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Two weeks ago we engaged into an academic adventure. Driven by our curiosity about social changes in intermediate Latin American cities, we went to Xela to experiment with collective fieldwork. At a place new to most of us, we wanted to see whether such a joint project by a multidisciplinary team of seven CEDLA researchers would allow us to get a better sense of commoning and decommoning processes.
Doing fieldwork together turned out to be even more fruitful and integrative than we had hoped for. While each of us had an individual research question within the overarching theme, in daily reality we often operated in alternating small teams. We also kept an eye and ear out for relevant information for our colleagues. And in the evening we had lively dinner debates where we would share our stories and discuss our understandings of all the new impressions and data. As we shared information, observations, interviews, and understandings on a daily basis, we deepened our understanding of Xela’s reality and developed our analytical and theoretical focus. While researching the commons in Xela, we were simultaneously commoning our research, sharing insights and ideas.
Increasingly we also came to see the multiple links between our topics: we realized that markets and cemeteries as public spaces where people come together and try to shape their lives, were more similar than we had thought. They showed the failed ordering projects by the municipal government and, at the same time, the complex and often contradictory efforts to create a common environment by people who use the public space. We realized that gravel mining in the rural areas is connected to the increasing problems of flooding in Xela’s urban area during the rainy season. We saw that organic farming and weaving schools are just as well efforts to create a Xela identity, as is the Maya movement. We realized that the feeling of insecurity in a relatively safe city like Quetzaltenango is inextricably linked to the feelings of fragmentation and the failure of the authorities.
On our last day we presented some preliminary findings at a seminar at CUNOC’s Architecture department. Besides academics, many of our ‘informants’ attended: from municipal officers, journalists, to representatives of NGO’s and civil society. Although many of the people we had interviewed stressed the desorden and divisions in Xela’s society, in our presentation we pointed out the importance of collective initiatives and commoning practices in the urban and rural territories. In the discussion that followed, several participants expressed concern about the multiple challenges facing Xela. ‘Por qué somos tan divididos?’ someone asked. More than initiatives, they experience disinterest and fragmentation. Other participants were happy with our approach. They liked our social science and humanities approach and welcomed our effort to stress collective accomplishments in Xela society. These contrasting views are unavoidable, stressing not only the complexities of Xela, but moving from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary research. And they show that still a lot of research needs to be done to really understand Xela’s complex realities.
While Xela’s problems are many, we have been impressed by the openness and generosity of its people. Whether in the municipality, academia (CUNOC), cultural organizations, rural communities, the markets, tejedora initiatives, social movements, the police, organic farming collectives, cemeteries, civic committees, or business organizations, we always experienced willingness to frankly share views and information. This has been an important ingredient for making this pilot project into a very productive and simultaneously immensely pleasant experience.
CEDLA agradece mucho a tod@s in Xela. ¡Hasta pronto!
Michiel Baud, Rutgerd Boelens, Fabio de Castro, Barbara Hogenboom, Christien Klaufus, Kees Koonings, Annelou Ypeij