Rural Development Projects in the Community of Mitontic
- margaretmaearney
- Jul 31, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 14
April 24, 2024
Arriving to Mitontic
We took a two and a half hour drive north to the municipality of Mitontic. As soon as we arrived, the paved road abruptly turned into a rocky, bumpy dirt road. When we hit the bumpy road, my friend Cielo Lourdes announced, "Bienvenida a Mitontic!" "Welcome to Mitontic!" Mitontic has rocky terrain and very little infrastructure for the roads.
As we arrived into the community, we could see women and children waiting next to water spigots where water was hardly trickling out. April is the peak of the dry, hot season before the rain comes. Mitontic has scarce underground water sources and this is apparent when you see the many concrete water cisterns throughout the community. Almost every household has a cistern. In the photo I took below, you can see four water cisterns in just one small area. Rainwater collection is extremely important for families, and in addition to the cisterns, there are other makeshift water catchments made from plastic bottles and plastic containers.
Along the drive you can see many women working in the fields and herding sheep or borregas. This highlighted what the team had told me about women carrying a large portion of the household's work and labor, although this work often goes unrecognized.
The Women's Workshop
When we arrived to the community, a large group of smiling women greeted my friends Cielo Lourdes and Yareni who are the CISERP field extension workers. They gathered at a house in the community to receive a workshop focused on personal hygiene, health, and nutrition.
Approximately 20 women arrived to the workshop, some with their children and babies. Cielo Lourdes and Yareni organized an activity in which the women participated in taping photos of different hygiene and health practices onto the poster board. This got each woman involved and even the shyest women smiled when Cielo Lourdes called their name to come up and tape a photo onto the wall. Cielo is a fun and dynamic facilitator. She gets the group moving and laughing. She is bilingual in Spanish and Tzotzil (the indigenous Mayan language) and carried out the workshop in the women's native language, Tzotzil.
Since I speak Spanish, I am used to understanding what is going on, but since the majority of women speak their native language, Tzotzil, I could only speak with a few women who also know some Spanish. It was nice to see their native language being preserved. The women wear traditional embroidered clothing with many beautiful, bright colors. They tie their babies across their backs with lovely fabrics and keep their hair in long braids. They wear small plastic sandals and flats, even when they walk far distances or work in the fields.
Agroecological Projects and Women's Productive Patios
After the workshop we went to see more of the community and some of the projects. First, we went to the property of Lorena, an active program participant, where she has many different crops in cultivation. She had squash, lettuce, beans, pumpkin, corn, strawberries, cilantro, cabbage, and more. Mitontic has very rocky land, and Lorena showed us how she used every corner of the land to produce. In the photos below Lorena is pointing to a small patch of land between the rocks where she planted beans and she laughed at how well they have grown in this little space.
Cielo Lourdes and Yareni said that in addition to the lack of water, many communities in Mitontic have very rocky land that makes agricultural production a challenge. They told me that they have to work with what they have and figure out ways to produce within the circumstances.
Healthy Homes Initiative
The healthy home initiative promotes nutrition, hygiene, and health of households. Below you can see a photo I took of one household's kitchen. It was a bit dark but in the back corner you can see the fuel efficient stove (which uses less wood and produced less smoke in the house). To the right you can see the faucet that provides running water from the cistern outside. Outside the house, this family had chickens, turkeys, and chicks as well as their vegetable garden and harvests of ava beans, wheat, and other varieties of crops. This is all part of the ideal "healthy homes" plan that CISERP has planned out. As you can see in the drawing below the photo, the ideal healthy home features a water cistern, a faucet in the home with running water, poultry outside, a diversified vegetable garden, and the milpa (corn, beans, squash and other staple foods).
The work of organizations like CISERP provides important technical assistance to rural families and aims to find ways to make local livelihoods more viable and improve basic living conditions.
Something that stood out in the region was that among smaller, more humble houses there were also big, concrete mansion looking houses like this one below. They often looked unfinished and uninhabited. Because people struggle to make a livelihood in their communities, there is a lot of immigration from rural areas to urban areas and abroad. Looking at these concrete mansions makes me think two things. One is that people have a sense of connection to place. Instead of staying abroad or in other places, they are often finding ways to improve their lives at home in the rural places where they consider home. Second is that standard of living and what is considered a "good life" is probably influenced by experiences and places outside of their community. This is probably changing the makeup of rural communities in many ways. It would be interesting to know more what people think about these changes.
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