D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
May
2009
Viva la Cooperativa!
Two creative co-ops are opening doors of economic opportunity
for people in Palomas.
Story and photos by Marjorie Lilly
Because most houses in Palomas have no numbers and most streets have no signs, Rita told me to go two blocks south of the plaza to the house with lots of cars outside. So I drove around the block a couple times before I found the gray cinderblock house on the corner.
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Josefina Morales, the most productive member of Palomas' Cooperativa,
and her daughter with handmade wares. (Photo by Marjorie Lilly) |
Despite the economic disaster of the past two years in Palomas due to the narco-violence and the tightening of the border, some seeds of change are sprouting because of joint efforts by Americans and Mexicans.
It was on a Friday that 25 women arrived with maybe a dozen small children at a meeting of La Cooperativa de la Frontera de Palomas y Columbus. It is one of two cooperative enterprises being started up recently in Palomas.
The women brought plastic bags with edges of crocheted or embroidered things hanging out of them, items they'd made during the week. The room was cool and dark where they sat around a big sturdy table painted green.
There were lots of yellow cherry-sized berries on the ground outside that kids were pelting at each other. Inside, one little boy crawled under the table, and a five-year-old girl drifted to sleep in her mother Wendy's arms.
It was the last of six meetings in the Mentorship Program sponsored by the Hunger Project of Our Lady of Palomas Hermitage and Retreat Center of Columbus. An American woman named Rita Holden sat recording in a notebook what each woman brought up to show her.
A woman named Nena took out a knit hat made of white fluffy yarn with pastel-color overtones, and popped it on her head. Others commented that it would be good for Easter, in just a few days. Rita took a look and made enthusiastic comments in her very limited Spanish. "Es muy bonito," she said.
What Rita said in English was translated by co-op president Paula Rodriguez, who went to school in Columbus for seven years. Paula wore an army-green visor cap perched on top of her head as she took notes. She's down-to-earth and likeable.
A young woman named Maribel modeled for the group a pretty dress with two doves stitched on the back. Eva showed some simple shawls she made out of gorgeous red-orange-purple material she bought in Juarez.
Rita has paid each woman, through the Mentorship Program, $10 a week on top of what they'll earn when their items are sold, as an incentive for creativity. The program is using some of the money they've received from several sources to support "sustainable development" — in other words, jobs. As part of the program, several of the women took informal classes from the more experienced among them, like Eva, who's been a professional seamstress.
The launching of the Cooperativa has largely been funded by the Episcopal Church and the New Mexico Women's Foundation. Another cooperative venture is called Aprons and More, and was started by a couple with an organization they call Border Partners.
These co-ops were hatched on July 4, 2006, in Columbus, in a fateful meeting of people who already knew each other slightly. Janet Shepard, who was then living and working in Gallup, bumped into Judith Lethin, an Episcopal vicar she had known in Alaska.
Both women had lived with their families in the same tiny town of Seldovia, Alaska (population 500) for a few years and had a passing acquaintance. Judith and her husband Chris had been active in their church and in social action all over Alaska for many years.
What brought the Lethins to Columbus was that Chris's step-parents had retired there. When the Lethins ran into Janet, they had already planned the chapel they now have and the mission statement of Our Lady of Palomas, which included the goal of "improving the life of the poor on the border." Janet and Judith got talking, and that's when these projects began.
Janet had already worked with Socorro Palacios of Palomas to put on big Christmas dinners at Socorro's home, beginning in 2005. The original co-op was housed at Socorro's place, but it's since branched into two separate organizations and changed locations.
Aprons and More was started by Peter and Polly Edmunds, who came along a little later and got to know Janet and Judith through their activism in Palomas.
The co-op women are for the most part participating out of great necessity. Nena Quinto lost her job at the bakery seven months ago. Her husband "lost his papers" to cross the border (probably a euphemism for being deported) and works from time to time in construction. She said, sotto voce, looking me directly in the eyes, that yes, they have gone hungry.
The vice-president of the Cooperativa de la Frontera, Chayo Covarrubias, lives just with her son who makes cakes at home and isn't able to sell them every week.
Juana Lozoya used to sell homemade bread in the streets for about $30 a week. With this co-op she makes $10 to $15 a week when she earns anything at all, and $30 to $40 in Aprons and More. She makes a little more money than she used to, and "I don't have to walk in the sun and wind any more," she said.
Janet describes the range of pay in the Cooperativa as being from $0 to $150 for the most productive worker to $0 to $7 for the least productive.
The regular Cooperativa de la Frontera meeting began on a Tuesday afternoon with more or less the same crew that had been at the meeting on Friday. But it was minus one person at least, because of a catastrophe that occurred while the group's sewing-machine maintenance workshop in Columbus was going on that morning.
The director, Paula Rodriguez, was in a freak accident in Palomas. A man had suffered a heart attack while driving and jammed his foot on the gas, running into the car that she and her mentally handicapped daughter Gaby were sitting in. The man died and Paula and Gaby were medivac-ed to Thomason Hospital in El Paso. At first their injuries were feared to be life threatening, but at this point they were expected to recover. (Paula ultimately had a successful operation on her foot, but will need assistance learning to walk again. Gaby recovered quickly.)
In Paula's absence, Janet was facilitating the meeting and called for a prayer. The women took each other's hands, and one of them spoke a sentence or two, followed by the Padre Nuestro. Then a 78-year-old woman in the group, Nicolasa, spontaneously spoke a tearful prayer herself.
The business of the meeting then started up, which consisted mostly of Janet throwing out ideas on new ways of making things and getting feedback. The group has been struggling with how to make crocheted shoes that fit well. "Using a buckle solves the problem of how it fits," said Janet, demonstrating with an actual shoe with lavender uppers.
Janet proved to be a lively facilitator, charming and overflowing with appreciation for the women's work. She has a part-time job working with the deaf in the Silver City schools, something she's done for years, since she founded a school for the deaf in Tijuana in the 1960s.
In an aside, Janet said, "This cooperative has congealed — they're making their own rules, electing their officials." She told me how the women wrote and drew up their own organizational plan: "They drafted it in December 2008, and then revised it in February this year." Everyone gets paid depending on what sells; five percent of their earnings go toward rent for the room they use for meetings.