Mobility, Society, and Governance in North America
Photojournalism Contest Winners Annouced
Congratulations to our 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners (shown below)
Mayan Re-Cycling by Ruth Mandujano
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Mayan Re-cycling
Mountain biking has always been about the freedom of the hills. And nobody knows this more than Vancouver's Our Community Bikes (OCB). Since 1998 the non-profit store has pedaled its way into the heart of the impoverished Guatemalan Altiplano. But instead of descending the single track, OCB's mechanics have chauffeured down cargo loads of old bikes previously destined for British Columbia's garbage dumps. Their mission: to recycle these old steeds into time-saving farming contraptions and help a Mayan woman's collective to rebuild their lives after 50 years of a brutal civil war.
Once in the highlands, the west coast riders have transformed these beasts of burden into useful devices, like pedal-powered grain mills, water pumps, coffee de-pulpers, and roof-tile makers. The work of the volunteers has made it possible for hundreds of Mayas to start productive ventures and to perform daily activities more efficiently and in more environmentally friendly ways. The bike does it best because on a micro level, pedal power is the most efficient energy source on the planet.
"Put the poor first" by Jaime Luna
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Put the poor first
Photo taken at a protest in Mexico City. A man stands in front of a tent housing many of the campesinos from Veracruz staging a protest in Mexico City.
The poor farmers from Veracruz were very dissatisfied with the government for its inability to provide subsidies for them to remain competitive with many industrial farmers. This is particularly important to note in the NAFTA region since many farmers in Mexico have seen their sales decrease in the last years due to American, Canadian and even Industrialized Mexican agriculture.
Los Basureros Felices by Joshua Gunty
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(From left to right): Miguel, Alfredo, and José collect and organize trash together every day of the week, spending fourteen-hour shifts stationed at a collection of dumpsters outside the entrance gate to Six Flags Mexico on a big busy boulevard in southern Mexico City called Picacho Ajusco. As the gate along Picacho Ajusco makes a right-angled turn to mark the boundary of the theme park, a thicket of trees embarks upon the line going back to separate visibility between Six Flags and the scene of the photograph above, where the men live with four others in the shack of scrap metal and wood in the bottom right region of the frame. An animated man of smiles and slick combed hair, Miguel is a mestizo from Michoacán. Of vertical stature that matches his shy reticence, Alfredo is a Mixteco of pure indigenous blood from Oaxaca. Full of welcoming kindness yet quick to sarcastic jokes for a laugh, José is a mestizo from Hidalgo. Like the rest of the group, these three men have the same answer to the question, "Why did you move to Mexico City?"They all came based on the belief that it was the best place to find work for the most money.
José settled here first 28 years ago, when neither Six Flags nor the skyscraper in the background had been constructed. The cement water depository that provides a leaning surface for Miguel and Alfredo, however, was already there. Members of a local neighborhood built it for themselves, and José has received their permission peacefully since arrival to inhabit the lot with his companions--who now include a wife and young boy--in exchange for taking care of the space. And despite the mountains of supposed garbage that populate around the shack awaiting their turn for a trip to another state to be either sold or donated, these men certainly do care for their space; they reap, for example, the organic benefits of a collection of plum and mango trees they planted and maintain there. José believes he lives in a beautiful place, and he thanks God each day that he can provide shelter and food for himself, his wife, and his child. He humbly admits that he could not expect more considering he left school after eighth grade to enter the work world, but he is determined to ensure the opportunity for his son to receive a much more complete education, so the boy can grow into better material conditions.
Although this self-acknowledged element of individual responsibility truly characterizes José's situation, I question the role of the federal government in the existence of a society that undervalues education while promoting an advanced economic model whose success presumes a relatively educated population. Shortage of work pervades Mexico, and a primary direct reason for this is that far too many of Mexico's citizens remain in the lowest-skilled sector of potential workers. This is why every gas station in Mexico--a country with a nationalized petroleum industry--has every pump manned by someone to serve you; why most urban intersections have someone ready with cleaning solution and a rag to wipe your windshield; why most parking lots have someone excitedly directing you to the spot you already saw. And here arrives the perfect irony of that skyscraper rising above the trees: it hosts a sector of the federal government's National Commission for Human Rights. If a society generally requires its members to be educated to achieve good living conditions, then for the members of that society education is a human right. This photograph is a visual manifestation of a paradox that has plagued Mexico's whole history of the past two centuries--the enormous discrepancy between the rhetoric and the action of the State. It is no surprise that José and the Office for Purported Disappeared Persons in the building behind him did not interact when one of the men who lived in the shack disappeared, only to eventually show up dead among the dumpsters, where his murderers disposed of his body.
Nonetheless, the sun adorns the trees in gold to reflect Miguel's smile and show us something else: life continues. These persons wake up, talk, eat, work, laugh, think, cry, enjoy, worry, hope, sleep--as do I, as do you. They have welcomed me with friendship despite all the ways that I live apart from them; all I had to do was approach them with trust, respect, and good will. I have discussed with some of them my ideas about life, human reason, society, and much more, discovering that we share an astonishing extent of understanding and agreement about essential philosophical perspectives. I may tend to think about my ideas in pedantic terms foreign to them, but the men I have conversed with have shown me that living is all it takes for a human to learn what life means for him. They know they have bodies and minds. They know they must live with other humans who have bodies and minds. They know this condition comes from a cycle of life that is most harmonious when they support the bodies and minds of those fellow beings as well as their own. They are happy. And notwithstanding the many external obstacles he faces, José is doing what he can as an individual to promote material-condition mobility for his child. As the circular progression of time indicates, however, José's son must arrive where his father hopes only after climbing a spiral set of stairs. At least it seems he'll believe he has God along the way ...
