WVU - Amizade Latin American History Service-Learning Course Rolling in Mexico!

A GUEST POST from Katherine Stackel, Amizade's Facilitator for the WVU-Amizade Latin American History course taught online by Dr. Evan Widders, and including excellent cultural experience and service opportunities in Puerto Morelos and Guanjuato. Take a look:

Amizade site coordinator Luis (*see below) and I have been leading the students around and getting everybody ready for our month in Mexico. Since the first day things have been great. We are staying at Luis's family's inn, a 10-room hotel on the beach. It is rustic yet beautiful, and it has been very interesting to learn more about this region. I've traveled through the Yucatan peninsula before, but the other times what I saw was a little different.

We are working on a couple of different service projects. First, we are teaching ESL in a kindergarten across the highway on "the other side" of Puerto Morelos. This community is divided in a sense, because half of the town is located on the side of the highway with the beach (the highway runs parallel to the beach). On "the other side" you can definitely see what a difference it makes when community members do not see the good impact of tourism, i.e. money. The houses are much bigger on this side, and although I would call this a sleepy town, there are still various small, and professional, tour companies here. Many people speak at least some English. The schools on this side, since they are visible to tourists, are in better financial situations because they receive many more donations than those on the other side.

On the other side most of the houses are "casas de interes social" (social-interest houses: built by the government for people with no savings/money. These citizens can get these houses by agreeing to pay a small-ish monthly fee for the following 15 years-- though people in town say that the fee is actually quite exorbitant compared to what the houses are actually worth-- credit options for the poor... always a debate-able theme...). Luis and his family, and Amizade, have worked on the other side of the highway for years.

Because of this project our days have been filled with hours of planning. Kids learn so fast! We have been having fun trying to remember all of the songs that helped us learn things when we were children. Songs we have sung so far are "one little, two little, three little indians," "hokey pokey" (to learn body parts), "head, shoulders, knees and toes," an invented song about colors, among others. There is no shame in this work. The kids love to see us make fools of ourselves. They love learning English and have been really good about participating. But I think their favorite activity is dragging us around the playground. There's an album at the end here.

Other than that we spent a good part of today translating a video for the tourist information center in town.

Basically, Playa del Carmen and Cancun's mega-tourism infrastructures have destroyed much of the ecosystem in this part of the country. There is not sufficient infrastructure for controlling these resorts. Puerto Morelos is located almost directly between the two. Giant building projects have destroyed reef areas, caused flooding, sewage problems, and are not really providing jobs for people in this area or (for the most part) in the cities where the operations are located. It seems that most of the workers in these big places come from other areas of the country, or other countries in the world. This is not to say that the region doesn't gain from this tourism. The transportation systems (highways, airports, etc) are phenomenal- which can be of great help. Having such large, important projects in the area has also brought high schools and even a university to the area. There is a give and take happening, but it is definitely happening more on the latter end.

Puerto Morelos is an extremely organized community dedicated to changing that. In 1995 the community got together and gained enough support to get national park status for their area. They are protecting 21 km of reef, and some great mangrove areas that are important for fish hatching and bird migration. They got government support to limit the amount of development that is happening in the area. They continually lobby against plans to continue developing the town (and especially limit its tourism operations) until they are able to achieve proper sewage and water control. The workers at the tourist information center (and many hotels involved in these projects) volunteer their time for these efforts. You can sense a big culture of conservation and it is very refreshing. They are also careful of how they talk about the mega-tourism operations. Their idea is to learn from them and continue working towards positive change and better regulations.

At night we have 2-hour long classes based on academic service-learning articles, and the students' overall experiences and how they compare to the stereotypes that we brought to the country. We are analyzing our own way of life as well, and how it relates or absolutely does not relate to what we find during our experience. We will continue working on these and other projects (eg. cleaning out and preparing for organic gardens, etc) until June 15th, when we head to Guanajuato in the central hills. We have other service projects planned for that time. I am lucky to be traveling with 4 very open-minded, well-behaved and somewhat reserved (and observant) college students. We are learning a lot from our Mexican partners and we know that we are all very lucky to be having this experience in paradise!

Here is a short album of everything so far: http://picasaweb.google.com/k.stackel/MexicoWAmizade2010#