Partnering with Mexico's rural poor: a participatory path to development

Mexico's most intractable problems are found in its rural areas, where lack of education and poverty facilitate the corruption, crime and violence that make it so much harder to implement programs which could help. But how can Mexico's rural poor emerge from this vicious cycle?

In applying our community-partnering model to new challenges, the Corner Institute is discovering creative new ways to deliver urgently-needed services to the poorest of Mexico's rural poor, while continuing to create jobs, help migrants' families weather crises, and keep migrants' children in school.

Peace-building project hosts native peoples' peace walk, helps Ayotzinapa victim's family

The Corner Institute worked with Malinalco's Barrio San Martin, the municipality's poorest and most indigenous barrio, to welcome the inspiring regional Walk for Peace that started in El Salvador, visiting native peoples' spiritual centers in Guatemala and the Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero before stopping in Malinalco to share spiritual practices and visit the ancient Aztec temple carved into the mountain above Malinalco.

A group of Mexico City-based human rights organizations asked the Corner Institute to host a security workshop for the local family of a student who was killed during the abduction of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa, the young man whose tortured body was found the morning after he and his classmates were attacked.

We were glad to host the national workshop, but also found that engaging the help of the family's local parish and diocese strengthened the support family members receive on a daily basis from their community.

Malinalco's poorest barrio hosted a native peoples' Walk for Peace.

Job-creation project brings accounting support and new technologies to Malinalco artisans

Malinalco's traditional carving in wood and stone goes back to the time of the Aztec empire, yet our artisans can barely earn a living. To help turn their skills into jobs, we helped them register for the tax-identification number needed to issue official receipts, facilitating sales of their beautiful crafts.

A workshop in lost-wax casting for Malinalco's master sculptors led to a new line of Aztec-inspired pendants: our artisans are now designers and can scale up production.

Sculptor Andres Medina learns techniques of lost-wax casting . . .

. . . producing a Aztec-spiraled bronze heart pendant.

Educational exchanges help students and scholars, service-providers

El Rincón has continued hosting students and scholars seeking to deepen their understanding of migrants' hometowns like Malinalco.

Bilingual Princeton student John Michael Colon participated in a Corner Institute internship teaching English in our summer program for migrants' children. Academics like Gabriela Martinez doing research for her masters at Mexico's Metropolitan University continue coming to interview our team, students and community members for research on migration.

Sharing our methods with other service-providers

We continue offering workshops to share our methods with other organizations providing services to migrants' families and children, such as the one we hosted last May for the Diocese of Tula, Hidalgo's migration ministry, in coordination with Mexico's Jesuit Migrants' Services.

Passport fair for U.S.-born migrants' children brings Embassy's consular team to Malinalco

Contrary to what most Americans would imagine, migrants' U.S.-born children face a series of bureaucratic nightmares when their parents bring them to raise in their Mexican home communities: unless their birth certificates were certified for use in Mexico, these children are in effect undocumented.

The Corner Institute was delighted to partner with the U.S. Embassy's Citizen Services section, the American Benevolent Society and Malinalco's Municipal Government in hosting a visit from the U.S. consular team. It was our most popular service event ever, with dozens of relieved parents finally able to apply for or renew their U.S.-born children's passports.

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