Playa Rinconcito section of San Agustinillo, Tonameca, Oaxaca, Mexico (Photo: Thelmadatter)

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Oaxaca farmer Pedro Santiago (Photo: Shannon Young)

Hillside farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico, are experimenting with low-tech, traditional methods to stem erosion and retain water. The efforts are a response to increasing floods and landslides, like those caused by a series of late-summer storms in the region. Shannon Young reports. Download MP3

• Permaculture Demonstration Center in San Andres Huayapam
• Institute of Nature and Society of Oaxaca

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LISA MULLINS: Farther south in Mexico, residents of the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca are still digging out from a rash of late summer landslides. The disasters killed dozens of people, destroyed homes and blocked rural highways. The landslides were blamed on unusually heavy rains. But deforestation and poor agricultural practices have made erosion a chronic problem in the region. Now some local residents are trying to address the problem by experimenting with low-tech, traditional practices. Shannon Young has the story from Oaxaca.

SHANNON YOUNG:  Back-to-back storms have drenched Oaxaca and three neighboring states in this busy hurricane season. Much of this rain has hit remote mountainous regions that are already prone to landslides. Storm-related damage to roads has left some towns unreachable by car for weeks.

SPEAKING SPANISH

YOUNG: Forest management consultant Jose Rodriguez says the Mexican government hasn’t provided much help in cleaning up, so the task has largely fallen to unpaid locals with their own shovels. Impassable roads are a fact of life during the rainy season in southern Mexico’s most remote areas. Deforestation and overgrazing on steep mountainsides have helped create serious erosion problems here. But much of the erosion is preventable. And without much help from the government, some local residents have begun fighting erosion and other land use problems, with low cost do-it-yourself techniques. The town of San Andres Huayapam overlooks Oaxaca City from the foothills of the Sierra Norte mountains. The town’s original name means “on the big water,” but the springs that inspired the name have been drying up. The area now swings between drought and the kind of floods experienced in recent weeks. But one project here has developed a system to restore the ecological balance.

JUAN JOSE CONSEJO: What we try to do is combine scientific and traditional in a way that everyone gets a better condition.

YOUNG: Juan Jose Consejo is the director of Oaxaca’s Institute of Nature and Society. He’s working on what’s called the Pedregal permaculture farm and demonstration center. The project is experimenting with various combinations of modern and traditional technologies for retaining soil and recharging watersheds. Consejo shows off one erosion control system on the Pedregal site. Trenches running down this hillside channel heavy rainwater that would otherwise carve out gulches and gashes. The trenches contain chain link cages filled with rocks, which trap eroding soil. The topsoil is then collected and piled onto nearby hillside cornfields that have been stabilized with new terraces and hedgerows. The demonstration center also has two small dams, one built with reinforced concrete and one made using an old technique combining earth and large rocks. The dams catch overflowing creek water during the rainy season for irrigation during the dry season.

CONSEJO: The idea is to give a little help to nature to do what nature does in healthy conditions. That means, lets the water run down, forming ponds and steppes. Then, we have a system of terraces in order to protect the soil from erosion.

YOUNG: After the recent downpours, the dams and traps are filled to capacity. But the experimental plots seem to have weathered the season better than much of the surrounding landscape.  Standing on a hillside, I can see the hills that have been reforested. Now, as I turn around and look at the opposite face of the canyon, gashes have been cut into the hillside by running water and these gashes converge into an entire area balded right down to the rock. Local farmer and traditional leader Pedro Santiago set up the Pedregal center five years ago.

SPEAKING SPANISH

YOUNG: Santiago says managing the many experimental projects here requires patience and ceaseless hard labor, but that signs of success are emerging. Forest ecologist Jose Rodriguez says more than two dozen towns have implemented stewardship programs similar to the work done at the Pedregal center and elsewhere in the region, but tailored to their own diverse local conditions.

SPEAKING SPANISH

YOUNG: The combination of old and new approaches being demonstrated here won’t completely solve the erosion crisis in this part of Mexico. But these small-scale efforts here in Oaxaca are showing that it is possible to restore degraded land and to protect Mexico’s hillsides against the devastating effects of rain that just doesn’t seem to stop. For The World, I’m Shannon Young, Oaxaca, Mexico.

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Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec sits on a cloud-cloaked mountainside in northeastern Oaxaca. Most of its 9000 residents are subsistence farmers or poultry breeders. On paper, Tlahuitoltepec is like many towns in southern Mexico.

But a closer look reveals some differences. First – this town still has plenty of young adults – a demographic that has otherwise left small towns like this one in search of work in the cities or in the US. And then, there’s the music.

The large municipal band practices in the afternoons near a gazebo crowned by a metal G-clef symbol. Local resident Florina Vasquez Núñez estimates that around 70 percent of the town’s population knows how to read music.

Then – she says – there are those who can’t read the notes, but can play by ear.

Youth and music literacy converge at Tlahuitoltepec’s Center for Musical Training and Development of Mixe Culture. Mixe is the indigenous group that most people in the town belong to. The conservatory offers a top-notch musical education — along with middle and high school coursework — to some 120 mostly indigenous boarding students. More than 100 local people attend free afternoon music workshops.

The school’s director, Damian Martinez says music accompanies all major life events here, from christening parties to funeral processions. He argues the presence of a band is so important that party hosts are more likely to scrimp on the food than to forego the live music.

These traditional celebrations sustain many of the region’s musicians. That, and giving music classes.

Felix Vazquez Hernandez teaches beginner-level students how to play guitar.

He explains that while pianos are favoured teaching instruments in many formal music schools, the conservatory here prefers guitars. They’re lighter and more portable, he explains, and pianos can be hard to find in many communities. But there are other instruments as well.

Intermediate level students spread out around the 10 acre campus to practice music assigned as homework. Sixteen-year old Viviana Karena Los Mendoza rehearses in the cafeteria.

She says she’s learning a lot at the school – including singing by sight-reading, breath control, and instrument maintenance.

Viviana wants to continue her education in Mexico City. University-level music instruction is one of the options for conservatory graduates. Some return to their communities to form bands. Others become music teachers. A few join symphony orchestras.

Thirty-year old trombone player, composer and arranger Leovigildo Martinez did all of the above.

He wasn’t planning to move back to Tlahuitoltepec after growing accustomed to city life…but the invitation to teach at the conservatory here was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Leovigildo Martinez now directs “Banda RM,” a group that has re-invented traditional regional music by fusing it with elements of ska, jazz and rock. Most of its members are in their 20s and live in Tlahuitoltepec.

Martinez says they’re not just creating a new style of regional music – they’re trying to show that it’s possible to make ends meet in a rural town without having to migrate. The most regular source of income for the band and other musicians here is the circuit of family, religious and town-based festivities. So it seems the musical education available in Tlahuitoltepec not only acts as a job-training program in an economically marginalized area, but also helps to keep the town’s social fabric strong.

For The World, I’m Shannon Young in Oaxaca.

And that’s why we’ve chosen one of Mexico’s 31 states for today’s Geo Quiz. It’s a place where the Day of the Dead tradition is especially strong. This state borders Chiapas and Veracruz, and to the south, the Pacific Ocean. The Sierra Madre mountains give this state its rugged character.

And it is the Mexican state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico that is home to espcially elaborate Day of Dead celebrations. Shannon Young sent us an audio postcard from Oaxaca City.

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