End of Week 12 - Huixquilucan, Mexico

It is now the end of October and winter is closing in on Mexico too. Last week the environmental education training group traveled to Piedra Grande in the municipality of Huixquilucan (pronounced weeks key lou kahn, accenting the lou), a small town in the mountains on the southwestern edge of Mexico City. The fall weather brought mostly sunny but cold days, with one day of fog and rain. At night, frosts loomed just around the corner. It was jacket weather, and I wished I had brought a winter hat. 

Fog and rain on the last day.

We spent the week at a center called GRUPEDSAC (http://www.grupedsac.org/portal/), training in ecotecnias, or green, low cost technologies, like solar water heaters, rainwater collection systems, bio-intensive gardening, and efficient wood-burning stoves (in reality, I'm still trying to figure out what ecotecnias are). We started the week with 12 hours of a single lecture on diagnostic tools for gender diversity in participatory projects, which is as fun as it sounds. The week got better though; we helped build an organic garden at a local house in the hills and a wood-burning stove at another house. We ended the week by facilitating a workshop on watersheds and soils, in spanish, to twenty women and children from the community.

GRUPEDSAC

Piedra Grande is a picturesque village, not at all what I imagined Mexico to be like; it lacks both desert and beach. The village lies in a narrow valley about 3,000 meters in elevation and is surrounded by tall pine forests, oak trees, milpas (corn farms) and mountain ranches. In the mornings, when the sun rose above Mexico City and the volcanoes that surround it, it shined on the east facing slopes of Piedra Grande, illuminating the trees with bright orange light, and the warmth attracted hundreds of birds of all kinds; white-eared hummingbirds, northern flickers, hepatic tanagers, blue-hooded euphonias, grey silky-flycatcher, and red warblers, to name a few.

At this time of year the corn is tall and dry, awaiting the final harvest of helotes (ears of corn) for making tortillas. The rows of giant agave are green, and some are being tapped for their agua miel, or honey water, to make pulque, the local home-made alcoholic drink. Some of the trees have lost their leaves. Wind rustles through bare tree branches and rows of dry corn, chapping the cheeks of those that live there until they are calloused and red.

The Piedra Grande valley.

Piedra Grande is a pleasant, small community, but one that has its problems. Poverty and joblessness are the norm. Water has to be trucked in, and greywater is piped into the streets untreated. Although there is a weekly garbage collection, plastic bottles, paper, and even diapers litter people's yards and the streets. People use every creek and ditch as a landfill. Donkeys and horses are the local beasts of burden and most families have their own chickens and rabbits, but stray dogs outnumber all living things by at least ten to one, although feral cats are a close second. We witnessed the non-stop abuse of the dogs and cats by the local children, who held them down and kicked them in the face, threw rocks at them, punched them, through the cats at the dogs, and stuffed them in deep holes, all for our enjoyment.

Me and the professor (he promised to teach everyone how not to abuse their dogs and cats).

The monster that is Mexico City is not far away; its towers and sprawling suburbs can be seen from Piedra Grande, coming ever closer, reaching further from the valley floor into the mountains. People escape the city by heading further up the mountain sides, but, unfortunately, the city's smog now climbs the mountains with them; every morning as the air heats up the smog climbs higher and by late morning it chokes the air and blocks the sun in Piedra Grande. The smog makes its way up to Piedra Grande, over the ridge above the village, and down again into the next valley. Soon, Piedra Grande will likely be just another suburb of Mexico City; a wealthy subdivision, a high-rise town, or another massive concrete barrio.

Santa Fe - a wealthy Mexico City suburb - and its smog, as seen from Piedra Grande.

The Birds of Mexico (Las Aves De México)

Introduction
This post has been moved to the following two links:
Passerine birds - http://mexicanjajean.blogspot.mx/2012/03/birds-of-mexico-aves-de-mexico.html
Non-Passerine birds - http://mexicanjajean.blogspot.mx/2012/03/birds-of-mexico-aves-de-mexico-non.html

A few good online resources for identifying Mexican birds include:

Aves de Mexico (upload photos and share sightings): http://www.avesdemexico.net/
CONABIO (photos and information on distribution): http://www.biodiversidad.gob.mx/especies/aves.html
Wikipedia's list of of birds in Mexico (photos and descriptions): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Birds_of_Mexico
Birds of Mexico (photos and sounds): http://www.birdsofmexico.com/
EBird Mexico (submit observations and view sightings): http://ebird.org/content/ebird/averaves
Bird Sounds: http://www.xeno-canto.org/
The Audubon Society of Mexico: http://www.audubonmex.org/

And, my favorites from home: 
www.friendsoftimesbeachnp.org/blog.html
http://protectionfarmjournal.blogspot.com/
http://nicksbirdblog.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/GreenWatch/140401049308745

Local Bird Clubs: 

Club de Observadores de Aves de Puebla (COAP): https://sites.google.com/site/coapmx/  and http://clubdeobservadoresdeavesdepuebla.blogspot.com/

Club de Observadores de Aves de Xalapa (COAX): http://www.coaxxalapa.org/

End of Week 10 - Puebla, Puebla

Arcade around the central Zocalo.

Puebla, Puebla - yes, the city of Puebla in the state of Puebla. Everyone that asks me where Ana and I will be working for the next two years in Mexico asks for clarification after my simple response of "Puebla", so I went ahead here and clarified preemptively.

Puebla is a large city, with beautiful architecture, a dense historic center, one central zocalo or square, museums, restaurants, and many, many churches. It lies 7,000 feet above sea level in a high valley between some of Mexico's tallest volcanoes, some still active, that separate it from Mexico City. The mountains have pine and oak forests, while the valleys have desert scrub vegetation, like acacia and cactus. Puebla is known for its food; mole poblano (the chocolate kind of mole), chiles en nogado (not sure) and chalupas (ala Taco Bell). We are told that earthquakes are common occurances, but the buildings seem to be pretty old, so that's a good sign!

The tallest church in Mexico is in Puebla.

We will be working for SEMARNAT - Secretario de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales - a federal environmental agency, in their state office in the city. Acronyms in Mexico are usually a little bit long like this. In the US, we would probably shorten the name to SMARN; in Mexico, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would be know as ENVPROTAGE, the National Park Service (NPS) would be called NATPARSER, and the National Football League (NFL) would be called An Exciting Version of Soccer In Which Points Are Actually Scored, or ANEXCVEROFSOCINWHIPOIAREACTSCOR. Just kidding Mexico!





The SEMARNAT office in Puebla. I'm not sure
why we advertise.



Ana will be working on environmental education projects related to climate change - they take it very seriously down here. I will be working on PET (Programa Empleo Temporal - Temporary Employment Porgram) projects in rural communities like reforestation, erosion control, and organic gardens. PET funding always increases during an election year for some reason, and elections are coming up so I will be busy. I will also be giving ecotecnias workshops in rural communities. Ecotecnias don't have an English translation, but they include things like solar stoves, rainwater harvesting like rain barrels, and greywater treatment systems like reed beds.

I will also be helping with some watershed planning in Valsequillo, a rural community outside of Puebla (soon to be well-within the sprawling monster) around a large man-made lake. Part of this project will include proposals for a new natural protected area, and all of the PET and ecotecnias projects are related to water because there 'just aint none no more.' The lake and its rivers are polluted, the water table is dropping, and although there is enough water in Puebla and Valsequillo for approximately 30,000 new homes, there are proposals to build 500,000 new homes.

Modern Puebla.

But the people at the office are nice. They seem to want us there and need our help. We will be working with two biologists, an architect, and an engineer. In Mexico, professionals are called by their degree title, like doctors are in the US. For example, biologists are called Biologo, architects are called Arcitecto, and Engineers are called Ingeniero. If you have a bachelors degree, you are called Licenciaturo, and with a masters you are called Maestro. I would like to be called Maestro Planificador Urbano Jajean, or "Master Urban Planner with an Interest in the Conservation of Nature" -MUPINTCONNAT Jajean for short.

End of week 8 - Life on the Altiplano

As Peace Corps trainees, we are seeing a part of Mexico that few tourists travel to and fewer Americans think of when they think of Mexico. The high plains in the center of the country, know as the "altiplano", are characterized by broad valleys, tall mountains, mattoral or low, thorny trees, and cactus. It is a land of extremes; high temperatures during the day, cold temperatures at night, dry periods that last for most of the year, sudden downpours that wash away roads,  poverty and wealth, and huge expanses of empty, windswept land. It is vaquero country - dusty old pickup trucks, denim, and leather cowboy boots are the norm.

Outside Matehuala, in San Luis Potosi.

A dusty town on the altiplano.

The people of the altiplano make a meager living growing maiz criollo, or indigenous corn, whose success depends on the all-too-infrequent rains, or grazing cattle or goats. There are few schools, little access to freshwater, and few paved roads outside of the main highway that brings people from Mexico's central valley to its northern borders with the US. There are also a few large cities in the Altiplano. Some were built from the riches of long depleted silver mines like San Luis Potosi. Others, like Queretaro, are recent boom towns, sprawling with former residents of Mexico City escaping the magnitude of problems in one the largest cities in the world. A few cities, like San Miguel de Allende, have thriving economies based on tourism as people are drawn to their colonial architecture and many festivals.

Ejido Gogorron.

It is now the beginning of October on the altiplano, and as a group of friends and I left Queretaro for San Miguel de Allende early Sunday morning, the air was noticeably crisp. The hot summer that we had arrived to Mexico in just weeks before had transitioned to a colder, cloudier, and windier fall. The light fleece jacket that I was wearing was not enough to stay completely comfortable.

After a brief panicked moment as the bus appeared to be speeding by the city with us still on it, we arrived in the historic center of San Miguel, a valley amidst the high peaks of Guanajuato, where the streets are perfectly clean, the three and four-hundred year old buildings are vibrant with fresh coats of colorful paint, and real estate prices are listed in U.S. dollars, not Mexican pesos. San Miguel is well known for its large retired "gringo" population. Impressive architecture and expensive handicrafts aside, San Miguel was not as outstanding as it was supposed to be. Another colonial Mexican city, a parade of indigenous dancers and concheros, churches, museums, and a fireworks display. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference between traditional culture and the tourism industry.

A church in San Miguel

We decided to head to the outskirts of the city, to the high plains overlooking the valley. Under overcast skies and in stiff breezes, we spent the afternoon wandering through a nature preserve, El Charco del Ingenio. http://www.elcharco.org.mx/ The preserve was beautiful; trails through native plantings of cactus, agave, and low acacia trees. There was a large lake full of waterfowl and a deep canyon carved by a river flowing towards San Miguel. Ruins of ancient mills powered by small waterfalls lined the trails. When the sun occasionally peaked through the clouds, the air quickly warmed, and thousands of brilliantly colored wildflowers appeared, disappearing again as the clouds returned and temperatures dropped.

The canyon at El Charco

We promised a friend that we would meet her at the entrance of the local fairgrounds before returning by bus back to Queretaro, so after a few hours at the preserve we began the long walk towards the highway, on dusty, flat, roads, meandering through a partially complete, expansive soon-to-be suburb, towards the fair. We were all a little nervous about catching a bus home to Queretaro - we hadn't left any room for error and had to hail the last bus leaving San Miguel that day from the side of the highway to get home. The sun was setting, the clouds were growing darker, and the wind was picking up.

The fair was like any state or county fair in the US; cowboys, carnival rides, fried food, loud music, and the incessant cries of auctioneers. The fair was situated a little off of the highway, in the middle of the endless cattle ranch that is the altiplano. The parking lot at the fair was large and dust swept up into our eyes and mouths. We sat shivering at the exit, covering our faces with scarves as protection from the wind and dust, waiting for our friend to come out, hoping she would leave a little earlier than planned. And thankfully she did. We wisely decided to chip in on the cost of a 50 peso (4 dollar) taxi ride to the bus center, rather than wait nervously on the side of the highway, hoping a bus would come along in the dark and pick up four hitchhikers on the side of the road. We made it back to Queretaro as planned, although a little bit colder than expected.

The ferria.