San Antonio Juarez and Tepango de Rodriguez

On Tuesday, we visited San Antonio Juarez in the municipio of Tzicatlacoyan to check on a series of stone walls being built to trap eroding sediments. As you can see from the following pictures, soil is a major limiting resource in this area of Puebla.

After San Antonio Juarez, we headed to El Aguacata for a meeting with some members of the local ejido about a town clean-up dat scheduled for this coming Sunday. Trash pic-up within the town will be focused around the steam that runs through the town, but we also wanted to focus efforts on a large trash dump site just outside of town (see below). It turns out that this section of hte highway belongs to another ejido, so we headed to Los Angeles Tetela to find their ejido inspector and ask about the possibility of their participation on Sunday.

When we got to Los Angeles and asked for the inspector, we were lead to a large tent in the middle of town where we found the inspector in the middle of a party, complete with mariachis and a stage. We pulled the inspector away from the festivities, got permission and a promise of participation on Sunday, and were then informed that it was in fact his birthday party and he would like us to stay and eat. So after some seafood soup and tequila, we finally headed back to Puebla.

On Wednesday, we headed in the opposite direction, towards Tepango de Rodriguez in the Sierra Norte of Puebla (about a 3.5 hour drive) for the 4th (and final) workshop for the Ordenamiento of the Necaxa-Laxaxalpan watershed. This workshop is the most important of the series that are held during the ordenamineto process because it uses public participation to give opinions on how land-use is zoned and what types of uses are deemed appropriate. In an ordenamiento there are 4 general catagories that can be assigned: conservation, restoration, protection, and use. Within each of these catagories, there are various specific types of activies that can be lefted completly open, conditional, or closed. Some of these activites include agriculture, industry, eco-tourism, urban growth.....

Tepango is 90% indigenous and is a mix of Totnacan and Nauha communties.

This is the view from the back of the muicipal palace, you can see the town quickly gives way to a more rural setting.

We had representatives from 15 of the 26 municipalities in the ordenamiento, as well as various representatives from other government agencies that have a presence in the region. Not much going on in the workshop picts, but you get an idea what it looks like. Afterwards the municipal president invited everyone to eat and we had a type of chicken soup (caldo de pollo) before heading back on the curvy, speed bump filled road.

Zacatlan Workshops

One of the steps of the process of Ordenamiento (a land use zoning or classification, which is what I am doing most of work in) is a workshop to include participation from the municipalities and allow people that actually live in the area to give their opinion or concerns about the program. On December 3rd we had the 1st workshop for the Ordenamiento of the Necaxa-Laxaxalpan watershed in Zacatlan, Puebla. Zacatlan is in the Sierra Norte, or the norther, mountainous part of the state. We stopped for breakfast at a place with a great view of one of the canyons on the edge of Zacatlan.
The municipal palace was already decorated with piñatas for Christmas.

This is the banner for the workshop, which was heald in the municipal auditorium.

After a general introduction to the process of an ordenamiento and advances specific to the watershed, participants were broken up into groups based on the sector they were representing (agriculture, mining, forestry, and tourism).
While we were in the municipal auditorium, it also kinda looked like a German beer hall with this stain glass window.