Hello Friends,

I encourage you to act to make a difference in the world, each and every day, and with every breath you take. You re-create the world in each instant of your existence. As more and more of us realize our potential to create the world with vision for justice, for human dignity of all indigenous peoples, and for loving respect of the natural environment, eventually and inevitably, we shall prevail over the forces that blindly act to affect the opposite.

Especially for those of us who live in the industrialized nations, as impoverished as many of us are with the high costs of living, we still have tremendous resources at our disposal to improve the lives of peoples whose lives, natural environments, and cultures remain under the oppressive effects of impersonal economic forces at work in the world today. Nonetheless, anything you can donate to the Schools for Chiapas is something very helpful you can do. And you can truly feel good about the money you give.

For those who believe in free markets, fair competition, and supply and demand economics; please know that is all fine and good. That is exactly what we here are all working for in reality, not lipservice.

The reality that US Trade policies cause, is buried beneath MultiNational Corporate motives to maximize profits without social conscience, any kind of control, and even less concern for the horrendous environmental impact that such madness has caused and is expanding without any way to make corporations responsible for the legacy they are leaving to womever survives these most devastating days human civilization has ever caused.

In actuality, now in contradiction to the very concept of fair trade, all of the international efforts to spread democracy and so called, “free market” economies have failed miserably. This has been a politico-economic experiment that any reasonably governed system would have abandoned half a century ago.

Our world drastically needs fundamental change that will substantially bring about qualitative improvement in the lives of indigenous peoples throughout the world with respect for the natural environment and the indigenous cultures that continue to hold fast in preserving the wisdom to live in harmony with the natural environment.

Our industrialized societies have lost this wisdom. And horrifically, our industrialized cultures have developed a momentum that continues to act towards the destruction of indigenous world cultures, as if their wisdom to live in harmony with nature is some kind of a threat to the industrialized way of life. These acts are preposterous in their contention, and atrocious in their promulgation, genocide, and extinction of species, genii, and micro diversity.

How many times must we reconsider this madness in futility and frustration before another way of being can come into existence with basic sanity and respect for the beauty and diversity that nature has given us?

Millions of destitute people in the world will die before any of the proposed economic development theories will even have time to be further tested, notwithstanding the fact that, in essence, these theories of economic development have been in practice for far too long and so far have only lead to greater and greater poverty, disease and overall oppression for the worlds poor.

What can one person do? One person can do much. Supporting the Schools for Chiapas program with even a small donation, or perhaps doing so much as volunteering to help work in a construction project can make a real difference.

Why Chiapas? Without lessening the importance of similar projects in other parts of the world, or in any way drawing attention away from the numerous regions in the world where such projects are not even in existence or possible due to political instability, warfare, or the absence of an indigenous infrastructure. Chiapas is very important to include among the places in the world where your compassion is merited, and fertile for your support.

Chiapas is home to the inheritors of the great Mayan civilization, a culture of vast wisdom and deep spirituality. If you were to see the abhorrent conditions that the contemporary Mayan peoples must endure for their survival, you would be appalled and doubt that such conditions could possibly be the legacy of such an advanced civilization. You would also find it difficult to believe that a country, like the United States of America, while spending trillions for military operations all over the world, could neglect to provide humanitarian assistance to a neighboring country for the survival of these people who bear the languages and culture of one of the most sophisticated civilizations ever to have existed.

For the truth to be told, the taxpayers of the United States of America are in fact spending money that goes directly towards the destruction of these peoples and myriad others, believe it or not! This, sadly, is the legacy of the United States' relationship with indigenous peoples and their cultures for centuries, as inherited from the aristocrracy and mercantilism of Europe, even prior to the period of out right empire building. Asian civilizations are not guilt free either.

We are duped to think that this history only happened in an unfortunate time in the distant past. And we like to think that somehow we have become more enlightened, after all, the American Revolution spurred revolutionary thinking which did inspire other massive changes in Nations since that time.

Has contemporary civilation advanced at all. We have greater abilities for killing and destruction than ever. Nobel Peace Prize Scientists advanced knowledge further and further. Yet contemporary civilization is still founded upon the pricinpal tenet of being brutal conquerors of weaker peoples that we laud when we consider the Spanish Conquistadors of times past, the Roman Legions against the Celts, the Kurgan horse warriors who once devastated the peoples Asia and Europe, the horrible devastation of Native Americans, and of course the Nazi's of the Holocaust of the early 20th century?

What went wrong? Why were there so many martyrs in the second half of the twentieth century?

Is there anyone whe doesn't believe we can do better? Then let us act in ways untouchable by the forces of anti-environmental economic policies running unbridled. Let us show our compassionate faces to the rest of the world, as well as towards our neighbors in our own country.

Please join us here. Building an alternative education system in Mayan communities throughout the state of Chiapas will help the Mayan people survive in dignity and sustain their own rich culture in harmony with nature. And, in honoring their cultural wisdom, we may discover in posterity, that we will have recovered the very knowledge we need for our own survival, and the survival of all life on our precious planet.

I thank you with the utmost sincerity for your support.

Sincerely,

"Evkha" Renee Hudgins-Lopez