Follow-up Visit to Hogar Communitario

On July 23, 2008, Melanie Evans and I made a follow-up visit to HOGAR COMUNITARIO.  We spoke with Jutta, a staff member who took us on a tour of the facility.  Hogar Comunitario cares for  single women in their last month of pregnancy, provides nurse mid-wives for delivery of their babies and  continues this care for one month following the delivery. The children of these mothers are also cared for during this two month period. Very few babies are given up for adoption.This facility has a capacity to care for 6 mothers and their children.  During our visit we learned that one of the pregnant women was only eleven years old! At the time of our visit all 6 beds were full to capacity. During their stay the women are trained in marketable skills so that they can survive on their own and care for their children.  Pre-natal classes as well as classes in nutrition are also provided.

 We toured the enlarged pottery-making area, the children's workshop area, the general workshop patio and the organic mushroom "garden" on the roof.  There are plans to enlarge the mushroom garden as restaurants in San Cristobal eagerly purchase these mushrooms and it is a source of income for the women who tend them.  The women are also taught embroidery work.  The individual women receive the money that results from the sale of their personal crafts.  There is also a used clothing outlet in the entrance of Hogar Comunitario as well as a store called Trauma located on Real de Guadalupe which sells the women's crafts. It is hoped that the source of income from these crafts would help to prevent the women from working as domestics in private homes where they are too often exploited and grossly underpaid.

 AMIGOS partially funds the psychologist who teaches self-esteem, responsibility and helps the women to deal with the individual life issues that resulted in their pregnancies and inability to support themselves.  These important issues involve abuse, shame, abandonment by their partners and families, etc.  The psychologist also gives workshops to the children of these mothers. A psychologist recently left Hogar Comunitario and moved to Cuernavaca but a new psychologist was recently hired.

This facility certainly makes a significant contribution to both Mexican and Indigenous women here in the San Cristobal area.  And the funding from AMIGOS for a good psychologist is crucial to the care and treatment of these women.  I suspect, however, that not many women are aware of Hogar Comunitario and wonder how this information might be made more available.  I also wonder if there are other marketable skills that the women could learn; skills that do not compete with other women selling similar crafts on the streets.

Diane Livingston