Dare to leave behind what you know | Celina Izquierdo | TEDxCancún

This talk is from a TEDx event, organized apart from TED conferences. More information can be found at: http://ted.com/ted

A woman with a cause, willing to fight and committed to welfare, Celina Izquierdo, shares with us how social activation, supporting networks and perseverance are a few indispensable factors to shape identity in a community.

A few days after the 1985 earthquake
in Mexico City,

while I was among the boxes
of basic goods and foods

from all over the world,

and while we were preparing
these bags with provisions

that would later be given out,

I chose to emigrate.

I didn't require a lot:

A place to hide from bad luck

out of my daughters' reach.

I thought of migration as a solution

not a problem.

6 years went by before I could leave

this much loved but terrible city

the Federal District, Mexico City.

It wasn't terrible just
for the tremors, well by then,

it was already the worst place
for assault,

for car theft,

express kidnapping made it's debut

and I needed to escape.

Leaving meant leaving this all behind,

but also leaving everything.

When we arrived in Cancun,

my husband's family,

a beautiful family, happy, supportive,

offered us a house

in the neighbourhood
Vicente Lombardo Toledano

and we settled in there.

I don't remember why but,
now that I think back,

I feel like it rained all the time.

My Mexico City daughters and I

felt like we were in the tropics
and we went out

to play in the puddles
and gather up the turkeys

until we realised

that the rain water was mixing

with sewage water.

I sold shawls in the hotel district.

When I saw the sewing machine,

this beautiful thing my elderly mother
had given to me with her furniture,

it came out in the move,

as I thought it would be great
as decoration

in my new house in Cancun.

I went from civil engineer to seamstress.

A little after that,

they needed a maths teacher

and well, there I was,

a little bit closer
to what I knew how to do

and not just to what I had learned

but what my father had taught me,

because he had always been
a maths teacher.

Shortly after that they needed
a construction teacher

and, of course there I came even closer

to my profession.

So I quit drawing out shawls in material

to sit down once again
to drawing out on the drafting table.

The friendships that we were building
during this period told us invariably,

"No, Cancun no longer has
the sea of opportunities,

that came before the hurricane."

Those were opportunities!

I thought to myself, "No, of course not,

the opportunities are here,

here we will build opportunities."

I realised that the word emigrant
applies to anything that arrived after me

and that the characteristics
of this condition

to which I belong,

are resistance, persistence.

I didn't come to hurt anyone.

Already being in the academic field

knowing a bit of maths,

statistics and being in the middle,

I was offered to form an association --

the Social and Domestic
Violence Association --

from the ground up.

This didn't exist in the country,

and a little later on,

coordinate the local Urban Association.

This allowed me to sort of integrate

two parts of my life,

one was theoretical work,
the academic work,

research, numbers,

big databases,

and the other that I
didn't want to give up,

was my ability, my longing,

to meet people.

Not just to see their faces,

but to offer my own.

And being in this place,

already allowed me to integrate

what is my true calling.

That has allowed me to get to know people

there's lot of figures too,
but also meet people.

For example, Eliza.

Eliza comes from Las Margaritas, Chiapas,

she has two sons.

Her dream, what she calls happiness

is for them to go to primary school,

all clean, well groomed, well fed,

doing homework, following the rules;

this for her is happiness.

She won't let them be like her.

Eliza told me how when she was younger

she received an average
of three men a night

and now that she is older,

the average has risen to six.

She is scared because

she thinks she has HIV.

When I ask her if she has sat and thought

about the possible transmission
to all these men

and them in turn to
all their other partners,

she turned to me quickly and said

that she was also worried about her sons

and due to her possible absence,

she has to worry for a whole army.

She didn't come to hurt anyone.

And in this way, she is like Geovanna,
who tells me off when I say

"Hey, Yoana,"... she says, "Geovanna."

Geovanna decided to get pregnant

when she was 14 years old.

It was the only way she could leave
the house of her biological father

who abused her

and what hurt her most,
was her mother's silence.

As she had raised
her three younger brothers

it didn't seem like a big deal to her

make her own and raise it.

She knew that she needed a man, as she

needed someone to provide for her

and give her a house.

She didn't finish school,

she assumed nobody would give her a job.

She has two sons and a daughter,

each of them is a failed attempt

at keeping a man.

This is why she came to Tabasco,

because she has faith

in what she will find there,

that they will register them,

they will say her name, as she says it,

they will give her a house,

they will give her something to eat
and so, she will be

very happy here in Cancun.

She has no idea that

that could hurt anyone.

Being in the Association,
seeing these stories

analyzing the figures.

Finding myself, not with statistics,

of point zero, zero, zero but with people,

has allowed me, in any case,

to make like a map,

like a representation of the city.

What is there in the city?

What opportunities does the city
offer to these women?

What decisions can they take?

Because I have real trouble thinking

that they made these decisions

faced with a wide range of possibilities.

But what possibilities does
the city really offer?

The people that can't be of use
to a city's services are unreported.

The sons of Geovanna are unregistered,

they have no medical card,
they can't be vaccinated

they can't go to school,

they have no identity,
they are unreported.

These people that have
no drinking water at home,

these entire neighbourhoods that

have to turn off the light,
so that on nights

with this heat, they can have a tiny fan,

are unreported in the public services.

To enter the city,

to become part of the city,

to get to know how the city moves,

what there is, what there is not,
how to get,

how to make use of such services,
and know where each thing is,

a support network is needed.

I had my family,
but it's not like that for everyone.

A support network tells you
where everything in the city is.

It also gives you signs of hope.

A support network
gives you a sense of security

so that you don't fall down,

but if you do fall,
the hit will not be fatal.

Who does this here in Cancun?

Well, there is an organisation
called Huellas de Pan,

which gives food to girls and boys
whose parents can't afford to.

And not just children,

if an adult today, like many,

like many times,
wakes up with nothing to eat

they can go to Huellas de Pan,
where they will find a delicious meal.

The organisation
Hands for Support and Life

is defined as --

they say that each step they take,

they find an abandoned youngster

and then they lead them to comfort spaces,

like helping them to complete high school,

become part of a team,

walk away from addictions.

These organisations

set signs, teach,

like the Cancun Choir,

Plant for the Planet,

and many other organisations and programs,

such as Communitary Bond
from the Caribbean University

that not only cares for today's
urgent need

to have food to eat,

but also the urgent need

to play an instrument,

to learn how to read to express ideas,

how to write to express ideas,

to express themselves with their bodies.

Yes, what we do at the Observatory

is to decode figures,
analyze large databases,

make representations of the city.

Who does what? Who needs what?

Where is which service?

How do phenomena move around the city?

But when I see those representations

I feel part of them,

I feel I'm an actor in that representation

but to do it, to truly act out

I have discovered I must re-found myself,

I need to re-found my relationships.

How do you achieve this?

I take the subsidiarity principle
or the first Christians.

The principle of subsidiarity states

that everything one could do on their own,

with their own strength

must not be transferred to another sphere.

The principle of subsidiarity,

help me to remember them, evoke them,

was created by the Christians

from the catacombs, chased,

poor, unattached families, impoverished,

they had their leader cruelly killed

and what they did was take action

within that small space they could,

within the small space remaining

and they took action to solve
the problems they were facing,

what needed to be done in that moment.

They had to do it
because letting others do it

would have been suicidal.

And it was working together

with what they had, that is,

with willingness, with
intelligence, with their heart,

that they re-founded themselves.

This is migrating to me.

It is leaving behind all you know,

carrying out a re-founding process

using your compassion,

the ability to feel with others.

"I am an immigrant, and
wish to continue being one.

Let's not leave that immigrant category,

because the strength,

the insistence

the ability to persevere,

the physical endurance,
the emotional strength,

the mental strength are the tools

that make way to hope

for others,

for us

(Applause)