Puerto Vallarta & Riviera Nayarit News

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Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029

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Maria. 316 Col. La Moderna Puerto Vallarta, Jal. Mexico.

The Vallarta Paper team gives you the warmest welcome to Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit. We wish you the best of the stays and hope you find the following information useful.

TIME ZONE: The state of Jalisco and the Riviera Nayarit area (Nuevo Vallarta, Bucerías, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Punta de Mita, Litibú, Sayulita, and San Pancho, and Lo de Marcos) are on Central time. beyond that point, time changes to Mexican Pacific Standard Time, or Mountain Time, one hour behind Puerto Vallarta time. Please keep this in mind for your f light schedule.

CURRENCY: Mexican peso is the legal currency. However American and Canadian dollars are widely used and accepted in most establishments. We recommend you try to be aware of the exchange rate.

MONEY EXCHANGE: The easiest and cheapest way to exchange money is to use your debit card in the ATM to withdraw pesos. Be aware of the exchange rate option some ATMs offer upon withdrawal. Exchange houses and hotels usually offer higher rates.

TAXIS: The town and surrounding areas are divided into defined zones. if you are staying in a hotel, fares will be posted by the lobby. If you f lag a cab on the street, ALWAYS agree on the

Welcome!

cost beforehand. In town, prices are by trip, not by person. Only airport- and maritime port-based taxis charge by person, but you can´t catch those in town. UBER is available in town but will not pick you up in federal-sanctioned areas such as the airport.

Important NumbersPhone Calls Mexico has recently adopted the 10-digit system for all

local, long distance, and toll-free numbers, either land or mobile lines. If you bring your mobile phone from home, check with your provider about services available in Mexico, or consider getting a Mexican SIM card. Most domestic carriers will give you unlimited calls to Mexico, US and Canada for as little as $200 pesos per month, plus some data included.

International Long-Distance Calls From MexicoUS & Canada: Dial 001 + Area Code + NumberOther countries: Dial 00 + Country Code + Area Code + Number

Calls To Mexico From AbroadTo make a call to Mexico from abroad, just dial the country code + the 10-digit number.

Emergency Calls: 911

Lizeth ContrerasManaging Director

Cynthia AndradeContent & Design Director

Paco MorásEditor

Vallarta Paper StaffSales

ContributorsOscar Aranda Mena, Martin Rosenberg,

Sujata Gupta,

PhotosRoberto Aceves

Website:www.vallartapaper.com

Contact: vallartapaper@gmail.comeditor@vallartapaper.com

Immigration department 322 224 7719

Canadian consulate – 24/7

800 706 2900Jalisco Tourism Office

322 221 2676Nayarit Tourism Office

322 297 1006Consumer protection

800 468 8722CFE – Power company

071

BUSES: A system of urban buses carry you through the central part of town. There is a different system to travel south up to El Tuito, and yet another one to travel north up to Sayulita. If you want to travel further in either direction, you will need to catch a bus at the central station. Fare within town is 10 pesos. Drivers won’t give you change.

DRINKING WATER: Puerto Vallarta’s water has been awarded a certification of purity for the past two and a half decades. However, the quality of the water tested at the source varies greatly from what comes out of the tap at the other end. We strongly suggest you buy bottled water, available all over town.

TIPPING: In general, you may tip 10-20% in restaurants and bars. Please also try to tip those who bag your groceries or help load your car. Don’t forget to tip your maid, bell boy, masseuse, the band, the entertainment. And by all means, tip more if you want, it will be very much appreciated.

GETTING AROUND: In many places such as Centro Vallarta and Nuevo Vallarta there are paths for bikes and pedestrians. Please be respectful of these designations.

EXPORTING PETS: If you are an animal lover and fall for a dog or cat while in town, know that bringing them home with you is an easy and inexpensive process. You only need a certificate of health from a local vet and check with your airline for additional requirements. If you need further information, call the local animal shelter: 322 293 3690.

Page 3Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029 Health

For sure, it is not like you should need persuading, but if you do have a couple of spare hours, I will tell you why you should spend

them in a spa. There are just as many different spas and treatments as there are reasons to go. Let me tell you about my top 7 reasons.

1. Relaxation and Destress

The basic advantage you get from visiting a spa is good break from your daily routine or stressful lifestyle. Every type of treatment or service, including a massage, can help you relax. Merely sitting in a whirlpool, steam room or sauna can immensely relieve you of stress.

After the spa treatment, you can spend some time in the relaxation area, where you can read a book and have a cup of tea in a quiet relaxing atmosphere.

After this treat, your body, mind, and soul will feel restored.

2. Anti-Aging Effects

There is nothing like a great facial. Truth is, it is pretty difficult to get the level of precision and that splendid after-facial luminosity without the help of a professional. Estheticians are trained and licensed experts. They have the knowledge of advanced application techniques and have access to specialty equipment and professional products that are developed to produce visible and lasting changes in the skin. Your skin can really benefit by incorpo-rating monthly facials into your skincare routine.

Taking care of your body, mind and skin helps to ward off the aging process.

3. Connecting with beloved ones

Spas can be a wonderful place to spend quality time with your beloved ones.

As you steam, swim, plunge and lounge in you can spend time with friends or chat with your beloved ones. Some spas have separate hydrotherapy areas for men and women, but if you go with your better half, you can still enjoy a massage in a treatment room for couples.

Spas can be really fun for girlfriend getaways, and so romantic if you are looking to rekindle romance.

4. Pain management

Be aware of the difference of a Med-Spa and a Spa meant for relaxation only. In the second one, you should not expect a rehabilitation treatment. But speaking in general, massage therapists are expertly trained to understand body mechanics and can offer a soothing way to manage a host of bodily aches and pains.

My Top 7 Reasons to Visit a SpaWhether you suffer from a chronic pain

condition like arthritis or fibromyalgia, a trip to the spa can help. Just make sure that you first consult your physician, go to a licensed massage therapist, and let them know about any limitations you may have.

Even if you don´t have a massage, taking advantage of the benefits of the hydro-therapy circuit and its thermal contrasts can always help fighting pain successfully.

5. Pamper yourself

With all the rush of the daily routine, it seems impossible to take the time out at home to put on a face mask or get around to that manicure. Booking a spa treatment means you will get your beauty chores taken care of thoroughly and being pampered.

6. Getting Inspired

Unplugging, doing something you really enjoy and being touched therapeu-tically through massage can help boost one’s creativity.

A spa experience will not only leave you feeling healthier, happier, and younger but it will also give you a feeling of inspiration.

7. Unplug and Enjoy Time with

yourself

Having the entire world accessible at our fingertips is an incredibly powerful thing, but it is also a double-edged sword. The more connected we are to the virtual world, the less connected we can often be to ourselves.

Some spas ban all mobile phones, internet, and laptops, during the duration of your visit. It may sound inconceivable but that is exactly an important reason to do it. So, shut out all the noise, take a well-deserved break from it and restore.

Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029Page 4 Health

Why do we miss the rituals put on hold by the COVID-19 pandemic?BY SUJATA GUPTAPART 1

For over a thousand years, the various prayers of the Catholic Holy Mass remained largely unaltered. Starting in the 1960s,

though, the Catholic Church began imple-menting changes to make the Mass more modern. One such change occurred on November 27, 2011, when the church attempted to unify the world’s Engli-sh-speaking Catholics by having them all use the same wording. The changes were slight; for instance, instead of responding to the priest’s “The Lord be with you” with “And also with you,” the response became: “And with your spirit.”

The seemingly small modification sparked an uproar so fierce that some leaders warned of a “ritual whiplash.”

The new wording has stayed intact, but that outsize reaction did not surprise ritual scholars. “The ritual reflects the sacred values of the group,” says Juliana Schroeder, a social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Those [ritual actions] are nonnegotiable.”

But in the midst of the global corona-virus pandemic, people are being forced to renegotiate rituals large and small. Cruelly, a pandemic that has taken more than half a million lives worldwide has disrupted cherished funeral and grieving rituals.

Even when rituals can be tweaked to fit the moment, such as virtual religious services or car parades in place of graduation ceremonies, the experiences don’t carry the same emotional heft as the real thing. That’s because the immutability of rituals — their fixed and often repetitive nature — is core to their definition, Schroeder and others say. So too is the symbolic meaning people attach to behaviors; doing the ritual “right” can matter more than the outcome.

Why do such behaviors even exist? Anthropologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists have all weighed in, so much so that the theories used to explain the purpose of rituals feel as myriad as the forms rituals have taken the world over.

That growing body of research can help explain the unrest people are now experiencing as beloved rituals go virtual or get punted to some unsettled future. Multiple lines of evidence suggest, for instance, that rituals help with emotional regulation, particularly during periods of uncertainty, when control over events is not within reach. Rituals also foster social cohesion. Engaging in rituals, in other words, could really help people and societies navigate this new and fraught global landscape.

“This is exactly the time … when we want to be able to congregate with other people, get social support and engage in the kinds of collective rituals that promote coope-ration [and] reduce anxiety,” says develo-pmental psychologist Cristine Legare of the University of Texas at Austin. And yet, with COVID-19, congregating in any sort of group can be downright dangerous. What

does that mean for how we persevere?

An illusion of control

Polish-born British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski documented rituals and speculated on their reason for being in the early 1900s. Living among fishermen on the Trobriand Islands off New Guinea from 1915 to 1918, Malinowski noticed that when the fishermen stuck to the safe and reliable lagoon, they described their successes and failures in terms of skill and knowledge.

But when venturing into deeper waters, the fishermen practiced rituals during all stages of the journey, acts Malinowski collectively referred to as “magic.” Before setting out, the men consumed special herbs and sacrificed pigs. While on the water, the fishermen beat the canoe with banana leaves, applied body paint, blew on conch shells, and chanted in synchrony. Malinowski later used that Trobriand data to comment more broadly on human behavior.

“We find magic wherever the elements of chance and accident, and the emotional play between hope and fear, have a wide and extensive range. We do not find magic whenever the pursuit is certain, reliable and well under control of rational methods,” Malinowski wrote in an essay published posthumously in 1948.

Working in the late 1960s and early 1970s, American anthropologist Roy Rappaport built on that idea by developing a social framework for ritual, theorizing that such behaviors help individuals and groups maintain a balanced psychological state — much like a thermostat system that

controls when the heat kicks on. In recent decades, anthropologists and psycho-logists have tested the idea that rituals regulate emotions.

In 2002, during a period of intense fighting between Palestine and Israel, anthropologist Richard Sosis took a taxi from Jerusalem to Tzfat, in northern Israel. Sosis, of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, noticed that the driver was carrying the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Psalms despite professing little religious inclination and admitting he didn’t read it. The driver said the book was there for his protection. Sosis suspected that the mere presence of the book helped the cabdriver manage the stress of possibly violent encounters. But how?

A few years later, Sosis and his team recruited 115 Orthodox Jewish women from Tzfat to take part in a study about psalm reading. By the time interviews began in August 2006, war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah had broken out; 71 percent of the women in the study had fled Tzfat for central Israel.

The researchers asked the women to list their three top stressors during the war. The women listed many of the same issues, with a few important differences. Almost 76 percent of those who stayed in Tzfat reported concerns about property damage compared with just 11 percent of women who left. Women who left were more likely than women who stayed to worry about stressors associated with displacement, such as inadequate child care (32 percent versus 9 percent) and a lack of schedule (32 percent compared with 6 percent).

The researchers also had the women

fill out a questionnaire about anxiety. Psalm reading provided anxiety relief, but the psalms’ true power depended on the women’s location. That is, the anxiety scores of women who left Tzfat and recited psalms were only slightly lower than the scores of women who left but did not recite psalms. The anxiety scores of women who stayed in Tzfat and recited psalms, on the other hand, were more than 50 percent lower than women who stayed and did not recite psalms. Overall, those who remained in Tzfat and recited psalms had lower anxiety scores than those who left.

When psalms help

Looking at psalm reading and anxiety levels among Orthodox Jewish women who stayed or fled war-torn Tzfat, Israel, in 2006, researchers found that anxiety scores were similar among women who read sacred texts and nonreaders who left, and nonreaders who stayed. But the anxiety levels of women in the war zone who read psalms were much lower than the other groups’.

Psalm reading helps when circum-stances seem out of control.

“Reciting the psalms was effective under conditions in which the stressor was uncontrollable. But once you could devise instrumental solutions to a problem, such as taking care of your kids or finding work, reciting psalms isn’t going to fix anything,” says Sosis, whose findings appeared in American Anthropologist in 2011. Several more recent studies conducted on indivi-duals living in war and earthquake zones mirror Sosis’ finding that rituals give parti-cipants a sense — or a comforting illusion — of control over the uncontrollable.

Page 5Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029 Columns

Martin Rosenberg, PhDMarty journeyed from Anthropology Lecturer at the Museum of Natural History, N.Y.C., President of Illinois’ CPA Society, CEO Tomorrows Software, film producer, and author of three books and many articles. As Director of Posters International Gallery in Puerto Vallarta he is surrounded by fine art. Talks given on creativity, mind/body connection and metaphysical wonders.email: martysanmiguel@gmail.comwww.rosenbergcollection.com

Insight

Pipelines

In Summer 2020, our focus is appro-priately on the virus, its spread and the impact on jobs, education, mental wellbeing, and the threat of personal

bankruptcy.

The term “transmission” can take on a broader meaning with time to reflect. I’d like to explore that with you. We’ll cut through the common contents of pipelines; move specifically to “water” and lastly, propose we become better at discerning corporate and governmental actions and motives. You may note down the road you first read about water wars in Mentifacts.

Decades ago, a senior level director

at a major consulting firm made the statement, “whomever controls trans-mission infrastructures will be able to wield great influence, power, and impact entire economies and a country’s quality of life. Today I re-connected to his vision along with a myriad of thoughts on natural resources, the environment, rigid geographical borders, international trade disputes, overpopulation, and a visible blurring of religion and government. I realized that’s a book, not a digestible mind stretcher. I may be all wet, but this piece is about WATER. First things first, however.

I wondered if we’ve become addicted to, and easily distracted, by “breaking news” daily headlines? Whether pre-meditated or natural, global, or local, miraculous or mundane… such information is pushed at us through our time on digital media. Infor-mation isn’t necessarily knowledge, and what is believed may, through an event, be totally changed.

Peering deeper, beyond traditional ‘transmission’ definitions, leads to a web of influence, control, and economic compe-tition among corporate and governmental giants. Moving oil or gas through pipelines is easy to grasp. Undersea cables move data throughout the globe. Trains, boats, planes, and tunnels are transmitters too.

There’s a picture in our minds of a physical pipeline crossing through

countries and waterways. We learn the news quickly when a pipeline ruptures or a digital cable breaks. Will this event impact family, my work, or me? So, it is the value of what is transmitted that’s critical to our lives. I am dropping anchor finally on thoughts relating to WATER.

We humans survive on air, water and nutrients. Our body is mostly liquid. Plant life, environmental and biological systems depend on water. About 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. The oceans contain over 96% of all that water. Water, at any price, is necessary to sustain human life. (And many other life forms as well). With online research on water and its distribution, we are led to consider where it originates from, how it travels great distances, and who controls it.

The 2020 pandemic added to a reduced demand for oil, natural gas became plentiful, and lots of competing digital networks. Major companies need to diversify, to grow. Their experts in engineering, technology and logistics are pointing to other less obvious, but very lucrative, transmission businesses. My intuitive divining rod tells me its water.

Bottled water began its journey along with gourmet European cuisine. Perrier, San Pellegrino, Evian, Aqua-Pura to name a few. Restaurants, movies, speaker podiums and celebrities paid a lot to associate with these brands. Water became a fashio-nable symbol of class, culture, and wealth. This “fad” was to become an obvious new product to companies already selling beverages in bottles. How big has it become?

Plastic waste is an enormous environ-mental problem…a lot is containers to hold water. Good news…local communities are taking action to reduce plastic bottles and bags. Public water systems are disclosing more data on their water quality. It’s encou-raging to see this.

In 2017 Americans purchased nearly 14 billion gallons of bottled water. In that same year, Canadians, for example, were paying 2.50 to 3.00 per bottled liter, while tap water was 10 times less costly. Health Canada reported that the standards for bottled and tap are similar. Much of the planet doesn’t have readily available freshwater. Climate change is also creating droughts and impacting agriculture, reser-voirs, aquifers and groundwater in general.

Where the opposite extreme happens, massive flooding, poor sewage systems and property destruction is evident.

If freshwater in rivers, lakes, streams, reservoirs, and underground is critical, what countries have the most? Maybe there are motives for the interplay between those governments? Brazil tops the list with about 12% of the planet’s fresh water. Their Amazon territory holds more than 70% of Brazil’s fresh water. Russia’s deep Lake Baikal reportedly holds 20% of the world’s fresh water. Most of the U.S. freshwater is in lakes, such as the Great Lakes network. Canada is next with its rivers, lakes, and underground sources. Finally, China’s freshwater lakes and rivers are seasonal. (Note: the runoff snow melt from Tibet’s mountains flow to the important Yangtze River… one motive for China’s occupation of Tibet)

Who are the largest international players in water? Most lists include Nestle, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Vivendi, Danone, Bechtel, Suez, and Bouygues Saur. Many formerly public owned water systems have been privatized by these companies… check out your home city record on these deals.

Nestle, Coca-Cola and Pepsi access privately owned water sources; purify or distill it, and sell the largest amounts of bottled water at inflated prices. Using different brand names these companies cut the retail price and sell via the big box discount stores and supermarkets.

We should remember that most of earth’s total water is in the oceans.

Regions with money and little water have the largest desalination plants in the world. They include Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Israel. While costly to produce, technology, smaller nuclear reactors, and sustainable energy harnessing tools, like solar, are bringing production costs lower. Even hotels, residential communities and companies with ocean access have desalination systems as primary or backup. Glacial melting is raising ocean water levels and has to be factored into water production decisions. Moving drinkable water from the sea to customers requires a trans-mission infrastructure. Short term, the usual, like trucks may have to suffice. Long term, the same issues that arose with oil and gas pipelines will be negotiated to carry water. Recently some environ-mental groups and towns have success-fully staved off pipelines being laid across their land. We can expect more serious confrontations where life-sustaining water is involved.

Didn’t seem right to conclude this water story without sharing a basic question I’ve always had. Tap, purified or distilled? What is the difference?

Purified water has been filtered to remove chemicals and some contami-nants. Most comes from groundwater or tap water. Distilled water is the purest type of water. This more elaborate process removes even bacteria and viruses…but also removes natural minerals, fluoride, and electrolytes remaining in purified water. Tap water varies greatly regionally and locally. Taste and quality are wide ranging.

How dependent a country is toward the owner of, for example, an important existing or proposed new pipeline, may find that relationship shifting from simple economics to hardball politics. There are informative studies online to search through on this subject that you might want to explore. Research carefully, double-check original story sources.

The heart of this article is about how transmission impacts societies. Using water as the specific example I may have connected some dots, as to when and why governments and companies chase after water and other natural resources. New pipelines crossing country boundaries are controversial. Relationships will be strained. Take some of this self-isolating virus time to go underneath the headlines, feel inspired, independent, in control of information and proudly surface facts and understanding.

Banderas Bay Vallarta Paper|

PUERTOVALLARTA

Banderas Bay Vallarta Paper|

PUERTOVALLARTA

Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029Wedding in VallartaPage 8

Genny & BrianPhotos by Roberto Aceves

Page 9Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029 Wedding in Vallarta

Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029Page 10 Columns

Oscar Aranda MenaOscar Aranda is a biologist, conservationist, environmental writer and author of the book “The secret language of nature. Having headed the sea turtle and cetacean protection programs in Puerto Vallarta for 12 years, he keeps his heart in the Banderas Bay despite living in Spain. You can contact him at osaranda@yahoo.com or through his webpage www.relatosdelanaturaleza.org

It is frog time!

When you hear the word “frog,” what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Most people associate them with the

words “leap” or “croak”; things that by the way they do very well. And speaking of the sounds they make, we sometimes forget that, in general, only males sing. Each species of frog has its own characteristic sound, which avoids confusion. However, all of them, both female and male, can “scream” with their mouths open when they are trapped or in danger of death.

Frogs, like toads, newts and salamanders belong to the class of amphibians, whose name describes their dependence (during at least some phase of their development) on terrestrial and aquatic environments. Their lineage descends from fish who began to develop legs to get out of the water and managed to spend more and more time out of the water. Although they have adapted quite well, modern amphi-bians still need water to reproduce, where they must live for the first few weeks of their lives. There they breathe through gills, which then lose and develop lungs. Their delicate and sensitive skin is what allows them to carry out most of their breathing (cutaneous respiration), thanks to glands that always keep them moist. Unfortunately, this makes them very sensitive to dehydration and the sun, from which they quickly flee.

They use the rainy season to mate, so every night we can hear their calls. Those who visit Puerto Vallarta for the first time often wonder which animals produce that singular concert of sounds that they heard at night in the gardens of their hotel, and the most curious dare to browse among the vegetation in search of their authors, generally without success. . Are they crickets? “They are frogs!” I would tell them when I saw them searching unsuccess-fully for those little girls who were silent in their presence. We forget how lucky we are to have these discreet little animals living in our gardens.

In general, frogs and toads can be easily mistaken for each other. Although they

are closely related, the general difference between toads and frogs is the texture of their skin, being smoother and wetter in frogs while in toads it is rougher and drier. It should be also noted that toads have a prominent gland behind the eardrum that resembles a “cheek”, with which they can produce a very unpleasant and even toxic substance for those who try to eat them. That is why toads have been part of Mexican folklore since ancient times, giving them magical and mysterious powers.

Although the exact figure is unknown, it is estimated that there are more than 5,000 species in the world, and in the Banderas Bay area there are around 50 different species of frogs and toads, some of which are endemic, which means that they are only found in a certain region.

Despite our presence and our daily activities, in the city of Puerto Vallarta we can find at least 3 species of toads and 5 species of frogs, who do an excep-tional job keeping the crawling and flying insects that are so abundant in rainy season at bay. Special mention should be made of the two species of large and beautiful tree frogs, which we sometimes find sleeping peacefully in quite visible places. They are the Mexican Leaf Frog (Agalychnis danicolor) and another very similar one called Common Mexican Tree Frog (Smilisca baudinii). You can also find much smaller but equally beautiful species such as the Dwarf Mexican Tree Frog (Hyla smithi) and the tiny [but noisy] Pale Chirping Frog (Syrrhophus pallidus). Among the toads is the imposing Cane (Giant) Toad (Rhinella horribilis), the

Marbled Toad (Bufo marmoreus) and the friendly Sinaloa Toad (Incilius mazatla-nensis). Remember that if you find one, you should not be afraid of it, as all species in the region are harmless.

Given their taste for eating insects, frogs and toads are inevitably attracted to the lights in our houses and streets, since this is where they find easy food. Unfortu-nately, every night they end up crossing streets and highways where they are run over. Over the years we have seen how their numbers have decreased signifi-cantly, as there is a greater danger directly related to our daily activities: The simple fact of cutting a tree creates a chain of effects which will end up killing an entire population of frogs . The shade is lost and the land dries up, heating up more than normal and all possibility of life for an amphibian is lost.

Even so, they are among us thanks to their fantastic and enviable ability to hide and go unnoticed. This, at the very least, has earned them the right to live peacefully in our gardens without being disturbed. Remember that while they may seem ugly, disgusting, or repulsive to some, tolerating their presence will be worth as they prevent more pesky insects from entering your home. On a quiet night, or after a storm, I invite you to go for a walk. Stop for a moment and enjoy listening to them. Hopefully, you will hear the so-called “cricket style” of the Pale Chirping Frog, or the one that makes trumpet noises, the Mexican Leaf Frog. Try to think, my dear reader, that this resounding concert is a joyous invitation to celebrate the rain and life itself. Long live frogs!

Page 11ColumnsAug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029

Indigenous Mexicans turn inward to survive COVID-19, barricading villages and growing their own food

Aug 14 - 20, 2020 Free Issue 029Page 12 News

J E F F R E Y H . C O H E NP RO F E S S O R O F A N T H RO P O L O GY, T H E O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y

While the coronavirus hammers Mexico, some Indigenous commu-nities in the southern

Mexican state of Oaxaca are finding creative ways to cope.

Oaxaca, one of Mexico’s poorest and most ethnically diverse states, is home to numerous Indigenous communities, including the Zapotec people. I have spent many years in the central valleys of Oaxaca conducting anthropological research in rural Zapotec villages, documenting the people’s lives, migration patterns and food culture.

Now, my summer research in Oaxaca canceled due to the pandemic, I am learning from afar how the Zapotec are confronting the coronavirus given such compli-cating factors as chronic poverty, inadequate health care, limited internet, language barriers and a lack of running water.

Working with colleagues at Mexico’s Universidad Tecnológica de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca and scouring online media resources, I find the Zapotec are surviving the pandemic by doing what they’ve always done when the Mexican government can’t, or won’t, help them: drawing on local Indigenous traditions of cooperation, self-re-liance and isolation.

So far, it ’s working. While infec-tions and death are rising relent-lessly across Mexico, many Indigenous communities in Oaxaca remain largely insulated from the coronavirus. The Indigenous Mixtec village of Santos Reyes Yucuná reported its first infection on July 17, for example – four months after COVID-19 reached Mexico.

I nd ige nou s su r v iva l st rateg ie s

Cooperation is a cornerstone of Zapotec life in Oaxaca. A history of social exclusion by the federal gover-nment reminds the Zapotec not to rely on politicians to save them.

People work together from a young age, joining together in “tequio,” or communal labor brigades, to complete projects that can range from painting a school to repairing the electrical grid. Individuals, their families and their friends routinely work together to make small jobs go quickly and to make big jobs seem less overwhelming.

The Zapotec also maintain relative isolation from broader Mexican society, my research shows. They grow food in their “milpas,” or garden plot, to supplement store-bought fare, and police their own communities with volunteers called “topiles.” With

high levels of community trust and a history of self-rule that predates the Spanish conquest, the Zapotec who continue to live in rural Oaxaca neither need nor allow much outside access to their villages.

These three aspects of traditional Zapotec culture – cooperation, isolation and self-reliance – are all helpful in a pandemic.

According to researcher M.C. Nydia Sanchez of Oaxaca’s Univer-sidad Tecnológica, Zapotec families are sharing scarce resources like food, information, water, and face masks in what’s called “guelaguetza,” the practice of working together and gift-giving.

And at a time when Mexico’s food supply chain is under stress, villagers are ensuring no one goes hungry by ramping up their crop of “maiz,” the corn used to make tortillas.

“Chapulines” – grasshoppers harvested from the fields and quickly toasted over a fire – are returning to the table as a protein-rich alternative to expensive, store-bought meats that are no longer available locally.

C on s e n su s r u le s

The tight-knit nature of Zapotec communities can, however, also complicate other measures critical to limiting residents’ exposure to infection.

These are small villages of no more than a few thousand souls. Everyone

knows everyone, and it is typical for Zapotec people to spend much of their day together with family and friends. This can make it difficult to maintain the social distancing recommended by national health officials.

“To no longer greet each other so much on the street [is difficult] , because we are used to it ,” a Zapotec man named Jose Abel Bautista Gonzalez told Reuters in April . “It is a tradition, the culture of the people.”

Rather than closing their doors to family and friends, then, the Zapotec are aiming to stop COVID-19 from getting in at all .

Across much of Oaxaca, villagers are building barricades made of chain, stones, and wood to physi-cally block access into and out of their communities, which are typically served by only one road. Many villages are effectively quaran-tined from society.

“We decided to set up these barriers so that visitors or outsiders wouldn’t be coming in,” José Manzano, of San Isidro del Palmar, told Global Press Journal on June 28.

Such decisions, like most Zapotec policies, are built upon community consensus – not made on the order of a local or national political leader.

Unce r t a i n f ut u re

Indigenous Mexican communities are unlikely to escape unscathed

from the pandemic.

Mexico is so far losing its battle with the economic effects of the coronavirus: Jobs are disappearing, and economists predict the national economy may contract by 8% this year. Tourism, the lifeblood of Mexico’s economy, has halted.

That means hunger and a long recession that experts say will impact the rural poor dispropor-tionately. Mexico’s social develo-pment agency estimates up to 10 million people may fall into extreme poverty, ending the country’s nearly decade-long run of poverty reduction.

And if the coronavirus does get into Zapotec communities, it will probably hit residents hard. Their villages lack the running water, social distancing, mask supply and health care necessary to slow the spread of the disease.

The lack of potable water additio-nally increases the risk that intes-tinal problems like cholera, among other health conditions common in rural Indigenous populations, will exacerbate the effects of COVID-19.

The Mexican government has committed to build more rural hospitals, including in Oaxaca. But the virus moves faster than construction crews. The Zapotec’s best bet, they know, is still themselves.

Reprinted from The Conversation under a Common Creatives license.