ANOTHER CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT
excerpt from an interview with Dolores Villalobos Cuamatzi of CIPO-RFM in Oaxaca, Mexico
August 23, 2004

What is your concept of development at CIPO-RFM and within the Zapotec and Miztec communities of Oaxaca?


Dolores:

The concept of development that we have, which really is just a word, many words that they invented, and which does not exist in our language. We can say that development is when your corn grows nicely, when your seeds are abundant, when your crops grow without any diseases, and when your animals grow and reproduce, having their little chicks without them getting sick.

For us, development would mean our children going to school and being healthy, they should be happy and content and learn many things. Development would also be when our grandparents die as they always have, in our houses without too many sicknesses, taken care of by their own family. Nowadays, doctors do caesarians for women which impedes them from having many more children. For us women, we give birth naturally.

For us it's to say, well, no matter how much you want your neighborhood to grow, nor how much you want to have your own family, it's a decision that each individual makes, and that no one can impose it on you.

Development for us would be putting and end to these agrarian conflicts. We must respect our differences between communities and peoples. For us, development would mean that in our countryside the soil wouldn't get damaged with fertilizers.

This is what development is for us ... continuing with our traditional celebrations, to continuing to plant our corn, and continuing to maintain our forests without any introduction of contamination, be it plastic, glass, or diseases.

Nature is what feeds us. Mother Earth is the one that gives us our corn, our beans, and our pumpkin. She is the one that feeds the animals and we also benefit from that. If rain makes the plants grow, and the sun helps them grow, then it's like that for us too!