Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas
The Institute for Training and Development, Amherst, met with our in-country partner organization, Cecropia, at Guanacastle Park, 10 miles south of Tuxtla a managed land area in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas on Sunday March 10. The park, a private preserve, also features archaeology from the Zoque and Chiapaneca people that are native the Central Depression of Chiapas and serves as a groundwater regeneration and endangered species protected space. The park remains open to visitors, like our group, which included Professional Fellow alumni from 2015, 2017 and 2023 and three former hosts on the US Fellow outbound trip.
The space also facilitated a conversation between members of Cecropia, the Guanacastle preserve, the ITD team, the US Fellows and two local political leaders. Aurelio Cruz Ovando, the Tuxtla Gutiérrez City Secretary of the Environment and Urban Mobility, and his city hall colleague, Alejandro Mendoza, Director of the Citizens’ Institute of Municipal Planning, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, who is an ECA alumni with ITD, from the Professional Fellows Program on Environmental Sustainability with Mexico, Peru and Uruguay in 2017.
Becky Basch, senior planner with Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, the fellowship site of Mr. Mendoza in 2017, here on her US Fellow outbound trip to visit 2023 fellows, conversed with Mr. Cruz Ovando and Mr. Mendosa on their planning initiatives in town. The two city officials described the creation of a bike path beside the Sabinal River in the center of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a new development that has also led to river trash removal and the creation of small shops along the newly trafficked area. To cultivate civic spirit among city officials, the two men mentioned how the Alcalde, their boss, marshalled the services of civil servants like them to engage in the trash pick and engagement with the newly recovered space for civic participation.
Jim Lescault, executive director of Amherst Media in Massachusetts, listened in. He discussed educational videos made by the Tuxtla Gutierrez municipality and offered to use his cable channel’s network to create publicity for Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
Present also was US Fellow Kate Riley, of Seattle, a director at Na’ah Illahee Fund, a Native American NGO. Ms Riley reconnected at the event with her 2023 Professional Fellow, Lucia Lucía del Carmen Gómez Díaz, of the Maya Tsotsil indigenous community and of the anti-corruption and human rights NGO Kintiltik. Accompanying Ms. Gómez Díaz to meet Kate Riley were Kintiltik co-founders, Juan Chawuk and José David Ruiz Aguilar.
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All opinions expressed by the program participants are their own and do not represent nor reflect official views from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, or of the Institute for Training and Development, Inc.
