Summer Research

So, I received some polite stares from friends over Memorial Day weekend when I explained what I was up to this summer. I realize that I have not been particularly forthcoming about my plans, part of it was because I wanted to be able to announce my funding and explain the trip, but didn't want to be too precipitous. So.....
I have received funding for graduate student summer research from the Center for Latin@ and Latin American Studies and from the Center on Diversity and Community to conduct pre-dissertation research in Chiapas, Mexico for two months this summer.

I leave on the 1st of July. I will arrive in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas State and make my way east to San Cristobal de las Casas, where I will spend some time at CIESAS Sureste.
Following that I will be in the southeast of Chiapas, adjacent to (and sometimes in) the Lacandon Jungle volunteering with a grassroots organization there. I am first going to be involved in testing for GMO corn, but I hope to get in touch with the farmers that work and produce for the Mut Vitz coffee cooperative, a fair trade producing cooperative that is made up of Zapatista affiliated farmers.

The academic line on this one is that this work, this summer, will contribute to my eventual dissertation research which focuses on the tension between production of luxury crops for the fair trade marketplace and production of subsistence crops. I chose Chiapas because it is unique in that the small farmers (read: peasant farmers) there have been fighting for land rights since prior to the Mexican Revolution, moreover, they have somewhat effectively petitioned the government for communal land rights in the post-NAFTA period, they are traditionally subsistence farmers and they are supported by the Zapatista social movement. So, my inquiry here is two-pronged (1) how does the production of fair trade crops change the way people produce for subsistence (or does it)? and (2) how does producing for the fair trade marketplace align/contradict with the oppositional politics of the Zapatistas, who deploy a much deeper critique of the marketplace?

So, I have to get my immunizations updated, my anti-malarial prescription filled and figure out how to pack for jungle/mountain/city conditions and fit it all in my red backpack. Oh the calamity!