In Mexico, They are Still Loved

 

The sculptor Alejandro Santiago was saddened by the reality of the little village near Oaxaca city, the one that still makes the handmade rugs for which it is famous. It is emptied of working age people, especially men, populated by old women and men, children, and some non-aged women. The working men are all away, in the United States or elsewhere, working to send back remittances that keep the family going. When I was there recently, his installation "2501 Almas de Migrantes" had taken over the plaza in front of Sto. Domingo, the streets nearby, and was said also to be occupying municipal offices. The clay figures, male and female, look uncomfortable, distressed, but they stand there in the plaza and on the street, representing creative energies and participation that are missing from the community because all those people were forced to leave.

I am sure they were forced to leave, because this is a truly beautiful place. The landscape is gorgeous. The people have lived there for millenia, attested by the Zapotec and Mixtec ruins that mark the mountaintops. Great treasures were wrought here in ancient times. It is said that these are the people who invented corn, breeding it selectively from a grassy grain that grows wild in the area. What happened?

The fields are still fertile, growing an abundance of vegetables and fruits and coffee. The people's hands are skilled, creating rugs, other textiles, beautiful embroideries, pottery, and amazing painted wooden fantasy animal figures. Still, somehow, the people are too poor for the men to stay. They must go and work in the fields harvesting crops in other countries, or enduring the rigors of industrial meat processing plants, or cleaning houses, or whatever.

Nearly half the population of Mexico is poor in the sense that they don't have enough to eat or a secure place to sleep. Many of those are children. This drives their fathers and/or their mothers to leave them to find jobs wherever they can, enduring hazards to get there, and putting up with difficult working conditions so their children can have food, clothes, school, medical care.

They leave their souls in the villages, says Alajandro Santiago. What can be done?