By Eliza Ridgeway

Photos Courtesy of Mitchell Anderson Diana Flores bonds with sisters, from left, Teresa, Olivia and Esmeralda in front of their school, which was built with foreign aid. Below, a child in San Cristobal de las Casas cares for her siblings while her mother works at the nearby market.

Diana Flores has flown far from the nest since she graduated from Los Altos High School in 1997. She relocated to the most isolated reaches of southern Mexico, where she works with villagers to document and publicize human rights abuses.

Based in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Flores has received an advanced degree in international adventure, global politics and the privilege of having a home like Mountain View to return to.

Flores studied Latin America as a UC Berkeley student, with a focus on Mexico and Latinos transplanted to the Bay Area. She is of Mexican descent herself.

Living in Chiapas for the last two years, Flores has been challenged far beyond her fluent Spanish skills by regional Mayan dialects, such as Tzeltal and Tzotzil, which she must learn to communicate with women in the villages. Flores spends much of her time traveling rough dirt roads through the stretches of rural jungle.

She and her boyfriend, Mitchell Anderson, work for a Mexican human rights non-profit called CAPISE (in English, the Center for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Research). The rural community Olga Isabel particularly struck Flores and Anderson. A community of subsistence farmers, the indigenous Indians of Olga Isabel have suffered attacks and threats from a nearby paramilitary group, Flores said.

Indigenous peoples in Chiapas have battled wealthy ranchers and the Mexican government for land rights for decades. The international world became aware of the conflict during the 1994 Zapatista uprising. Flores does independent work in Chiapas, but a conversation with her makes it clear that she has developed a great respect for the Zapatista cause.

Named for Emiliano Zapata, a revolutionary leader of the early 20th century, today’s Zapatistas form a network of indigenous governments that view themselves as independent of the Mexican national government. Claiming to be a non-violent organization, the Zapatistas focus on indigenous rights and anti-globalization.

Negotiations between the rebels and the Mexican government secured some autonomy for the indigenous communities, but the concessions change on an almost yearly basis.

A charged topic is the activity of paramilitary groups in Chiapas, which are, Flores said, covertly associated with the Mexican government and thus armed and powerful.

The human rights abuses she records stem primarily from paramilitary attempts to intimidate and fragment the Zapatista communities.

Olga Isabel, which includes about 50 families spread between several small villages, permanently lost power when a nearby militant group cut the electricity cables to the town.

Flores and Mitchell have spent the summer raising money in their Bay Area hometown to restore power. Their goal is to buy the community its own transformer and generator, giving it an independent power source and “prevent the conflict from escalating,” Flores said.

They have already raised $10,000 through a letter campaign to friends and family.

Flores also pointed out that anyone interested in participating more directly can volunteer as a peace observer in a Zapatista-aligned community.

“It’s a great way for people to get themselves down there, and they’re really helping the people when they do this,” Flores said. “It brings the international eye in that community. Just their presence (in a village) will prevent the paramilitary from coming in and burning down a house. This happens all the time.”

She said that there are too many international workers in the area to feel like a target, and that foreigners, and their associated governments, are the last people the covert militias would want to bother.

Flores plans to spend another year documenting human rights violations in Chiapas while she applies to graduate school in the United States. She wants to study public health and become a nurse practitioner - a field where she has seen a great need in Latino communities in the Bay Area and in Mexico.

“Just being there has also made me focus on what I can do in my own country,” Flores said. “But I’m not done, the travel bug isn’t out of me.”

For more information or to donate, e-mail olgaisabelfund@yahoo.com or write to Flores at 144 Flynn Ave., Mountain View, or call 630-0791. Include your e-mail address for further updates and pictures of the electricity project.