Ecojustice and Education by Wayne Kathryn Ross;Gruenewald David A.;Gruenewald David A.;

Author:Wayne, Kathryn Ross;Gruenewald, David A.;Gruenewald, David A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

McDonald’s, No! Ancestral Foods, Yes!

On the evening of December 10, 2002, there was yet another fiesta organized by Unitierra. Students, staff, and some tutors celebrated at this particular time the official decision to keep McDonald’s out of the main plaza of the city of Oaxaca.

Internationally famous for its gastronomy, especially its regional and local foods, Oaxacans were already suffering the humiliation brought to them by tourists: a new McDonald’s near the airport. The diverse indigenous groups of Oaxaca silently witnessed the spectacle of middle-class, educated Mexicans arriving every weekend to treat their children to Happy Meals packaged inside of Happy Boxes. The question: Should McDonald’s locate in the main central plaza (zocalo), with its magnificent ancient trees, a plaza full of life where every day native Oaxacan inhabitants come to talk and walk and enjoy themselves? For the rooted dwellers of Oaxaca, this proved to be too much. Enough! ¡Ya Basta! they protested, inspired by the now renowned call to action of the Zapatistas.

¡Ya Basta! So started the struggle to liberate Oaxaca’s central plaza. The peoples’ struggle of resistance and liberation, like countless others preceding it, became a central part of learning at Unitierra. Students and tutors alike participated in a thousand different ways in a movement that took weeks and months to mobilize, given the different linguistic and cultural groups that constitute Oaxaca. In August 2002, students, staff, and tutors participated in communal preparation of tamales for free distribution in the central plaza. The serving of real, rooted, indigenous food was one among many events orchestrated at the grass roots—constituting a gentle and peaceful movement of the people to prevent one more incursion of One World into their multiverse. Francisco Toledo, the internationally acclaimed Mexican painter, was part of the struggle. One of his friends nourished horror in the hearts of Oaxacans with a collage of the McDonald’s burger flying atop the ancient archeological site of Monte Albán.

On November 28, 2002, Unitierra students and tutors joined together with other communities, inhabitants of downtown Oaxaca, and prominent intellectuals to organize an open democratic forum to discuss the latest undemocratic McDonald’s invasion of their communities while articulating alternative hopes for those living around it. Some students and tutors presented position papers. Others created and distributed leaflets. Still others labored to document this movement—as they have others—producing videos and audiocassettes for distribution to communities across the world interested in learning from the success story of Oaxaca’s eviction of McDonald’s from its central plaza, its commons.

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