Visit Peñon de los Baños
By Betsy Bowman January 16, 2009 San Miguel de Allende

Visit Rural Mexico
Sat, Jan 17, 9:15am–4pm
Center for Global Justice
300 pesos 

The Center for Global Justice, founded in 2004 in San Miguel de Allende, is a research and learning think-tank conducting participatory research in central Mexico. We research the effects of the globalized economy on the lives of average, rural people.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Mexican government encouraged industrial and agricultural policies called “import substitution” – producing nationally all the things they had previously imported to meet needs and develop infrastructure and industry—in short, to develop their society. Starting in the 1980s and increasingly so in the 1990s, the government changed policy and encouraged the production of whatever could be exported in order to earn hard currency and import what people needed. This drastic shift in policy has had far-reaching consequences.

Until the early 1990s, the average Mexican lived in a rural area and survived by subsistence farming. The surplus produced was then sold in local markets to earn the small amount of cash money a family needed to buy gas for vehicles and cooking, school uniforms for their children, shoes, glasses, medicine, etc. One subsistence farmer told me that until ten or twelve years ago, several times a year at harvest time they loaded up twelve mules with food to sell in the San Miguel market. But they haven’t been able to sell anything for quite a few years due to food imports from the United States.

The end result of producing cash crops and manufactured goods for sale on the international market and importing foreign products to meet needs has been that a lot of people have fallen between the cracks. No longer able to eke out a living by subsistence farming, there has been increasing emigration from the countryside to large cities within Mexico and increasing emigration to the United States and Canada. Hence the crisis of so-called illegal immigration into the US.

On Saturday, January 17, we will visit the organic tomato-growing co-op in Peñon de los Baños, a dairy community some 15 kilometers north of Los Rodriguez. Peñon de los Baños has a fascinating history. Originally it was an ejido in Mexico City where the present-day airport is now located. It was moved from Mexico City to the state of Guanajuato in the 1950s to make room for the construction of the airport. Subsequently, the original residents left, and people from Leon and Celaya came to live on this ejido. 

An ejido is a form of collective or communal land tenure that is the crowning achievement of the Mexican revolution’s agrarian reform. Chuch property and large haciendas or farms were expropriated and given to the peasants who worked on them. It was a long and gradual process of ownership transfer starting in 1938 with President Lázaro Cárdenas and ending only in the 1980s. In 1992, then President Salinas de Gortari, in a midnight maneuver, changed the Mexican constitution, allowing ejidos to be divided up and sold to outside investors. This was a US-required prerequisite for Mexico’s joining NAFTA.

The residents of the ejido Peñon de los Baños have steadfastly held onto their land. Many of their neighbors sold their land to an outside investor and are now day-laborers working on the fields they used to own, earning from 500 to 600 pesos a week.

Peñon de los Baños is a dairy farm. About 60 families who live there own about 500 head of cattle. They sell their milk wholesale to a middleman for about 3 pesos a liter. This does not provide a living for the members of the community, so many have moved to the United States. Several years ago, a group of six families decided to build a greenhouse and grow tomatoes in an effort to make more money and provide jobs for their family members who had left.

Members of the Center for Global Justice were introduced to them in 2006. In 2007, we began bringing visitors from San Miguel to learn for themselves first-hand what life in the countryside in Mexico is like. Some visitors donated money to the Center’s revolving loan fund, the Fund for Community Support, which the Fund loaned to these six families to build the greenhouse. We also connected them with agricultural cooperatives in the state of Hidalgo who are successfully growing organic tomatoes in greenhouses. During the fall of 2007 and the winter of 2008 they built the greenhouse. In the spring of 2008 they planted their first crop, which was harvested in the fall of 2008. They are now planning their second crop.

During our visit, we will dine in the ejido and share conversation with the cooperative members. Please join us. Come to the office at Calzada de la Luz 42 to make your reservation, as the trip is limited to 12 people. The cost includes transportation, translation, comida and guides. Please arrive at 9am. The office phone number 150-0025. The office is open 9:30am-1:30pm Monday through Friday and at 8:30am on Saturday for trips. 

Betsy Bowman, Ph.D., is a research associate at the Center for Global Justice.

Visit CEDESA
By Betsy Bowman

Travel to Rural Mexico
Center for Global Justice
Sat, Jan, 24, 9:15am–4pm (arrive at 9am)
400 pesos 

Founded over 40 years ago, the liberation theology-inspired CEDESA (Center for Agricultural Development) has tirelessly and ceaselessly worked to improve the standard of living of the local folk.

Starting in the early sixties, when 95 percent of the rural folk in northern Guanajuato were illiterate, CEDESA started with literacy classes. Throughout the years, they have also had to struggle against the (formerly) wealthy landowners who tried to undo the agrarian reform of the Mexican revolution and take back the land that had been expropriated by the government and given to the peasants who worked the land. They also struggled to get small mills for each village to grind their corn, thereby saving precious resources that otherwise would have gone to a mill owner.

A constant subject of struggle has always been the peasants’ sense of entitlement to the fruit of their labor and their own dignity. Over 500 years of Spanish domination has taken its toll psychologically. Concomitantly, CEDESA has worked to develop self-organization and mutual organization. There is now a coopertive of campesinos in northern Guanajuato who together have developed a network of some 300 small producers from all over Mexico.

Today they focus on autonomy – how to live independently. They are learning about new ecological technologies to help them live off the land – technologies such as rain water catchment systems, dry toilets, water recycling and, of course, improved organic agriculture. In addition, bee keeping has been particularly successful for them, and they make lots of honey and other bee products as well as cactus-based products. They have developed their own brand of products called “Tierra Generosa,” or generous earth. They have perfected production and packaging of different items for sale.

Today CEDESA is building a model of a productive, sustainable campesino home with the land divided between dwelling, water recycling and catchment systems, dry toilets and vegetable garden separated from the livestock pens and both separated from yet other area of undisturbed land where beehives are kept. The local families are working on incorporating this design into their own homes.

The Center for Global Justice is proud to support the projects of CEDESA and work with them, in particular helping to bring solar stoves to CEDESA. Join us on our visit there.

Please come to the office at Calzada de la Luz 42 to make your reservation as the trip is limited to 12 people. The cost includes entrance to CEDESA, transportation, translation, comida and guides. Office phone number 150-0025. The office is open 9:30am-1:30pm Monday through Friday and at 8:30am on Saturday for trips. 

Betsy Bowman, Ph.D., is a research associate at the Center for Global Justice.

Travel News You Can Use
By Judy Newell

Mexico Travel News

Sian Ka’an Golf Resort opens on Riviera Maya

The new luxury Sian Ka’an Golf Resort & Spa follows the condo-hotel model that has been gaining in popularity in Mexico tourism regions and will soon be selling with pre-construction pricing. It features 25 three-level buildings, each housing 12 units. The design of the development has been created to blend with the natural beauty of the surrounding area.

The highlight of the Sian Ka’an project will be a Robert Trent Jones II 27-hole championship golf course as well as a nine-hole par three course. Other amenities of the development include an on-site commercial center, a medical center, exclusive access to a private beach club, spa, tennis courts and gym. Get your checkbooks ready.


Palace Resorts debuts Aventura Cove Palace

Aventura Cove Palace, Riviera Maya’s newest family resort experience, is slated to open March 30. The existing Aventura Spa Palace split into a resort of the same name with 777 adults-only guest rooms, and the new Aventura Cove Palace family resort on the south end with 489 rooms and amenities geared toward kids and teens. Aventura Spa Palace guests will have access to all other Palace Resorts, including the adjacent Aventura Cove Palace—if they want to put up with lots of squealing and splashing. However, children staying at the Aventura Cove Palace will only be allowed on this and other child-friendly Palace Resorts properties.


Hotel and resort construction suspended 

The world economic crisis and lack of available credit have suspended plans to open more Marriott, Best Western and Fiesta Americana hotels. Especially hard-hit, according to the government development agency Fonatur, will be Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point) and San Felipe, both close to the US border and pitched to appeal to retirees.

The president of the National Association of Hotel Chains said hoteliers are concentrating more on economical hotels built for business travelers.

Mundo Imperial in Acapulco has suspended construction of an 805-room resort combined with Latin America’s most advanced center for exhibitions, conventions, theatre & performing arts, spa & wellness, and even a Pet’s Club. 


Cruise News

Deals, deals, deals

A four-night cruise to the Bahamas starting at US$99? It’s no misprint. Norwegian Cruise Line published that rate in November on a cruise from Florida. Other lines also are making drastic promotions to help fill ships, whether it be basement pricing, smaller deposit requirements or free shore excursions. To stay above water in the current economy, cruise lines are making it as easy for consumers as possible to take a cruise, even if that means basically giving vacations away.

Interestingly, slashing prices in the cruise industry isn’t seen as a death knell as much as it is in the hotel industry. Reducing room rates devalues the overall product and makes it difficult to restore past higher levels once the market improves. The reason? Whereas cruise ships are chock-full of ways to recoup money (gambling, drinks, specialty restaurants, shore excursions) hotels aren’t the same revenue-generating machines.

While cruise lines, even luxury cruise lines, are taking it on the chin and lowering rates, it may not be such a problem; as long as they can keep ships full and generate enough onboard spend, they should be all right once the economy shifts.

Sources: Travel Pulse Daily, Mexico Tourism News, Discovery Channel, Travel Agent Central, USA Today 

Judy Newell heads the travel company Perfect Journeys that specializes discounted rates for airfare, hotels, tours and cruises worldwide, as well as luxury and adventure travel. Contact her with comments or suggestions at JudyNewell_03@msn.com  or go to her website www.PerfectJourneys.net.