Tlamacazapa - "People who are fearful" (Translated from Nahuatl)

The community of Tlamacazapa (estimated pop. 6,150) is located high in the dry and rocky mountains of central Mexico, near the border between Guerrero and Morelos States. The indigenous Nahua villagers earn a meager living by weaving palm baskets, their basic economy, against an incredible vista of hills, sky and distant lakes. Once the palm is gathered or purchased, working steadily, a woman can weave a large basket in four days; it will sell for a few dollars. Men and their sons sell the baskets on the streets throughout Mexico, often leaving the village for weeks or months at a time.

Villagers eat twice a day. They buy corn, grind it and make tortillas over an open fire, rapidly stripping the surrounding forests of available firewood. They will often add a weak "soup" of water, rice, onion and tomato to their meal. Sometimes they can afford to share beans, eggs or, on fiesta days, small bits of pork or chicken. The children are hungry or, paradoxically, have little appetite. Greater than 50% of them are undernourished (stunted and lacking micronutrients) or seriously malnourished. Many women are anemic due to poor diet, intestinal parasites and frequent pregnancies.

Most women are illiterate and rarely leave the village; their world is small. The many female-headed households of women, widowed or abandoned, are the poorest among the poor, living in small cornstalk houses with tarpaper roofs that allow wind and rain to pass through. Few families are corn farmers, cultivating rock-ridden land with little harvest. There is no plumbing, no running water; people use any open space as a toilet. Plastic and other garbage abounds; pigs roam everywhere, setting up horrific disease cycles.

Oppression: spiritual poverty

Villagers' stories, especially those of women, are tragic: they speak of raw fatigue and illness, deaths of small children, beatings, husbands and brothers killed in drunken fights. Men drink away their families' scarce pesos-an addictive way of dealing with despair and a weak male image. Women speak of feelings of ignorance, blame and exhaustion. Common illnesses, such as diarrhea and sudden death, are consistently explained by the "evil eye" (mal de ojo) or witchcraft rather than by such factors as parasitic/bacterial transmission or malnutrition. Years of grim survival coupled with a strong belief in the evil eye have shaped a complicated culture of suspicion.