversity, but in fact it is to a rather large extent within the eurocentric context. This could provide an opportunity to broaden the range of diverse experiences open to our students and faculty. I will appreciate any expressions of interest, comments, or other feedback. --George Salzman, November 10, 1998 Physics Dept University of Massachusetts Boston, MA 02125 tel: 617/287-6067 at home:617/547-5033 e-mail:[log in to unmask] fax: 617/287-6053 http://salzman.physics.umb.edu