Wendy Call
Book: No Word for Welcome
Wendycall.com

megaproject

Ochoa from MIT

shrimp farming

removing a mayor

dealing with government

Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Attended a conference in 1997 as a community organizer-- 1000 people got together for a three day meeting to deal with a megaproject targeting the Tehuantepec Isthmus.
Was working at a Boston org called Grassroots International.

People in the community can trace their history back 5000 years.
They look at the effects of plans on the community hundreds of years into the future.

If you can't afford to pay,  your education STOPS

Changed ideas of what it means to be cosmopolitan, to be well educated.

Mexico's news is centralized, mostly produced in Mexico city-- come from mexico city-- costs $1 a paper in a place where people earn $2 a day.

Mexican are written for HS or college grads, not for people with 4 years of education, like many Mexicans.

"ya nos cayo' el chahuixtle"
the corn crop disease has arrived

Corn smut-- disease has befallen our crop--
phrase used when something catastrophically bad happens--

Felipe Ochoa, Mexican, also at MIT for four years, spearheaded the mega-project

500 page document describing the megaproject.

How did these people stop or slow the globalization juggernaut?

They'e been dealing with globalization for centuries.

Those people are violent, don't let people into their communities..
there was a deep respect from other parts of mexico for other people in this region.

Ochoa thought that they were of no consequence.
Would say, "People there are uninformed." Only way locals figured in his plan was how he would market to them.

How can people in the US recalibrate the way they think about education and sophistication?

Mixe  5000 years
Xapotec   750 years there, still considered immigrants
locale: juchitan

chinotech
nawatl language of the aztecs
mixte

Why title, "No Word for Welcome"
many languages so people transliterate from their language to Spanish.
People don't say Bien Venido-- welcome, they say , ya llego-- you've arrived.

also people who were selling the megaprojects were not welcomed.

Mexican version of EPA PROSEPA

Constant pressure from people in the community, people around the world.
Huge conflict between shrimp farm advocates in government (mayor probably elected through electoral fraud) and opponents.

Often that change looks like no change.
The end point of these huge struggles is things remaining the same, at least from the outsiders perspective.
Also, I learned, these struggles never end.

What were the takeaways as how to be a better community organizer.
The struggle never ends, that you have to keep it up.
saying from the Cree people of the US-- slogan for     when the last tree has died, when the last fish has been cut-- then will we understand that we can't eat money.
Their economy was not about money, was about something more fundamental than money-- about keeping their community alive-- any indigenous community has to be fundamentally concerned with keeping engaged because there is so much

Staying connected to the land, even if you don't work the land.

Knowing that it's not just about you.

People's natural way of being was to set aside their personal desires and think about their larger community.

What of the idea of "indianness"  

International development exchange
Cultural Survival

They work to help protect local indigenous cultures.

UCICONI
American Jewish World Service

Zapatistas had huge impact on the Isthmus people.
Zapatistas had inspired and affected them.

superhiway
walmart

Juchitan has a Xapotec market where you can still buy grilled iguana-- that's where they put the Walmart, which wasn't even part of Ochoa's plan.

It happened because of a series of illegal land transfers.

Lionel Gomez lived across the street from where they opened the Walmart.

Socrates walking through the Athenian market talking about all the things he did not want.
Lionel goes to Walmart for the air conditioning, but doesn't buy anything.

The losses happened when the leaders didn't listen to their constituents. OFten when there's corruption.