Comparing the 18th Century and the 21st Century

[Jzmackenzie]

Reporter Carol Shor said it all in her article on June 3 -

Empowering Spanish Speakers is the first book of its kind to identify the problems facing rural Mexican families. It?s a book that could change the lives of the millions of our Mexican neighbors who are living 18th century lives while the rest of the world rapidly advances through the 21st century.

Readings, San Miguel Literary Sala presents, Teresa Nicholas, Buryin? Daddy & Jacqueline Mackenzie, Empowering Spanish Speakers, Thu, June 9, 5-7pm, Posada San Francisco, Cnr of Hidalgo & Canal, 70 pesos/50 pesos for Literary Sala members

Jacqueline Mackenzie?Empowering Spanish Speakers

From another part of the South, this time ?South of the Border,? comes a passionate writer who is dedicated to improving access to education for Mexicans. Dr. Jacqueline Mackenzie isn?t just theorizing and philosophizing about Mexicans and Mexican culture. She has taken herself and her family and moved them into the heart of true Mexican life, the rural campo, where she lives with, cares for, teaches and helps her neighbors ? poor, disenfranchised, often overlooked Mexican campesinos.

Empowering Spanish Speakers is an eye-opening story of what Mexican life outside of places like San Miguel is really like. No running water, no electricity, no work and oftentimes no food are the challenges facing the campesino. A subsistence farmer in rural Mexico doesn?t have time or money to think about books and uniforms or the four pesos it might take to get to school each day. A subsistence farmer in Mexico gets up in the morning and works a 12-hour day to provide food for the family. Families are extended and tend to include mothers, grandmothers, children, aunts ? not so many fathers, grandfathers, uncles or even sons. As soon as he able to, a rural Mexican boy starts to look north to the US for work, for opportunities, for money to send back to his poor family ? a dream most often ending in disappointment, failure and no money at all.

School for Mexicans is required until 6th grade. Campesino children are expected to contribute to the family?s support as soon as they are able, sometimes as young as 5 years old. Girls are expected to be caretakers for the younger children, as the mothers must go out and work. Children are taught survival skills by their parents, not because the parents don?t value education or want their sons and daughters to go to school. Quite the contrary. Dr. Mackenzie?s life and research has shown that Mexicans prize education and want it desperately for their children. But when you have nothing to eat, food and hunger are your greatest priority.

Dr. Mackenzie and her family work with rural campesino children, teaching them in a culturally appropriate way that may be quite different from the Western model of education, but suited to a Mexican farmer?s life and religious and cultural beliefs. As if this isn?t hard enough, Dr. Mackenzie specializes in the exceptional needs of children who are physically disabled or mentally challenged, a subset of the Mexican population who are most severely neglected and overlooked. She and her family provide horses for equine therapy and a pool for aquatic therapy. They do this for the poorest of poor children who may be carried for miles and hours each way by a mother barely out of her teens who is hungry and tired and helpless herself.

It?s not a pretty picture that Jacquie Mackenzie paints in her book. But she has chosen to speak for the underprivileged, overlooked people who surround us here in Mexico. Dr. Mackenzie feels that she has been chosen for the honor of caring for these children and their families. ?All I care about is that kids benefit.?