Week 5: Hope for the future of Merida and the world!

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Shelsy Zarate

<i>"Hello" in your host country's language:</i> Hola <i>Home Institution (your U.S. University/College):</i> Pomona College <i>Expected graduation year:</i> 2024 <i>Destination city & country:</i> Merida, Mexico <i>Program provider:</i> IFSA-Butler <i>Major/minor:</i> Science, Technology, and Society — Biology + Social Studies Concentration Latin American Studies — Literature and Cultural Studies Concentration <i>Demographics:</i> Hispanic/Latinx, First-Generation College Student, Zapotec (Indigenous of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico) <i>Future career aspirations:</i> My future career goals are to prolong and improve the quality of life of minority communities, most specifically that of indigenous migrant individuals, by organizing efforts to address the root causes of community and individual health disparities both inside and out of the clinical environment. As the oldest daughter of indigenous immigrants, and their medical document translator for as long as I can remember, I aim to work as a first-hand bridge to restructure education, pharma-patient relationships, and healthcare hazards, such as access to quality-food and the diabetes/high-blood pressure epidemic, that continue causing disproportionately higher death rates in our communities, as the COVID-19 pandemic so cruelly proved. <i>Top 3 goals for your time abroad:</i> 1. Volunteer at a local organization in Mรฉrida! 2. Take "Contemporary Issues in Public Health in the Yucatรกn," a class where students examine the public and private healthcare systems in Mexico and the use of mainstream and traditional approaches to public health in both urban and rural settings. 3. Build amazing relationships with my host family, community, classmates, and other students from abroad.

This week I learned and reflectioned a lot about the future of our planet in my Contemporary Social Issues of Mexico and Yucatรกn class. Mexico, the whole world, is suffering through a water crisis. We do not have enough water to sustain life at the rate that we are depleting it. Yucatรกn is a water jackpot in Mexico, though, because of the large amount of cenotes found in it, pools of fresh water underground. However, there are many things putting that water, and the people who depend on it, at risk. For class, we attended a water festival called โ€œAgua Sagradaโ€ that educated the Universidad Autรณnoma de Yucatรกn students and Merida community about the current health situations and disparities occurring in Yucatรกn that stem from faults in the water supply. We learned about the dangers of pesticides and antibiotics (used by large industrial farms) for the health of people who drink that water. For example, pesticides runoff from farms and contaminate water supplies, like cenotes, which then gets ingested by humans, especially in rural, indigenous towns. These people, and their children, later suffer health issues like neurological disorders and they also donโ€™t always have access to the healthcare they need to battle these health problems. However, this is all further related to faults in our global system, which I mentioned in last weekโ€™s vlog. In this case, large international corporations have monopolized the grocery industry, thus excluding local farmers, who do not use harmful chemicals in their crops, from having a fair play in the market. These same small farmers are the ones being largely negatively impacted by the large companiesโ€™ use of pesticides (to quickly produce enormous amounts of produce and products that can be sold at a low price).

During my first weeks here, I mentioned in a blog that it had seemed to me as if Meridaโ€™s identity involves the mentioning of the indigenous Maya people much more than it actually equally involves them in the Meridian community. I would like to change my statement. I am noticing that in the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan, there is much discourse in the Anthropology department classes about how we, as the future of tomorrow, can take actions thatโ€™ll change the course of the way society is headed. That is, how can we, as tomorrowโ€™s professionals, justly access indigenous peopleโ€™s needs and inequalities WITHOUT treating them as less, judging them, or bossing them around. Even more importantly, how can we protect indigenous townsโ€™ health so that the next generation grows up with the necessary resources, health, and opportunities to be equally incorporated in these conversations. A Mayan man at the festival on Saturday passionately stated that Indigenous people do not need โ€œsaviorsโ€ to come and โ€œmodernizeโ€ their world and way of living. I understood that as Indigenous people do not want โ€œinvadersโ€ altering their way of life that has functioned for them for so long. As a child of Indigenous Mexican parents myself, I understand that maintaining oneโ€™s prehispanic culture also doesnโ€™t mean living a life without modern changes like the internet, a university education for all (even women!), and biomedical healthcare. However, they should be the ones deciding that, not large corporations that do not necessarily acknowledge that. This week inspired me to do my part both here and in the US, to take care of the planet and local farmers everywhere.