Rural Enterprise Center

January 28th, was our full second day here in Maltrata, though I split from the group to do my own work, I joined the group to visit the middle school.  We visited with kids during the 11:00 am recess and then three 7th grade classrooms, each between 50 and 60 students.  When asked who had family in Northfield, over half of them raised their hands.

According to the Atlas de Mexico, a free publication of the Public Education Secretary (SEP) that is distributed to elementary school children around the country, Veracruz has a total area of 71,735 square kilometers representing a 3.79% of the country and a population of 6,908,975 or 7% of Mexico’s population, this data is quoted from 2000 census.

Maltrata is one of 210 municipalities in the state and has a population of 20,000 (according to the Major’s office).  Veracruz is also a transit zone for many immigrants from countries to the south such as Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who travel by train through the region.  Tales abound as to stranded travelers who have decided to make their home along their immigration route in towns along the highway. It is not hard to find someone who knows a Guatemalan or a Honduran who lives down the road or in the nex town. It is common for local folks to be approached by immigrants who need food, temporary work, shelter, or a donation to continue their trip to the United States.

On January 28th, our group had a chance to visit the local middle school.  Though both visitors and the local kids where at first very  shy, with help from our group leaders (Father Dennis from St. Dominic’s Church) they found ways to get to know each other very quickly.

We also watched a game of girl’s soccer, though the game was exiting, I was very distracted by the impressive background that included he “Pico de Orizaba”, standing at 5,747 meters (18,850 feet) above sea level, is higher than any mountain in the contiguous 48 United States.

Groups from around the region and many European and Japaneese tourists climb this inactive volcano, most can make the clim in one day as there is a road that reaches past half point.  There is also an astronomical observatory in the hill next to the volcano, wich is open to schools without previous notice and to tourists with a 6 day notice.

On January 30th, I visited Cholula a city in the state of Puebla on the road back to Mexico City.  Two others from the group joined on this trip and we hired a  local driver. Cholula is known as “the city of the 365 churches”, though this includes small chapels around the city, the amount of church buildings that show-up in a panoramic photo makes anyone wonder if the aren’t actually all those churches around.

Regional tourist destinations include of course the Pico de Orizaba (above), Cholula, the Africam Zafari, where animals roam free and visitors do the trip inside an African Style bus, and jurasic park style warnings  about staying inside and closing the windows when crossing the areas with the more dangerous animals.

There is also the city of Orizaba a 20 minute drive down the mountain from Maltrata, with amazing shopping, central park entertaintment, and a fair-like atmosphere all day every day with the market days on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday when it is hard to even more crowded.

Other small cities such as Ciudad Mendoza between Maltrata en Orizaba are also full of color and have well maintained central parks.  Both Orizaba and Mendoza are backed against the side of the mountain with some amazing  contrasting views and for those more adventurous, a half an hour hike can put them high enough to get a full view of each of these cities, the same goes for Maltrata.

I am traveling with a group of people from Northfield on a trip to the town of Maltrata in the state of veracruz, Mexico.  This town is located about 3.5 hours East from Mexico city just 4 kilometers off the main four lane highway from Mexico City to the port of Veracruz on the golf of Mexico.

The Northfield News has written in the past about the connection to Maltrata. according to Father Dennis Dempsey at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, over 400 people with ties to Maltrata live in Northfield.  When we visited the local middle school here in Maltrata we asked the kids ot raise their hands if they had family in maltrata and I counted over 50% of the students raising their hands. We even met students in the school who have recently returned from Northfield. The Mexican Consulate in St. Paul has activelly promoted the Clubs Veracruzanos, formed by groups from different parts of the state of Veracruz.

When the Church of St. Dominic announced that Father Dennis was leading this trip I signed up right away.  Understanding the culture specific to Maltrata and to the state of Veracruz is very important for the work that we are doing in the State of Minnesota with immigrant communities from these regions.  As we look at business development in Northfield, there is nothing more important than knowing what these individuals have been exposed to in their hometown, but most importantly, what resources are here that we can explore and build opportunities by capitalizing on the family ties and the available resources to build business opportunities.

I am here with this group but sometimes totally disconnected from them as I am concentrated in observing the local economy, and how this is affected by the migration of the young people from this town, the brick industry that 10 years ago employed over 800 people, todays is 80% gone and employs only 80 people according to estimates from local leaders.

As to the trip itself, we could not have it better, we arrived to a fully packed home where over 50 people had gathered, more than anything else, to greet Father Dennis, who has a following here large enough to fill St. Dominic’s a couple of times.

We divided up into groups to the homes of host families who have been feeding us incredible amounts of good local foods.  The next morning my roomate (Andy Kornkve) and I woke-up to the noise in the kitchen and on the street outside of our window.  In the kitchen was Hermelinda and Pablo Lazaro our hosts, waiting with “cafe con leche” for us.  Then we went outside where two different families had set up outdoor cooking stations where pork skins were being fried into crackling and tortillas stuffed with lamb meat and condiments were being deep fried in large steel kettles.  The tacos and some fresh baked sweet bread and more cafe con leche was plenty to get going for the day.

On Monday the 27th, Andy and I went down the main highway to the city of Orizaba, and stopped by a natural spring that forms a large pond and river that the local government has developed for public use.

 The water so clear, one can see the bottom of the pond in areas way over 8 feet deep.  

Every one of these towns has so much history and places to see one could spend a whole month and not get to see most of the historic sites.  In Orizaba for example, there the “steel palace”, 

The central Park was full of vendors and music, stores filled with people and all things considered, it felt like a state fair going on, but not, it was just Sunday morning in Orizaba, Veracruz.

I will provide more links when I can get to a faster connection.

Luis Orlando Galicia Mijangos, born on May 25th 1989, was killed by gunshot last Sunday according to the Red Wing police. Luis Orlando was 26 years old and was from the village of Nueva Concepcion, in the province of Escuintla, Guatemala, he lived in Red Wing since he arrived in the U.S. 8 years ago.  He has a brother and a sister in Red Wing and an Uncle in Northfield.

I have spent many hours in Red Wing since Monday and just came back today after a visit to the local paper, the Red Wing Republican Eagle, I accompanied the brother of the deceased and his uncle, who wanted to present some family points to the Red Wing community through the newspaper.

The stories and speculation have created some tensions and the family wanted to do their part in clarifying their position and their opinions rather than having it speculated or delivered second hand.  They asked me to help with this, as well as many of the logistics associated with sending the body of Luis Orlando back to Guatemala and other community relations that will be better described tomorrow in the local newspaper.

If anybody reading this wishes to contribute funds to cover funeral and repatriation expenses, follow this link.

Articles related to this situation can be found at the Red Wing Republican Eagle, the incident was also reported on MPR, Star Tribune and other newspapers, but here are two relevant issues if anybody is interested in checking them out (you may need to create an account, but it is free of charge).

Police ID Murder Victim, 2 More Suspects

Bail Set in Murder Case

I just came back from a 26 day trip to Guatemala, where I went with my wife and three kids to spend Christmas and New Years with family and friends.  During this trip we were able to see much more of Guatemala then in previous trips when we dedicated most of our time to a project in a single place.

Part of this trip’s purpose (besides visiting as much of my family as possible and improving the kid’s Spanish skills) was making sense of the work that we do with Latin communities in Minnesota by looking at what we do through the lenses of those who live in the towns and cities where many of the immigrants come from.  There is a lot to learn from the way life changes in these places when families separate in search for a better income, or to re-unite with relatives who migrated before.  There is also a lot of incredible new developments happening all over in Guatemala and other Latin American countries, and those changes affect our own ability and effectiveness here in MN as we work with part of these same populations, sometimes still closely connected and other times removed by one or two generations.

In the town of San José Poaquil, for example, located up in the highlands of Guatemala in the province of Chimaltenango (which you can map out by going to google maps and search for San Jose Poaquil; you will need to zoom out to about half of the zoom bar in order to get the map to show the towns  accurately, otherwise it mixes them up), one can see a town that to any visitor unaware of its economic, social and political web, would look like an isolated place.

I happened to work with traditional weavers and agriculture cooperatives from this region from 1989 to 1992 and saw what this town looked like then. Today it looks much different, many more buildings, cars, trucks and money wiring services receiving the “remesas familiares”  as the money sent home from the U.S. are called.  The roads are not gravel anymore either, the market is much larger, there are two and three story buildings that just came to be recently.

This time we visited with my sister Argelina, who runs the orphanage Hogares Santa Maria de Guadalupe, she is part of the School Sisters of Saint Francis, 25 or so kilometers up the road from San José Poaquil.  She has continued to work on economic development in this village since the time I was there.  The current mayor of this town was raised at the orphanage after his parents lost their lives during the Guatemala civil war that ended officially in 1996.  The point about all of this is that despite the apparent isolation of this little town of around 15,000 residents, according to the mayor, there is probably only a handful of families who do not have family, relatives, or close friends living in the U.S.

The same case can be made for many more places, but more specifically about 4 municipalities in the Northern rainforest of Guatemala where my parents and most of my family live.  These municipalities have joined forces in order to better deal with economic development issues and formed the Mancomunidad de Municipalidades del Sur de Peten or MANMUNISURP.  They fully understand that their socio-economic situation has been significantly transformed by the migration of young people to the United States.  The primary reason for such migration is the lack of local economic opportunities.  These conditions have continued to deteriorate under pressure from global and regional economic forces which these small communities are not prepared or able to absove or accomodate.

This context needs to be understood when working with immigrant populations from Latin America in the U.S.. One of my top priorities for the trip (together with meeting with local government and economic development leaders)  was to explore opportunities related to the large influx of money from the U.S. back into these communities, as it represents a large system of micro-investment that if effectively utilized, has the potential to re-vitalize local economies.

Later this month, I will be traveling with Father Dennis and a group from St. Dominic Catholic Church in Northfield to conduct the same exploration in Veracruz, Mexico.  After this two encounters, there will be exchanges aimed at developing a model to capitalize on the transfers of money from migrant families in the U.S. back to their hometowns.  Aligning municipal programs to improve the return on these investments and encouraging more economic activity associated with the ripple effect that this money has, could significantly improve the ability of these communities to create wealth and opportunities locally.  These are also already existing resources, currently invested in a disorganized manner and without local incentives for increasing their size and aligning them with regional priorities where local government money is also being invested.  So far, governments have been looking at this cashflow simply as a way to bring in dollars to buy foreign goods, our aim at the LEC is to establish a couple of projects involving people we work with in Minnesota and show and document the deeper possibilities for rural economic development that already exists within this system of “remesas familiares.”