Alternative university; alternative education; alternative solutions
Date: 18 December 2010
Kate Blagogevic, WDM media officer writng from Oaxaca, Mexico.
Earlier this week, we met Oliver in the Universidad de la Tierra. It’s a small organisation of 7 academics who are working to provide alternative analysis, education and solutions to those being pushed by governments and the powers that lie behind the dominant system of corporate globalisation.
It was founded a decade ago in Oaxaca, a city with has a history imbued with a fight for autonomy from state and corporate power. The university offers exchanges for foreign students to open their eyes to the political and economic struggles at play in Mexico; and apprenticeships to people from surrounding communities; including midwifery, environmental management and computer science. The ethos behind this is to teach practical skills that can be put to use in communities to avoid the ‘brain drain’ from rural to urban areas and provide an alternative to the dominant education system where learning is so often directed purely towards functioning within the capitalist system that so often fails the people who try to be a part of it.
Unitierra are involved in a huge range of practical community projects helping to create a pathway towards a more sustainable education, leading to a more sustainable life. From remodelling disused computers to create jobs for unemployed computer science graduates whilst creating computers that can be used by underfunded schools, to teaching people how to fix compost toilets (“this is the thing that will really stop climate change” he said, referring to his previous comments about the false solutions currently on offer in mexico, such as the biofules being grown across Chiapas), assisting with the certification process fo traditional medicence and also the ‘Network for Food Sovereignty’.
The starting point for this network is a roof top community garden. But so much more than a garden, it is a community space where people, particularly women, are learning more about growing their own food in urban areas. But it’s also a political space to talk about local, regional, state and international politics, and to take the radical step away from being dependent of the whims of the ‘free’ market, from financial speculation and from GM companies.
Our conversation was sprawling, fascinating and inevitablely turned to the World Bank. Oliver spoke, of course, about structural adjustment programmes which forced countries to privatise their public services, such as health, education, water and energy sectors. And about infrastructure projects; such as the mega-dams and roads that have destroyed communities around Mexico and Latin America. But when talking about the Bank’s current programmes, he pointed to a new and sinister subtlty in their way of operating. This has meant that critical reforms are being imposed in an under the radar, piecemeal fashion, consequently making them increasingly difficult to oppose.
Oliver highlighted the World Bank’s current objectives in Mexico is focused on reform of the judiciary system. He was at pains to say that he wasn’t defending the current judicial system in Mexico, that there were many problems with it, but he pointed out that one has to question who is going to benefit from this ‘streamlining’ being imposed by the Bank, based on the north American system. Will it be the ordinary people? Or more likely the corporate lawyers and corporations seeking to gain access to profitable resources?
