I spent the last week in a little village called San Isidro Vista Hermosa. They are havıng a serious problem wıth paramılıtarıes. It was intense. The Paramilitaries conveniently named the ¨National Front for Indigenous Farmers¨ Kidnapped and beat up 6 people in 2003, 40 people in 2005 and shot up a meeting with automatic weapons fire in 2006. They are basically a group of caciquiles(ruling families) from Santa Cruz Nundaco(the neighboring town) that use there ties to the PRI Party and the governor to get arms and impunity. They use the impunity and arms to terrorize there neighboring community of Vista Hermosa off the land and out of any hope of political independence. My time there was good in the sense that things seem to have calm down a little and there were no conflıcts with paramilitaries. It was dıffıcult to witness how torn up, but struggling campo communities are here. Almost all the men and many of the women are currently in, just got back from or were going to the USA. The poverty is serious, only a little running water, no paved roads or large machinery, but they had electricity, so its not as bad as Nicaragua (but they went through a civil war). We did alot of video interviews with them about there experience under attack from the paramilitaries. Many of them had been kidnapped for days, beaten up or shot at. It was hard listening to so much suffering while knowing there is so little that I can do to effect things. But I hope being there and video taping was important. Community member camped out in the zocalo(center) of Mexico city for 4 months and have been completly ignored. The town is less then 250 people and it is split from house to house, you would try to bring up “the problems” and they would politely whisper “no, next door they are “the others”, the bad ones, it is better that we talk out front.” We counldn´t walk across town with out a guide because they feared provocations. The cars with the decals of the paramilitaries would drive by and say “good morning” in English to us. it was disconcerting to realise your actions could have a huge impact on the people around you. For example I generally asked before filming anything because if paramilitary people saw me filming, the municipal building or their cars it might be taken as a provocation and might lead to them shooting up the house of the people we were staying with after we left.All the people hosting us were amazingly kind, we had three meals a day each cooked in a different house, corn tortillas , beans, and eggs all grown right out side. I was there with 2 other internationals, one from spain and the other from germany, and we tried to help out with little tasks like taking the grains off the corn. The towns people generally made it clear that the real work(Building houses, taking care of animals, fixing water pipes) was probably too hard for our unskilled hands. They follow the traditional Uso y Costumbres decision making structure. Using full community assemblies and collective work for everything in town from the school to the church. It was a culture shock for us to come into town and ask them where we would be sleeping and have them reply ¨we´ll have a meeting about it.¨ 2 hours later the came up with a perfect room for us. then we asked where we would for breakfast the next day. again ¨we´ll have a meeting about it¨an hour later they had figured our eating schedule for the whole week. impressively effective even if it seemed slow to the gringos at first. It was a strange mix of cultures, a 3 road town way up in the mountains, every-ones first language is Mixteco, they all want me to teach there kids english. It was super loud day and night, the Fields of maiz (corn) with the blaring of american and mexican pop music, the sound of fighting dogs, donkeys, roosters, cows, the bells of the little church and the announcements to pay your electricity bills. Such a strange twist of ideal farm life and hyper modern trash, culture and violence.