“¡Zach!”
“¿Qué?” I respond, more than half asleep.
“¡¡¡ZACH!!!”
“¿Qué pasa?”, still disoriented.
“I think they are taking some of our stuff off the bus!”, said Beatriz (in Spanish, of course).
“Tranquila, Bety. No pasa nada...”, as I drift back into my dream.
Surely there was some danger of losing some of our cargo--by malice or more likely by accident—simply because there was just so much of it; somehow we had fit what seemed like an endless amount of boxes and bags in the carriage of our bus. But after having travelled so many times like this, I had learned to worry about lost bags at the end of the trip. There's just not much you can do, and I desperately needed sleep as we made the big move from Salta Capital to Rivadavia, an 8-hour overnight ride on mostly dirt roads.
We arrived at around 8:30 in the morning, probably exhausted more from the preparation and rush to the bus terminal in Salta than the trip itself. Fermín, Secretary to the municipal government of Rivadavia and our main contact in the region, eventually arrived with his pick-up truck to take us to the hospedaje where we would be staying for the next week or so as we settled in.
And then the fun began.
As soon as we had unloaded our gear and eaten the semblance of a breakfast, we were on our way to meetings. Meetings and meetings and meetings, to establish ourselves in the community and form mutual relationships with institutions that will help us reach our goals.
But first, some political context. Rivadavia is a small town--probably about 3000 inhabitants--which is surrounded by indigenous Wichí communities, some closeby (1km), some quite far away and isolated (60km or more). Even so, the politics are fierce and dirty. In terms of elections, buying votes with favors is commonplace, and often politicians will provide transportation to the voting booth on election day to ensure they get that community's vote. Once in office, the situation doesn't improve very much. Conflicts of interest are well-known and accepted (for example, the Director of Public Works also owns the company that builds public housing units), work is slow and inconsistent, and the mayor--who has a 7th grade education and recently won his 3rd term--is never here. Earlier this year when Rivadavia was in crisis due to flooding, it took his staff almost two days to find him. He was at a folklore fiesta in the wine-country town of Cafayate. Needless to say, most people seem to be in disagreement with the government in general, but are also typically dependent on it for their welfare, however mismanaged the process might be.
Since I don't want to bore everyone with every detail of every meeting over the last week, I'll outline here what happened at each place:
MUNICIPAL GOV'T
Main contact: Fermín (Secretary)
What we asked for: Technical, financial, and moral support for the project
What we were offering: Improved quality of life for citizens
Most important thing learned: A housing project had begun in “our” community (La Misión), with 40 homes being constructed and 40 more promised
Most impacting images: The run-down building and primitive technology; the line of Wichí waiting to submit requests and complaints with the gov't
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Main contact: Director
What we asked for: Attendance records for children from La Misón
What we were offering: Assessment of children with learning disabilities by two social workers on our team
Most important thing learned: A shockingly small percentage of children who finish 4th grade in the school located in the community continue on to the 5th grade located in the town, and those who do are in segregated classes
Most impacting images: The classroom of Wichí children reading their dictionaries; a quote on the main blackboard about the cultural value and richness of the indigenous peoples of Argentina
HIGH SCHOOL
Main contact: Director
What we asked for: Students who might be interested in volunteering in the project
What we were offering: Guest lectures in our areas of specialty
Most important thing learned: Only 1 or 2 Wichí youth finish high school every year
HOSPITAL
Main contact: Director
What we asked for: Health records for inhabitants of La Misión; participation in community workshops on health
What we were offering: Donated medications and equipment; general help from our social workers
Most important thing learned: The water of Rivadavia, even in the town, is not drinkable (maximum level of arsenic in water should be below .01% according to the WHO. Here, it is .2%, 20 times the limit)
Most impacting image: two Wichí mothers—aged 13 and 15—nursing their babies
RADIO
Main contact: DJ
What we asked for: Permission to promote our project on the radio
What we were offering: Awareness
Most important thing learned: Listening to the radio is very common, and the staff is completely open to our participation
And finally, the community itself. La Misión is rather unique among Wichí communities. Unlike others we have visited, it lacks a central hub of homes and instead is comprised of a number of disperse hamlets, usually made up of only one or two extended families living in proximity. Also notable is the diversity of living conditions, ranging from stake and plastic lean-tos to humble adobe houses to full-on brick constructions. Most interesting, however, is their apparent lack of a cacique (chief). It is normal after the death of the cacique that there be some dispute about who be chosen for the position, but typically after a year or so most of the community will recognize the new leader. Not only has La Misión been missing a cacique for over two years, it appears that no one is really interested in having one. The priests of the local Anglican church seem to have any sway at all, and even then it is only over a very small portion of the community.
With no central leadership, La Misión has been left to a mild but consistent discord and disorganization amongst its' members. As you may imagine, this creates a difficult situation when you are trying to initiate a community-based project like ours. Each time we speak with a different member of the community we receive a slightly different story, coupled with different motives, different ideas... different everything.
There is one factor, however, that might turn all of that around. As I mentioned before, we found out that the rumored government plan to build houses in La Misión had indeed begun. This was indeed the most notable difference we encountered when we first arrived at the community. They had built a temporary structure as an annex to the defunct comedor (soup kitchen, although its an awful translation) to hold and prepare the building materials. A group of four or five men was cutting iron rods which would be later bound together to form posts for pouring concrete.
Why would public housing unite the community? First, because it would centralize most of the members in one place, providing the combination of having a defined center and living in proximity would, perhaps, promote the idea of living as one unit rather than separated groups. Second, because it gives the community a central project that they can all stand behind. Third, and most importantly, because it simply provides hope that positive change is possible.
Still, the project is not without it's difficulties. Since only 40 homes are being constructed in the first phase, certainly some families will be left out of the selection, an unfortunate reality which is possible even after all 80 homes are completed. Also, some people worry that the small plot of land on which the house rests will become their only land, that the government will try to snatch up the rest of the property that they believe belongs to them. Obviously this worry is not without cause, as such practices are common in the history of the Wichí and indeed virtually all indigenous peoples.
Since the public housing project is already taking place, we are trying to show the community how this is an opportunity to reach even higher goals. Certainly the improvement of living conditions is important, but the betterment of nutrition, higiene, and community integration are goals that are necessary to create a real change in the overall quality of life. Furthermore, the existence of a new community structure also will allow for a more formalized request for the legalization of indigenous lands.
And it is on those four goals—nutrition, hygiene, community organizaion, and land ownership—that we are dedicated. We have not yet focused heavily on hygiene, but this week we made important steps in the direction of completing the other three major goals. We met with the national institute for argiculture (INTA) who tested the water and proposed how and where we would start the farming process. We met with the surveyor to discuss the integration of our plan with that of the new housing units. And we met with community members to discuss their perception of our plan, their doubts and dreams, their needs. Slowly but surely we are showing them that we are a hand that is reaching out to help. I hope that eventually the community as a whole will see us as something more, not just as helpers but companions in their struggle. I think it is possible, and will continue to be more apparent as time presses on. As one of the pastors of the church said in the Friday evening service we attended, “we are all one below the same God”.
One of our key phrases this week has been “Rivadavia no es pobre. Solo está en una situación de pobreza”: Rivadavia is not poor. It is only in a situation of poverty. (The use of es versus está es elemental. Both are translated as “is”, but es is a conjugation of the verb ser, a verb for “to be” which implies permanency [e.g., I am a blonde, I am American], while está is a conjugation of estar, also meaning “to be” but in a more fluid sense of things that are changeable [e.g. I am sad, I am tired]). Although our main focus is on nutrition, a fundamental part of that process is showing both the community and the key institutions of Rivadavia that there is a richness here that is in grave danger of being lost if the status quo does not change. As I have noted before, the richness of the land is already being extracted by outside interests instead of being used to feed those who live on it, the rightful owners. At the same time, the richness of the Wichí culture is slowly disappearing because their communities are in a seemingly impossible struggle to simply survive. Our mission is to make sure those two processes are stopped, and hopefully someday reversed.
I don't have time to go into detail about all of the things I have seen and heard, but I'll leave you with some of the most important things I haven't yet mentioned:
- The pastors of the church conducting nearly all of their Friday service in Spanish simply because we were there, and them asking us to speak up front (very nerve-racking!)
- The children of the community drinking water directly from the water spout with putrifying water surrounding them, all the while knowing that the source is poisoned with arsenic
- The worn and wrinkled faces of women not even my mother's age
- The way the surveyor talked about the Wichís living like animals
- The Wichí children surrounding us while we snapped photos of them, laughing and playing and fighting and joking in both of our half-Spanish tongues
- The two women who were kind enough to come to our meeting even we had invited nearly half of the community (who didn't show up)
- The endless repetetive songs in the church
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