Bernadina Pérez García

a Common Place - April 2002

I was born in 1960 here in my village, Zacango, in southern Mexico. In my family there were three boys and three girls, plus three siblings who died. My father was a campesino, or small farmer. He died when I was 15.

When I was 6 or 7, I went to live with my grandparents. They were old-fashioned. My grandmother spoke Nahuatl, an indigenous language. I attended school for only three years. But I finished elementary school in 1988 by attending classes for adults. It was very important to me to have that certificate.

For fun in those days, we went to village dances. Most of the houses were made of sticks and mud, and the streets weren't paved yet. There are a few more people now, but many of them leave [to work in the United States or Mexican agricultural areas] and come back.

When I was 19, I got married. My husband was also a campesino, and we started working the land together. We have one son and seven daughters. The oldest, our 21-year-old daughter, is studying to be a secretary. The three youngest daughters still live at home and go to elementary school, and the others are studying in a larger town.

The way we are able to pay for all this schooling is that my son and husband are working in the United States. They're near Los Angeles picking citrus fruit. There are no telephones in my village, so I go to Olinala [a nearby town] to receive their calls every Sunday. They say the United States is nice, but they're suffering because it's getting harder to find work.

In their absence, this year I did all the farming by myself. It was heavy work, but it has to be done. And it's something beautiful about our lives here -- in the rainy season, we can plant and harvest so we have food for the dry season. We grow corn, squash, chilies, beans. I select the best corn for seed for the following year.

I enjoy learning new things. One of my friends from another village told me about the MCC center in Olinalá. I went there to take courses and then formed a group of women to build stoves. Each person found her own materials, and we used the MCC molds. We were all accustomed to cooking over an open fire, so at first the stoves were hard to get used to. But they are really a great thing. We are using much less firewood now. There's so much less smoke, and it's safer for children because the fire is enclosed. Before, I would say, it was pure smoke and pure crying in this house. But now when I cook it's pure happiness!

There's a lot I still want to learn and ideas from MCC that I want to put into practice. I would like to have a dry latrine, and I also hope to plant soybeans.

Like my husband and son, many Mexicans leave their homes to go and work. The people who stay behind are always anxious, worried that they won't come back. We know it's hard to reach the United States, so we also live with the day-to-day anxiety of not knowing if the people we love are safe. We are always hoping that someone in the United States will help them.

When my oldest daughter graduates a year from now, she'll be able to work to help pay for the other children's schooling. Then my husband and son will return. Some people believe girls shouldn't study, that women shouldn't participate in anything but the home and raising children, but I don't agree. I want all my children to prepare for a better future.

Bernadina Perez Garcia lives in Zacango, Guerrero, southern Mexico.

Booklet
MCC workers around the world promote various technologies like the smoke-reducing cookstove Bernadina Perez Garcia describes. Other "appropriate technologies," as they are called, include dry-composting latrines, rope pumps and cisterns. In "Beyond Technology," an MCC Occasional Paper, former MCC volunteer Jacob Schiere examines the meaning of appropriate technology, drawing examples from his work in Latin America. Available for $1.25 Cdn./$1 U.S. from MCC in Akron, or read it on the Web at www.mcc.org/respub/occasional/14.html.

a Common Place - MCC's magazine