Tribal Conference Reveals Grim State of Health Care in Mexico Story-Date: 07:57 a.m. PST Friday , October 9, 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------ Tribal Conference Reveals Grim State of Health Care in Mexico By Brenda Norrell, Indian Country Today, Rapid City, S.D. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Oct. 5--CASA GRANDE, Ariz.--Fidelia Suarez Mendez and Eulalia Saviva Buitimea sacrificed four days pay from their jobs in Yaqui village schools, traveling all day by bus to share the grim truth of Yaqui in Sonora, Mexico. Asked what is the greatest need for health and economic development in Yaqui villages, Ms. Suarez Mendez said, "It is difficult to know when the stomach is empty." During the "Border Health: Information for Action" conference, tribal and health officials from the Southwest United States and Mexico shared projects and strategies. But in the border zone meager funds, multiple languages and desperation, neither government, state nor grant funding has done much to eliminate human suffering. Speaking through a translator, Ms. Saviva Buitimea said, "The Yaqui men must leave the villages to work and do not even make enough to pay for a place to sleep at night." Indian laborers in the state of Sonora make the equivalent of four U.S. dollars a day, less than half the cost of an inexpensive hotel room in urban areas ripe with violence. With inflation and devaluation of the peso in Mexico, the cost of food, clothing and medicine has skyrocketed. For Yaqui, a kilo of meat costs nearly a day's wages. Even though well and barrel water is often contaminated, few Indigenous people can afford bottled water, more expensive than in the United States. In the Sonoran Desert, where fresh fruits and vegetables are at a premium and water difficult to come by for farming, empty calorie and starchy foods are replacing the one-time diet of wild plants and game. Besides little food for the present, there are no guarantees for the future. Ms. Saviva Buitima said, "One Yaqui man was working in a sardine packing plant in Guaymas. He was electrocuted and died. The family did not receive one penny from the factory." Refusing to be overcome by complacency or hopelessness, the two Yaqui women teamed up with Indigenous women from throughout Sonora to organize "The Truth and Right of Women." With health care and jobs a priority, their first goal is to establish a women's health clinic based on preventive medicine and health education. Next, they plan to create village-based jobs. Currently, the women receive no funds. The Indigenous women, including the group's president from the Mayo Tribe in southern Sonora, use personal funds for travel and organizing. Ms. Suarez Mendez, treasurer of the organization, said women are the foundation of the home and society and must prepare themselves with education to better their communities. But she said it is difficult for teen-agers to gain a high school education when they are desperately needed by families for work. Also, there is the high cost of registration in village schools, $20 or about one week's pay. During the border health conference, Maria Garcia, vice president of the "The Truth and Right of Women," offered a slide presentation of Kickapoo and Cocopah communities in Mexico. The slides revealed desperate living conditions for tribal members who lack job opportunities, clean water and often food. Some have no possessions, others have a few goats. "While the Mestizo (mixed bloods) in Mexico have made some progress, the Indigenous women are in the same situation they were in 500 years ago," said Ms. Garcia, Tarascan from Michoacan, Mexico. Ms. Garcia, owner of the Cafe Cultural, an Indigenous organizing center in Tucson, said all human beings have the right to health, education, food and homes. "Women are the foundation. Please help us reach our dreams for the future of our children," Ms. Garcia told professors and health workers gathered at the Holiday Inn Sept. 18. While hunger and desperation scar the Indian communities on the Mexican side of the border, environmental contaminant's on both sides of the border, accelerated by the North American Free Trade Agreement, pose the threat of cancer and death. Yaqui, Tohono O'odham, Cocopah, Kickapoo, Yavapai and O'otham (Pima) are among the Indian Nations with communities on both sides of the border in the United States and Mexico. The O'odham have lived in the Sonora region since time immemorial -- long before the imaginary line was drawn by conquerors and colonizers 200 years ago. "The border crossed us. We didn't cross it," said Joe Garcia, governor of the O'odham in Mexico and human rights activist. During the border health conference, Andrew W. Nichols, professor and director of the University of Arizona Rural Health Office in Tucson, quoted Nancy Dickey, president of the American Medical Association, "The border is burning." "The border is burning, not always in a literal sense, but in a very real sense to those who live in the 200 kilometer band stretching for nearly 2,000 miles from Brownsville and Matamorros to San Diego and Tijuana," Mr. Nichols said. >From Texas to California, the border is burning with open sewage, toxic waste fires and rivers polluted with polio, typhoid and salmonella. Attempting to tackle the environmental nightmare, the Border Health Commission bill was passed in the United States to establish a bi-national Border Health Commission. So far, however, Mexico has shown little interest. Speaking at the conference, Guillermo Nunez said it is important to reach men while working in women's health in order to sensitize men to women's ------------------------------------------------------------