Julián y Rafael

Trabajadores: Julián y Rafael
Localidad:  Zimatlán, Valles Centrales, Oaxaca

In the long shifts to design the mural, some community members shared what they knew about COVID-19 and what they were learning through the mural. They shared how they thought the information could help the community and how other subjects could be addressed in this way in the future.

About the virus, Julián commented: “It originated in Asia and a few months later arrived in Mexico. It’s very contagious and harmful, it can even cause death.” Another person spoke about the first impacts it had in the community: “Official statements arrived stopping the classes, closing the schools, and cancelling village celebrations.”

On the lessons of the mural, several people placed emphasis on the community work, on the joint participation of women, men, and children, something which they considered valuable: “I could see everyone supporting each other, without caring that everyone painted or outlined the figures that were added to the mural,” Julián mentioned.

They also spoke about the murals message around preventing COVID-19 contagion through good hygiene: “It was useful, it helps people to start taking better care of themselves,” shared Rafael.

‘We should integrate topics around sexual health, around our rights as indigenous people, and about our mother language,” suggested Julián when asked which other subjects might be useful to incorporate into future murals.

Rafael shared other concerns that are afflicting the communities, about the people who migrate in search of better conditions: “Honestly it makes me sad that children, women and men, because of lack of employment, go to work on the ranches and suffer. The data doesn’t correspond to their official documentation so that when they go to take their AFORE (retirement funds) they can’t. The children go and they miss their classes and academic years, and the older adults lose their support, when they come back, they are no longer enrolled in school.”

These problems have to do with policies that exclude internal agricultural migrants, like the closure of the migrant schools which had specific academic cycles adequate for families that migrated with their children, allowing them to continue their basic education. When these schools closed, this had the secondary effect of breaking up families, since children had to stay behind to not miss school, while parents went to work in the agricultural fields of other states.