Fin de Semana
This past weekend was awesome for the two of us, especially this Saturday! We started off the afternoon with a very productive meeting with Noe and Juan (Co-Founders of Vinculo Comunitario); in fact, this was our third meeting with them since we’ve been in Mexico! We discussed the details of our partnership with them in future Inventure pilots. After our meeting, Noe and Juan invited us to dinner at the home of Mr. Mario Rechy – a federal politician in Mexico and mentor to Vinculo Communitario!
Mr. Rechy has worked in the Mexican government for 30 years. In his current position, he serves as an adviser to several sections of the Senate, specifically committees related to social economy and agriculture. Much of his recent work concerns agricultural cooperatives in rural areas of Mexico. Our friend Noe is currently working with Mr. Rechy on a project to help organize a milk cooperative in Amecameca, a rural community outside Mexico City. The purpose of the cooperative is to bring over 300 rural farmers together to work under the same government-constructed plant to make better quality dairy products with cheaper prices. However, forming this collaboration has been a difficult task – as Noe and Mario Rechy expressed over dinner, even though farmers know its best to share information, they find it hard to trust that many individuals and be willing to share profits. A lot of work on this front still remains for Vinculo.
Mr. Rechy’s house was unbelievable! It was made in the old Mexican style and filled with more books than you can imagine, covering topics from world literature to political economy to famous Mexican biographies. First, we sat down and began asking Mr. Rechy about his life and his work. He was able to share some very valuable information with us about Mexican social and political history and his unique views on the hybrid “capitalism” in Mexico. We were able to use what he shared to reflect on our work. Following the discussion we were surprised to know that Mr. Rechy himself had cooked an INDIAN meal for us! It was delicious and we topped it off with a traditional Mexican dessert, toasted sweet bread with fresh cream!
The end of the night was perhaps the most special part. Noe had brought his guitar with him and began to play some traditional Latin American music (some from Mexico and some from Cuba). We all gravitated into the living room where there was a piano and listened to all of them play songs and sing old tunes for hours. It was truly a memorable experience, and we were touched by how much they were sharing about their culture. Mr. Rechy has invited us to accompany him to Amecameca to see the cooperatives he works with - I hope we will have time to take him up on this!
