Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO)

 “¡La Tierra No Se Vende – Se Ama y Se Defiende!” (English translation: “The Land is Not for Sale – It must be Loved and Defended!”)
– A change from woman fighting against a large dam in Alpuyeca, Mexico

They cross borders to survive.

Young people, like Ponciano Perez, 19, left, take the long north-bound journey from Mexico, seeking an opportunity in the United States. The trip can take several weeks or months. Without money to pay bus fare, some travel on foot to the border. Too often, the journey does not go as planned – meet the wrong people and they strip you from anything you have.

Back home, family members do not hear from their loved ones for months. They just hope for the better: a call or information that everything is okay and some money will arrive soon. In the best-case scenario, some money will arrive but at the cost of not seeing their children for years.

The hillsides of Oaxaca literally slipped into mud and slid through community villages nearby. Among those affected by the deluge are Grassroots International partners: Mixe Peoples' Services; Center to Support the Popular Movement in Oaxaca;

Grassroots International partner Aldo Gonzalez from the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) joined us in the San Francisco Bay Area at the end of January for a week of meetings, conferences and public events.  UNOSJO is an indigenous-led organization working with Zapotec communities to build local autonomy and to increase food security in the Juarez mountains of northern Oaxaca, Mexico.

Chances are, the average U.S. resident has no idea that their demand for electricity might require that a Mexican village be flooded for a hydroelectric dam. The question is: if the human cost were known, would we consume just a little bit less?

At Grassroots International, our bet is that a little bit of knowledge would go a long way.  For those who value human rights, that high social and environmental cost is not likely to sit right.

Our unabashedly biased perspective is based upon the way we’ve worked for more than a quarter century: offering financial support to communities around the world whose natural resources have been extracted and despoiled and sharing their stories in living rooms, community centers and across cyberspace.

The Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) - a longtime partner of Grassroots International based in Mexico - denounced a recently conducted study in the Zapotec region by U.S. geography scholar Peter Herlihy. Prof. Herlihy failed to mention that he received funding from the Foreign Military Studies Office of the U.S. Armed Forces.  The failure to obtain full, free and prior informed consent is a violation of the rights of indigenous communities as codified in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the United Nations in 2007. In addition, UNOSJO fears that this in-depth geographical mapping of indigenous communities may be used in some harmful manner by the military. 

The Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) is a Zapotec indigenous organization, established in 1990 by 26 regional and community-based indigenous campesino organizations in Oaxaca’s Juarez Mountains.

The Zapotecs are one of the largest indigenous groups in the region. UNOSJO works to promote the rights of the Zapotec people and has been the leading organization defending resource rights for Juarez mountain communities, most notably in their work on saving forests from illegal logging, protecting watersheds and access to water and defending collective indigenous land rights.