Oaxaca, one of the poorest and most ethnically diverse states in Mexico, is home to many indigenous communities, adding the Zapotec people. I have spent many years in the central valleys of Oaxaca performing anthropological activities in rural Zapotec villages, documenting people’s lives, migration patterns and food culture.
Now, my summer studies in Oaxaca have been canceled due to the pandemic, I am by far how Zapotecs deal with coronavirus given complication points like chronic poverty, insufficient fitness care, limited internet, language barriers and lack of running water.
Working with colleagues from the Universidad Tecnológico de los Valles Central de Oaxaca in Mexico and navigating the resources of the online media, I find that the Zapotecs contract the pandemic by doing what they have done at all times when the Mexican government cannot or does not want to help. Them. inspired by local indigenous traditions of cooperation, autonomy and isolation.
So far work is under way. While infections and deaths are on the rise throughout Mexico, many rural Zapotec villages remain largely far from the coronavirus. The Zapotec village of Santos Reyes Yucuno reported its first infection on July 17, for example, 4 months after the arrival of COVID-19 in Mexico.
Aboriginal survival strategies
Cooperation is a fundamental pillar of Zapotec life in Oaxaca. A history of social exclusion through the federal government reminds Zapotecs that they must rely on politicians to save them.
People portray in combination from an early age, assembly in “tequio”, or communal functioning brigades, to carry out projects that can range from portraying a school to repairing the electricity grid. Individuals, their families and friends portray in combination to make sure that small jobs pass quickly and that the great portraits are less burdensome.
The Zapotecs also a relative isolation of Mexican society in general, according to my research. They grow food in their ‘milpas’, or lawn plots, to complement the rates purchased in the stores and monitor their own communities with volunteers called ‘topiles’. With high degrees of trust in the network and a history of autonomy before the Spanish conquest, the Zapotecs who continue to live in the Oaxaca countryside do not want or allow access to the outdoors to their villages.
These 3 facets of classical Zapotec culture – cooperation, isolation and autonomy – are all on the occasion of a pandemic.
According to researcher M.C. Nydia Sánchez of the University of Oaxaca, Zapotec families focus scarce resources such as food, information, water and mask in what is called the “guelaguetza”, the practice of running in combination and gifts.
And at a time when Mexico’s food supply chain is in tension, villagers make sure no one is hungry by expanding their crop of “corn,” the corn used to make tortillas.
The “chapulines”, herbs collected from the fields and temporarily roasted in the fireplace, return to the table as a protein-rich option for expensive meats purchased in the store that can no longer be eaten locally.
Consensus rules
However, the united nature of Zapotec communities would possibly also complicate other measures to restrict residents’ exposure to infection.
They are small villages of a few thousand souls at most. Everyone knows everyone and it’s typical for Zapotecs to spend a lot of their day with their circle of family and friends. This can hinder the social distance advised by national fitness officials.
“Not greeting others so much on the street [it’s hard], because we’re used to it,” a Zapotec named José Abel Bautista González told Reuters in April. “It’s a tradition, people’s culture.”
Instead of closing their doors to the circle of family and friends, the Zapotecs aim to prevent the COVID-19 from entering.
In much of Oaxaca, villagers are building barricades made of chains, stones and wood to physically block access to their communities, which are serviced through a singles road. Many villages are well quarantined by society.
“We have to put those barriers in position so that visitors or foreigners don’t come,” José Manzano of San Isidro del Palmar told the Global Press Journal on June 28.
Such decisions, such as the highest Zapotec policies, are based on the consensus of the network, not on the order of a local or national political leader.
Uncertain future
Mexico’s indigenous communities must escape the pandemic unscathed.
Mexico is wasting its war on the economic effects of coronavirus: jobs are disappearing and economists expect the national economy to contract by 8% this year. Tourism, the engine of the Mexican economy, has stopped.
This means hunger and a long recession which experts say will have a disproportionate effect on the rural poor. Mexico’s social progress firm estimates that up to 10 million more people can fall into excessive poverty, ending poverty reduction for nearly 10 years.
And if the coronavirus enters the Zapotec communities, it will most likely hit citizens harshly. Their villages lack running water, social distance, masks and the care needed to curb the spread of the disease.
The lack of drinking water also increases the threat that intestinal disorders such as cholera, among other non-unusual physical condition disorders in rural indigenous populations, exteer the effects of COVID-19.