ft) the le t) from (2nd m the righ r e h Meag r (4th fro , Mexico. ssors Profe dford-Mille s in Puebla t e L and eir studen h and t
Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies Go to Mexico Dr. Sharon M. Meagher & Dr. Linda Ledford-Miller
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f we are to prepare students who, in the words of Jesuit founder St. Ignatius Loyola, will “set the world on fire,” then we need to take our students out into that world and ensure that they have a critical understanding of it. As Father Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., stated in an address at Santa Clara University, “Solidarity is learned through ‘contact’ rather than through ‘concepts,’ ... Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed.”1 In the first major collaborative effort between the Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies programs, the authors developed a January travel course, Women and Development in Latin America, in which students study “concepts,” but engage in “contact” as well. As part of the course, faculty and students travel to rural Huehuetla, in the state of Puebla, Mexico, in the high North Sierra region of the state. Huehuetla was founded in pre-Hispanic times by two indigenous groups, the Nahuas and the Totonacas. In 1550, the Spanish arrived; in 1574, the first titles to lands were given, and the town was named San Salvador Huehuetla. To this day many of the inhabitants speak only an indigenous language and do not speak Spanish. We live and study at Kakiwín Tutunaku, an ecotourism lodge owned by an indigenous women’s economic cooperative called Taputsama Talakxtumit, S.S.S. Our course engages the students through readings and discussions of development theory in the context of Latin America, and provides them with the opportunity to learn directly from Totonac women who are working to sustain their livelihoods, their
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Ignite Faculty work in the Ignatian tradition
language and their cultural traditions in an isolated rural area where farming is difficult and other modes of employment extremely scarce. By listening to the empowering stories of women who with few resources nevertheless succeed in making positive change for themselves and their families, our students come to appreciate how social change can happen and how they too can become social change agents. Perhaps, more importantly, our students learn why social change is needed. Indigenous women, who initially were not allowed to attend organizational meetings without their husbands as constant companions, are now working together to run a cooperative that brings money to their families and their community. Microloans are made to women only, and the women in turn may choose to employ a few of the men. Before we travel, students read and discuss a variety of texts that help them understand the crises of development from a global perspective and within the cultural, social, economic, political, historical and contemporary context of Latin America. We concentrate particularly on the complex role that gender plays in this dynamic, analyzing both why women were historically left out of international development efforts and why women have more recently become the focus of such efforts.2 During and after our stay, we encourage our students to reflect on the connections between social justice, sustainability and development issues in Latin America. We structure the course using some of the same pedagogical principles that the indigenous women use in their own organizing work, influenced both by Brazilian educator and philosopher Paolo Freire, as well as various feminist methodologies. These principles emphasize the value of lived experience and local knowledge as vehicles for learning and redefine the