Team:UNAM-Genomics Mexico/HumanPractices/LawProposal

HYDROBIUM ETLI. CASE EXPERIENCE AT CUATZOQUITENGO, GUERRERO: A SUSTAINABLE PROJECT TO DEAL WITH ENERGETIC ISSUES IN THE RURAL COMMUNITIES OF MEXICO

OVERVIEW

This page contains the information about “Hydrobium etli goes Cuatzo”. This project was born thanks to the fact that this year our team is an association between the UNAM Genomics undergraduates as well as fellow students, also at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, from the Latin American Studies Undergraduate Programme.

As we raised our ideas for what would become our 2011 iGem project, Hydrobium etli, it was quite clear that an interest to develop a project with the ability to improve our immediate surroundings was present. Namely, a situation in our country that could take advantage of Synthetic Biology.

Hydrobium etli goes Cuatzo represents the effort of building an interdisciplinary iGem project, because it aims to take the Synthetic Biology project “Hydrobium etli” and place it under the context of Mexico's current rural situation.

This area of the project vouches for the incorporation of new Synthetic Biology proposals, such as Hydrobium etli, as potential solutions to the necessities in the indigenous communities of our country. The posibility to supply environmentally-friendly energy to this localities, together with the energetic diversification it would imply, are the two objectives chosen to explore.

Among the results of this intiative you will find a document containing the analysis of the current mexican legal framework on GMOs, as well as the panorama on energetic matters of our country. Through this paper, it is concluded that the rural situation of our country could take advantage of a project like Hydrobium etli.

Another fundamental section of Hydrobium etli goes Cuatzo is the diffusion of the Hydrobium etli project, which is where it takes its name from. Cuatzoquitengo or “Cuatzo” is an indigenous community that belongs to the mixteco linguistic group of the country. It is located in the Malinaltepec municipality of the Guerrero State, right in the middle of la Sierra (the mountain system). Cuatzo was the place elected to the field work part of the project.

The two goals of this field work were, first, to take the information of the Hydrobium etli project to the people of this community. And second, to collect their opinion on the posibility of carrying it out. Electric energy is a public fundamental service nowdays but in Mexico we have many communities like Cuatzo where sumministrating this service is a challenge for the government, Hydrobium etli goes Cuatzo is thus, a quite relevant approach to a social issue present accross our whole country.

Introduction

Placing the project under a relevant context

The UNAM-Genomics-Mexico 2011 team is formed by undergrads from both scientific and humanistic programs. We understand that Synthetic Biology is an evergrowing field and that it holds many challenges; but the outlook is quite promising: its ability to develop applications with the potential to solve problems posed by disease, environmental deterioration, and scarcity among many others, is overriding.

The development of Mexico and its international vinculation (specially with other countries from Latin America) beg for a systematic analysis of the cultural, political, and economical problems of the country. The Latin American Studies Undergraduate Programme is an interdisciplinary one seeking to understand the historical development and the contemporary problems in Mexico.

Mexico is a developing country with a large population (112,322,757 in 2010) and a vast cutural and ethnical diversity. The population is distributed across the whole country and the

Maturing the Idea

Don't forget to include photographs

Document

Precedents

Law's stuff

Viability

Case Study

Mediciones

Conclusion

Case Study: Cuatzoquitengo

Introduction

When we posed the project Hydrobium etli within a laboratory, we understood that we faced ourselves with a project with a social future... for many days we thought in the best way to take this project to the right and relevant people. What would be more relevant than to one community with the potential to take on a project like Hydrobium etli? Since this moment it was our greater objective to highlight the integral and profound relationship between science and the society.

In our first meeting with one of the community professors, he expressed the true problems that electric energy represents in rural regions of the country. The cultural diversity of Mexico has propitiated that it is a constant problem the land tenure among communities and this in turn provokes quarrels that end by promoting electricity outage that last weeks, road closures, problems among the communities that take years to be solved; it is true that provide public services to the Sierra represents by itself a great challenge. A project correctly oriented that permits the communities access to their own electricity supply could solve some of the problems here stated. Of course this is about a project that still remains in the research step, but it is important to reaffirm that it is about a project with a social potential against the rural communities reality and their needs in our country.

The rural communities are restless, participative and foster the dialogue about problems in a updated manner, and personally, in Cuatzoquitengo, we found people with full awareness of their environment, of their needs, with projects to be applied in a non-distant future; people willing to give the necessary opinions to share the information, people that want their opinion to be listened above all other. This is why finishing the difussion work has made me be part of this community eager to participate.

Living the Experience

We were anxious to arrive to la Sierra, the place where the community we had chosen was located; was an impressive place. It seemed to belong to another reality far away from the city chaos. The silence was overwhelming, you could breathe tranquility, people greeted in their own language -mixteco1-, children played among the houses and among the maize fields, the wind was cold and the roads were muddy... but we arrived and we were pleasantly surprised.

• Nataly Álvarez Sánchez: Hydrobium etli goes Cuatzo Testimonial

Going to La Sierra in Guerrero is an experience that can teach you a lot from the reality the indigenous communities live in. We were confronted by the sight of the marginal poverty these communities live in: many children with naked feet can be seen, people travel very long distances by feet, and health services are pretty basic. The scenary that can be seen while arriving tu cuatzo leaves you breathless, beautiful landscapes inform you of the little urbanization that exists in Cuatzo.

It was very interesting, challenging, and mostly rewarding to have the oportunity to communicate and work together with the people of Cuatzo to convey the community a scientific project like Hydrobium etli to them. They taught us some words in their native indigenous language, mixteco, and that really helped us to bond with them. Learning about the way they live, their usual activities and their traditions opened the door to deliver the information related to Hydrobium etli, as well as obtaining feedback from them. Something that I will enver forget about the experience is knowing how the project could actually help them improve their lives. As a humanities student I feel very proud of the task we acomplished through this case study experience: to form a link between the people that Synthetic Biology could help find solutions, and the people who are doing Synthetic Biology.

• Paloma Ximena Velázquez Ríos: Hydrobium etli goes Cuatzo Testimonial

My participation in the journey to the Coatzoquitengo community was higly enriching, it gave a whole spectrum of contrasting, profound emotions and feelings.

As is it natural, when I first got noticed about this participation I felt anguished and anxious, as this was to be a journey to a isolated community, deep within the Sierra, where the means of comunitation are scarse. Besides, I confronted with problems that I hadn't had to face before, like the fact that I had to communicate to people that spoke a different language and that practiced radically different traditions.

The landscape that I got to know was very overwhelming, but nothing can be compared with some of the moments that this experience gave me... The mindfulness to certain situations, like a bucket of cold water, that these realities made you adquire... as you live them as never before.

One of these moments was a stop we had to do in the middle of the transportation towards the village, when we were already inside the Sierra; it was at a little food stand in the middle of nowhere. We stopped there to have breakfast, it was very cheap (approximately 10 pesos per person) and very tasty. In a corner, a family, both parents and a little kid, were apprehensively eating. When they finished, the woman that attended the little stand went to pick up their dishes and told them that didn't have to pay. I then realized that these people didn't have resources to eat by themselves, and as I knew the ciphers (In Mexico, the half of the population does not gain enough to afford what has been stablished as “the basic products a family consumes daily”), you are never as conscious of this truth as when you have something to eat in your plate and someone else does not. When having something to eat in your plate everyday makes you feel guilty.

This reality becomes more penetrating when you understand the profound communitiy sense of this people, that is willing to share the little or the much they have to their community. This sense of community becomes a pleasant surprise to experience, as example, the meetings in which the whole community dialogues in search of solutions to each of their problems.

Maybe one of the moments that gave me a major reflexion was when we had to explain the benefits of the creation of a cooperative to begin the project with, one of the presents told me -”Yes, but we already know that, that's how we make things here...”- I felt bad, asking myself who was I with slender studies on the subject, to go and talk to them of something they practiced daily.

One of the biggest obstacles we had to face was the communitacion issue, as we didn't just talk different languages, but a whole bunch of distinct experiences. That is the reason we made special emphasis to our preparation to explain the subject in a very careful manner, thinking in the adequate words and in the most didactic methods to make accessible our explanation. It was pleasant to be able to communicate with them, to listen to their doubts, the opinons that emerged, and above all the illusions the project created to them.

I consider the project Hydrobium etli a project bespoke to the rural communities, specially to all of them that have been historically marginated, as this promises to be not just a food supply, but a source of nutrients to their lands, and an electrical energy source, covering in that way two fundamental axes of the sustainable development.

Future Directions

We are humanists, the people opinion is one of our main concerns. The world needs a mayor interaction between sciences and the society. To make this bond between Synthethic Biology by means of the Hydrobium etli project and an indigenous population has been a demanding task, but it has also been an unique and necessary experience to us because there probably does not exist better way to make scientific difussion other than really promote a dialogue among science concerns and the people concerns.