Leadership for Social Change at Huehuecoyotl , Mexico

January, 2009

Faculty entry: Giovanni Ciarlo –Lead Instructor

All the students arrived to the Mexico City airport without delays or incident. They were all happy to land in 80 degrees weather and leave behind the subzero temperatures and in some cases feet of snow on the ground back home.

The trip from the airport to Huehuecoyotl and through the town of Tepoztlan went very smooth as well. There are a couple of transfers from taxi to bus to taxi on the way and they were all on time, comfortable and culturally fascinating.

We began the course on January 4th with a wide orientation to living in an ecovillage, creating a learning community, setting up chores for the students and giving them practical advise on how to make the most of their time in Mexico and the Tepoztlan region. Later we also went over details of the schedule, the academic responsibilities of the students, course objectives, grading system and assignments.

Having oriented the students to the academic component of the course they went on an extensive tour of the ecovillage, after lunch. They saw the owner designed and built natural buildings made from local materials such as adobe, stone, and wood. They toured the rain water catchment system that supplies the whole village and visited the various service projects completed by previous Living Routes students. The day ended with a meditation on the mountain top at sunset, contemplating the copper color light reflecting against the east facing mountains just above Huehuecoyotl.

The next three days the students were given an intensive schedule of basic theory and useful skills they will need to lead the facilitation and consensus decision-making process for their community service project. They learned about the historical and geological past of the bioregion and took a first trip out to Tepoztlan, the municipal head. There they had their first exposure to the local culture and market, gaining valuable information about what a small Mexican town looks and feels like. This trip included exposure to Spanish language as used by the native population, and a tour of the town to locate banks, internet cafes, ice-cream store and crafts market.

On January 6th we celebrated the Three Kings day in typical Mexican fashion by eating the sweet bread traditionally eaten on that day, and listening to live music. The sweet bread has a surprised inside in the form of a small doll. The person or persons who get a doll in their slice of bread has the charge of offering everyone tamales on February 2nd, dia de La Candelaria. Look for students returning to school and organizing the feast to commemorate this important Mexican holiday.

On Wednesday the academic work included exploration of their social identity, lead by UMASS faculty Kim Wolfson who is here to carry out a course review for UMASS. They were also presented with Ground rules theory developed by Roger Schwartz, and a brief introduction to Nonviolent Communication as developed by Psychologist Marshall Rosemberg. In the afternoon they took a filed trip to a local NGO (SARAR) which specializes in Ecological Sanitation and development of water conservation and restoration projects throughout Mexico and Latin America. There they had first hand contact with a local social enterprise and cultural appropriate leadership. The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to a second visit to Tepoztlan, this time with a Spanish language assignment consisting of a list of shopping items from the local market. They now have the basic information and are set to practice and develop the facilitation skills they will user to research and carry their service project.

The health of the students has been mostly good, except one male student who came down with a temperature and headache on the fourth day of classes. He was attended to by staff and given water and fruit to overcome what we think is heat stroke and dehydration. The rest of the students are doing fine and slowly adopting to the high altitude (6000 feet) and vegetarian diet of the site. Morale has been high, though after a few days of hard academic work, reading and discovery they feel a little exhausted.