Return to Zapatista Communities with Inter Campus

CHIAPAS – Inter Campus have just returned from another trip to see how the project is progressing in Chiapas, Mexico. This time, our delegation was made up of operations manager Christian Valerio, coaches Silvio Guareschi and Davide Lubes and Inter Campus Mexico instructors Fernando Martinez and Jose Ruben Hernandez.

We were able to return to the Zapatista communities, visiting the Tierra, Olga Isabel, Aliados, Gennaro Vasquez and Santo Domingo secondary schools, where the Inter Campus project aims to help the local children via the game of football.

It was our tenth visit in five years, no less, according to the programme set out in accordance with the local government of the Caracol de Morelia, which is the administrational and institutional hub of the Zapatista peoples. The original agreement with the Autonomous Zapatista Education Commission set up an extraordinary mission aimed at working with a range of secondary schools, helping 225 boys and girls and involving a dozen instructors.

The objective of our visit was to teach the instructors about the core principles of the Inter Campus programme, which rates the recreational and educational aspects of its activity with just as much importance as it does the technical parts.

Our activities in Chiapas require us to adapt to the local culture, the daily lifestyles of the indigenous peoples in the area and the unusual rules of the Zapatista communities.

Having been working in the area for so long, we are now fully integrated and accepted by our Zapatista friends, with all parties pulling in the same direction. For the local people, sport is synonymous with altruism, respect, courage, discipline and humility – all values that have been at the heart of the Inter Campus project since the very beginning.

08.04.2016