Empowering the Unempowered — Indigenous Communities

Thesis Week 4: Literary Review

I will never forget what happened at that one stoplight on the very last day of my visit to Mexico this summer.

On my way to the airport to return to California, while my mom and I waited at a red-light, a woman in need of help approached us asking us for any money that we could spare. My mom simply nodded no — not in a apathetic kind of way, but rather as a non-thought every-day action, given that this is not uncommon in Mexico, and is seen in everyday life. We instinctively ignored her, but seconds later a wave of sympathy hit my mom and changed her mind about engaging with the woman. My mom asked the woman to approach the car again to help her with $100 pesos, and asked her what was wrong. As soon as the woman started talking I could see she was fighting really hard to hold back the tears in her eyes.

The woman’s husband recently contracted a chronic disease that disabled him from working, the woman recently got dismissed from her job cleaning houses earning the daily minimum wage of $80.04 pesos ($4.32 US dollars), and as if that wasn’t enough, she was expecting to have her baby soon.

Sadly, everyone who lives in urban areas in Mexico, myself included, is exposed and used to the impact extreme poverty has on 50% of the Mexican population (2). The reasons for extreme poverty are deeply rooted in the corrupt governmental structure that ignores the basic human needs of people, such as accessibility to education, which is the core for financial and ethical integration into society. Because of how hard it would be to to resolve corruption and poverty all at once, it would not even considered ambitious, but rather completely out of the question — the solution for these would involve immense and massive efforts from governmental and social institutions at an extremely large scale, that realistically, would largely depend on individual and community efforts for change. However, identifying and starting with the groups of people that are at the bottom of the pyramid who are affected the most by these adversities is the key for starting change — that group of people with the most potential for change are indigenous communities, where out of the 15.7 million living in Mexico, 80% of them live under poverty and extreme poverty (2).

Wealth inequality division in the outskirts of Mexico City.

Access to education is primordial among young children and teenagers that belong to indigenous communities. The causes for educational exclusion vary greatly, but can be narrowed down to discrimination based on ethnicity, poor cultural relevance, poor school infrastructure, low pedagogical quality, poverty, child labor, early teenage marriages and maternity, and poor family and community consensus. In order to understand the relationship indigenous people have with education, it’s important to know that the concept of adolescence does not exist among many indigenous communities. During this time period, indigenous youth and their communities see them as either kids or adults who make a sudden transition from one to another when certain social occurrences happen in their lives, or certain responsibilities are bestowed upon them. The Rarámuri tribe of Chihuahua is a perfect example, who only relate school to childhood. From their age of 13 or 14, young men engage in work as a main activity while young women take over household chores (2). Mixtec and Zapotec youth from other tribes have expressed their desire for education, while at the same time having the social, nonetheless embraced obligations and responsibilities for their families and community:

“We have more responsibilities than our younger siblings, we have to take care of them, help at home and sometimes support our parents in their work. Our parents have sacrificed much for us, so we can have an education. They have had a very hard and difficult life and we are very grateful for the sacrifices they have made. We want to be able to marry later in life, not as young as our parents and grandparents, we want to study first”. (2)

Higher education among indigenous young adults has a great, yet challenging opportunity for growth in Mexico (1). Indigenous people who are part of the minority who have the privilege of entering into higher education are essentially the children of migrants from large cities, and are usually the first generation in their families to do so. These youth have benefited from a less flawed education process than those attending a rural educational system, because they completed the previous educational requirements in urban schools of higher quality. Nevertheless, they are financially poor and continue to be subject of discrimination (1). It can be said that most indigenous kids, teenagers, and young adults are disadvantaged (and even excluded) with respect to education, public services and the the labor market, but are advantaged when it comes to happiness quality of life (2). Adolescence is usually a period of creative and unstable life, in which new identities are defined and consolidated — given this, it can be significantly challenging for indigenous youth (2).

“The right to learn is also important, we like to learn new things, but we do not like going to school because we are treated poorly” (Teenage Nahuas of Temixco, Morelos) (2).

With a lack of access to education, illiteracy becomes a problem to marginalized Indigenous groups, having the highest number of illiterate people in Mexico. In total, there are 8.8 million Indigenous Mexicans who are illiterate. These include the 3.4 million people who are also over 15 years of age, and those 5.4 million who only completed the first two years of primary education — if the equivalent of the third grade of primary education is not achieved, reading and writing skills are lost (5).

Indigenous girl asking for “limosna”(money) at stoplight.

The large inaccessibility to education forces many indigenous people to leave their communities, some with their families, and try to establish in large urban areas for job seeking and better opportunities. Those who manage to establish in urban areas work and live in conditions of poverty, just like in their villages; they live in neighborhoods in the city outskirts without access to services, they work in precarious employment conditions, and children tend to abandon school to contribute to their family income — through begging or in informal employment, with no safety and social benefits (4). In addition, indigenous immigrants are forced to confront the prejudices and stereotypes of the urban population, suffer the lack of understanding or the clear rejection of their language and customs in public spaces. It is common for children to engage in the sale of traditional handicrafts and gum in the streets, do shoeshine work or at last resort to begging (4); It is very common to see children accompanied by their mothers, collecting money on the city streets. Their arrival and adaptation to these urban spaces is not easy, and their incorporation into the working life of cities is limited by social stigmatization by the rest of the population (4).

With Mexico having the highest concentration of indigenous populations in the Americas — 15.7 million (7), it is important to set a precedent for other nations to follow as soon as possible in order to improve the indigenous peoples’ quality of life, and provide them with the means to achieving full potential. After all, it is unethical for the groups of people who originally inhabited the American continent to be placed on the bottom of the pyramid and suffer through the incongruences socioeconomic, and governmental institutions are responsable for. As stated by Magdalena Lorand, “the poverty of indigenous communities is often associated with ignorance and/or hopelessness about the fulfillment of their rights, including those already enshrined in the national constitution and international treaties” (2). Hope, empowerment and exposure to tools and services that help provide people their full potential should never be underestimated. Given that in many cases in Mexico NGOs have exerted more influence over policy changes than the national vote of the Mexican legislature (5), NGOs whose mission revolves around empowering and aiding indigenous communities are the best resource to contact and partner with if one wants to help.

For those of us, including myself, who come from a developing country and have the enormous privilege of studying abroad, we must first, recognize our privilege, and secondly, ask ourselves: What can I do with my privilege to help those in need where I come from? For me, apart from having the privilege of studying abroad, I also have the privilege of studying a major not offered in many parts of the world, that helps me approach problems of any kind, and generate solutions through research, ideation, prototyping, and technology integration, while maintaining an empathetic approach to the problem, design-solution, and group of people we’re designing for — Interaction Design. My current plan is to establish a relationship with Mexican and International NGOs and volunteers focused on indigenous communities, focus on a specific problem and area of need, work together with them, and share knowledge and resources from both sides on how to create social good and actionable change that will help empower Indigenous communities in Mexico, and maybe around the world.

Works Cited:

1. Aupetit, Sylvie Didou. Pathways to Higher Education: una oportunidad de educación superior para jóvenes indígenas en México. Anuies, 2006.
2. Busquets, María Bertely, Gonzalo Andrés Saraví, and Pedro Abrantes. Adolescentes indígenas en México: derechos e identidades emergentes. CIESAS, 2013.
3. Hall, Gillette, and Harry Anthony Patrinos. Pueblos indígenas, pobreza y desarrollo humano en América Latina: 1994–2004. Washington DC: Banco Mundial, 2005.
4. Horbath, J. (2008). La discriminación laboral de los indígenas en los mercados urbanos de trabajo en México: revisión y balance de un fenómeno persistente. Pobreza, exclusión social y discriminación étnico-racial en América Latina y el Caribe, 25.
5. Robles, José Narro, and David Moctezuma Navarro. “Analfabetismo en México: una deuda social.” Realidad, Datos, y Espacio: Revista Internacional de Estadistica y Geografia 3 (2013): 5–17.
6. Schmelkes, Sylvia. “Educación superior intercultural: el caso de México.” conferencia presentada en el Encuentro Internacional Intercambio de Experiencias Educativas, Guadalajara, Jalisco: udeg-uaci/anuies. 2003.
7. Torres, José Luis, et al. “La salud de la población indígena en México.” Caleidoscopio de la Salud México FUNSALUD (2003): 41–54.