Don Apolonio, Mixteca Non-GMO Farmer

Apolonio is a happy, contented man. He has raised a large family, he has a new block house with metal roof, a small modern kitchen with a gas stove, and a traditional adobe kitchen removed from the house due to the smoke engendered by burning wood as the fuel source....where the tortillas and tamales are made. He has an oxen or two for tilling and planting, and four successful children. One son has gone to 'el norte' to earn a living, as the land, until recently, did not support productive agriculture. His wife Francisca, daughter  Silvia, and daughter-in-law Rosa helped us immensely in gathering recipes and sharing cooking techniques for their simple, healthy recipes, created from their milpa gardens and companion plants of nopales and wild greens. Delicious....

Apolonio told us a saying  in Spanish, which our co-author  Phil Dahl-Bredine then translated into Spanish a similar English phrase, whose meaning is roughly: 'if you eat food, you are involved in agriculture!' How true. Yet most children in large urban cities in the United States have no idea where there vegetables come from, other than the store.

Our Democratic Commission of Communal Goods

AUGUST 2012.....

In the 18th century Jean Jacques Rousseau decried the chicanery of those who would stake out the

“commons” of Europe protected for use of all by the Charter of the Forest, and claim, “This is mine!”

He called on the people of his time not to be duped by the “imposters” of privatization.

Yet a few decades ago, by accepting the self-serving concept of the “tragedy of the commons”, invented

to support the radical privatization agenda of the Reagan/Clinton/Bush free market politics, it seems we

have let ourselves be duped once again. The fictitious “tragedy of the commons” (if it doesn’t belong to somebody, it will get trashed) does not exist. What does exist is the tragedy of an unmanaged and unregulated “commons” (our air, water, oceans and biodiversity) innan era that prizes unlimited individual and corporate greed.

Here in Santiago Tilantongo, Oaxaca, we have the privilege of taking part in one of the relatively few managed commons that the followers of Rousseau’s “imposters” have not yet been able to enclose. And it is instructive to see how well it works.

As in most indigenous communities of Oaxaca, here there are two parallel governments, the municipal and the Commission of “Bienes Comunales”, or communal goods. As the name indicates, it is the responsibility of the Commission of Communal Goods to regulate the use of the forests, grazing lands, and, when appropriate, agricultural lands that families have abandoned, in the name of the community. All of this is the commons of Tilantongo. The Director and Vigilance Committee of bienes comunales are democratically elected in town meetings of the entire pueblo of Tilantongo, including its 17 different communities. For any major decisions the entire pueblo needs to be convoked to approve or disapprove. Meanwhile, it is the task of the director and bienes comunales committee to regulate and manage the common resources of the village, approving permits for harvesting trees for building and firewood, and medicinal plants, for use of gravel and sand, water, and minerals, as well as for fining abuses. Although the serious deforestation that marks the post-conquest history of Tilantongo is testimony to lapses and abuses of the trust placed in the commission of common goods, the system has and continues to successfully govern the commons of Tilantongo and hundreds of other indigenous communities of the state of Oaxaca.

Nevertheless, Rousseau’s “imposters” have not given up. Mexican government free market advocates

promote programs to privatize common lands and revoke constitutional provisions that protected them

from sale or use as collateral. Foreign corporations are anxious to patent indigenous biodiversity and

reduce the rich commons of indigenous native seeds to dependency on imported genetically modified

seeds.

And now, in the name of conservation of the planet’s resources, contaminated and made scarce by the excesses of the Global North, international environmental groups and commercial corporations wish to take control of indigenous resources – the indigenous commons – by putting a monetary value on the forests, biodiversity, water, and even the wildlife of theindigenous South. Through contracts for “environmental services”, and investments in commodified biodiversity, water, and biological resources, they intend to effectively transfer control of the commons of the South to private corporations and speculators, using tools such as bio-reserves and carbon sequestration projects that exclude indigenous peoples from access to their own lands. In essence they propose to solve the problems that attachment to money (greed) has created, with more money. Are we naïve enough to be duped once again by the new form of enclosure of the commons proposed by the radical privatization politics of Rousseau’s 21st century “imposters”? Or are we ready to learn something about the management of the commons of the planet from the indigenous communities of Oaxaca?

Blessings,

©Kathy and Phil Dahl Bredine, Tilantongo, Oaxaca August 2012

(P.S. We just finished learning even more from our local contributing industrious Mixtecan chefs this August, how to make a Dried Shrimp Mole, and Amaranth Seed Cookies.......all while chatting, weaving and cooking in our instant kitchen! ) 

©Judith Cooper Haden Photography

Zaragoza Tilantongo, Oaxaca- Señora Epifania Palacios and Rosario Santiago Santos

Rosario

Rosario Santiago Santos is a pretty goat herder and campesina and the young, gregarious granddaughter of Epifania Palacios, a village cook in the mountain pueblo of Zaragoza Tilantongo.  We arrived at their brick home about sunset after a breathtaking ride up the side of a mountain on a one lane road with a sheer drop off both sides, praying all the while we wouldn’t meet a car coming down in the opposite direction! After that little surge of adrenaline, I was happy to get out of the driver’s seat and walk down the pine tree lined path to their house, stretch my legs and slow down my beating heart!

Epifania

As we arrived, they were just finishing the Mole Amarillo de Frijol Blanco and Nopales for the annual Feria de la Milpa to be held the following day. The kitchen was the standard Mixtec country kitchen in a separate building with a stone table set up to build a fire on, with a molded adobe ring to hold the flat unglazed disk called the comal. Next to that was her metate, where she massaged the dough and made little thick masa cakes that were pressed into large very thin tortillas on a big iron press.  Rosario amused us with stories while she made countless fresh tortillas on the comal. 

Nearby were two more molded rings to rest the round ollas where she had cooked beans, and the nixtamal, which is dried corn boiled in water and calcium oxide (cal) to soften. Lots of firewood was stacked in a corner. The large cazuela they were stirring held enough mole to serve small bowls to about 200 people. True to tradition, the people in the Mixteca are very generous and they insisted on giving us some to try. It was delicious, very filling with the beans and cactus pieces immersed in a tasty mole sauce bursting with the flavor of chile guajillos, cooked in combination with corn masa and herbs, and ever so picante! The belief in their household is that if the food isn’t “hot” or picante, it can make you ill! 

It is said that this dish or some rendition of this recipe is the traditional food to make when the family and others in the community come to plant corn.  Very appropriate to make for the Feria de la Milpa, where everyone in CEDICAM gathers to exchange seeds of corn, beans and squash! 

  MOLE AMARILLO DE FRIJOL BLANCO Y NOPALES

WHITE BEAN AND CACTUS YELLOW MOLE

YIELDS 12 - 14

INGREDIENTS

For the beans:

I pound white beans

½ medium white onion, finely chopped

5 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 hierba santa leaves, torn into big pieces

2 teaspoons sea salt

1 pound nopales, grilled, then cut into pieces

  MOLE AMARILLO DE FRIJOL BLANCO Y NOPALES p2

For the mole:

1 head garlic, peeled

1 white onion, in thick slices to grill

3-4 ounces chile guajillo, depending on how “hot” you want it

2 tablespoons Oaxacan oregano, or marjoram, dried

2 teaspoons cumin seed

3 whole allspice berries

6 oz.  prepared masa OR  (2/3 C. masa harina mixed with 1/3  C + 2 TBS water)

 sea salt, to taste

METHOD

For the beans:

In a olla or clay pot with a lid, heat 3 quarts of water to boil.  Add onion and garlic and cook 15 minutes. Add the beans, lower the heat and cook 45 minutes or until almost soft.  Add the hierba (hoja) santa leaves and 2 teaspoons sea salt, continue cooking five minutes and add the nopales.  Remove from heat. 

For the mole:

On a comal, griddle or dry frying pan, roast the garlic and onion until translucent.  In a small pot heat 1 quart of water to boil.  Pour over the chiles and soak for 15 minutes, or until soft.

With tongs, remove chiles from soaking water and grind in the blender with, the roasted onion and garlic, oregano, cumin, and allspice until very smooth. Place puree in a food mill and strain.

Add the puree to the bean mixture and heat through about 10 minutes.

Place the masa in a blender with one cup of water and blend until smooth.  Add this mixture to the mole and cook for 15 minutes more.  Add salt to taste and serve with limes.

©Susana Trilling SOMH Sept.2011 Oaxaca
Photography @ Judith Cooper Haden All Rights Reserved

 

 

"The indigenous vision: the purpose of human life is ultimately to create harmony within the human community and with the natural world....."

(This is the first of the monthy newsletters from Phil and Kathy Dahl-Bredine as they transitioned from Maryknoll Lay Missioners to independent activists within an isolated village in the Mixteca Alta of Mexico).


                                                             November, 2009

Greetings to you all from Oaxaca!  The difference you see in this newsletter represents a change and a challenge for us this fall.  The Maryknoll Lay Missioner Association, because of financial difficulties, is consolidating its work and has decided to move out of the Mexico region. 

Faced with the option of moving to a different country to start new work with Maryknoll,  we, along with the four other lay missioners in Mexico, have decided to stay and continue to work on the projects that are going so well here and producing exciting results.  We plan to continue the same work as before, perhaps as Maryknoll Affiliates, though we will no longer receive support from the Maryknoll Lay Missioners Association.

                                                                                                                           

Why stay in Mexico and why San Isidro Yucuyoco?  How could such a small and isolated indigenous village have any relevance to what is happening in the world today? What puts San Isidro and the Mixteca Alta in the center of what is most important about what is going on in the world today is that here an ancient indigenous people has decided to change universes. Young campesinos who grew up in an eroded, treeless landscape with degraded alkaline soils that spawned hunger and migration, decided in 1983, that this, their impoverished universe, did not have to remain so.

Since that time, spearheaded by the indigenous organization that these young campesinos created, the Center for Integral Campesino Development of the Mixteca (CEDÏCAM), villagers have reforested thousands of hectors of barren arroyos and dug hundreds of kilometers of contour ditches on the mountainous slopes to retain soils and recharge the aquifers which feed area springs, by capturing rain water before it washes down the steep slopes. The green shade of San Isidro’s pathways is due to their work, as are the new forests that fill the valleys of nearby villages such as San Antonio Tilantongo. Now they have turned to confronting the key issues that face our world today: the food crisis, the ecological limits of the planet, the corporate dominance of the world’s food system, and the threat to an indigenous agricultural biodiversity, which is the foundation for most of the foods the world eats today. And through the work of Niño a Niño, the village young people are joining in.

At the same time, these indigenous peoples are regaining the confidence to say to a world whose Western philosophies and political and economic systems are having devastating effects on the ability of the planet to sustain life and on the social fabric of the human family, “We have a better vision!” Underneath all of its weaknesses and human pettiness, life in San Isidro, symbolic of indigenous communities around the globe,  is based on the indigenous vision that the purpose of human life is ultimately to create harmony within the human community and with the natural world that is, in fact, our Mother the Earth. The indigenous balance of the “I” and the “We”, which is variously called “estar bien” or “being well”, or “el buen vivir” or “good living” here, is proposing itself as an alternative to the predatory resource wars and devastating destruction of the life of the planet to which the ideologies of Western culture have brought us.

Phil Dahl-Bredine

Kathy Dahl-Bredine

As always our main purpose is to communicate with you from our view in this corner of the world.  But if you do wish to contribute to this work, you can send a tax-deductible donation to:  

Instituto Paz en las Americas, 2645 Mountain View Rd., Silver City, NM 88061.




















Photographs © Judith Cooper Haden