Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, addressing the bubonic plague that ravaged London in 1665, offers us three points to consider as we contemplate the pandemic striking the globe in 2020. First, pandemics are dramatic and distressing events that are superimposed on the peculiarities of cultures, histories, and economies of nations, yet in many respects transient in the broader sweep of the societies they disrupt. Second, as a consequence of the danger and uncertainties people experience most seek a return to “normality”, i.e., the known circumstances and conditions existing prior to the pandemic. Third, while today pandemics are fortunately uncommon the breadth and depth of their impacts may be vast. In effect they are slow-moving earthquakes, similar to the dislocation and misery provoked by the Syrian civil war. As Fulbrighters interested in disasters and crisis management we are called to analyze the current pandemic and its dynamics even as we grapple with the personal dangers and complexities it presents.

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     As Mexican and American Fulbrighters who have collaborated on numerous community-oriented projects across three decades this pandemic intruded without warning on an array of cooperative endeavors ranging from supporting current Fulbrighters on the ground in Mexico and the United States, participating in community development initiatives, and nurturing networks of Fulbrighters and other international actors addressing social welfare, migration, educational opportunity, and heritage management among other concerns. While the pandemic stymies our personal activities it presents a more extensive  threat to longstanding programs and those who benefit from them. These programs depend in large part on personal contact and support; in its absence our partners may become apprehensive and skeptical regarding the reliability of their relations with others. To community and organizational leaders normality includes our presence and encouragement. In practice this may be largely symbolic but it is valued nevertheless.

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     A good example of Fulbright collaboration with communities and local organizations is our engagement with the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Tehuacan-Cuicatlan Biosphere Reserve (TCBR) which covers almost 5000 square kilometers along the state boundaries of Oaxaca and Puebla. The TCBR, declared a World Heritage Site in 2018, is a rugged, dry landscape dotted with small communities seeking to eke out a livelihood in precarious circumstances. Many communities contribute to the migrant steam to Mexico City, the Mexico-U.S. border, or the United States.  Access is difficult, visitor services are limited, and the region is largely unknown to Mexicans or foreigners; traffic on the main Puebla-Oaxaca highway passes through the TCBR and drivers know of few reasons to stop. 

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     Our long engagement with Oaxacan communities brought us to the region by different paths. As an archaeologist Nelly Robles Garcia (Fulbrights University of Georgia 1991-1994, Harvard University 2013-2014),  has long been intrigued by the extensive array of long-abandoned sites in the TCBR, evidence that in the past significant populations not only survived but thrived in this apparently hostile environment. Who were they and how did they accomplish so much in the face of continuing challenge? Nelly works with TCBR communities both to protect their archaeological resources and to foster services attracting visitors.  Jack Corbett, a broadly-trained social scientist (multiple Fulbrights in Mexico and Canada between 1969 and 2016) has worked with San Juan Joluxtla, a subsistence farming community in the TCBR, to develop a local enterprise converting cactus fruit into value-added products for sale in urban markets. Both of us draw on knowledge, skills, and experience gained from our respective Fulbrights as integral components of our collaboration  with communities and organizations.

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     Unfortunately the pandemic now threatens not only these activities but the viability of collaborative projects and progress to date. While we are valued as connections to agencies, organizations, and resources beyond the TCBR we are also outsiders and therefore to be regarded with reserve. Long subjected to exploitation and abandonment by outsiders communities are slow to extend confianza or trust. To seemingly disappear at a time when communities feel vulnerable and threatened……some communities are blockading access roads to keep out strangers who might carry the virus…...will suggest to some we do not value them or are indifferent to the challenges confronting them. Communities like Dominguillo, slowly warming to the possibility that visitors to neighboring caves sheltering ancient rock art might be productive sources of income and opportunity, may find travel restrictions and diminished incomes drastically reduce visitor traffic. San Juan Joluxtla’s community enterprise, Tyuum titan, (Mixteco for “Grandmother’s tradition”) having generated employment for the women who harvest xoconostle and garambuyo, may lose markets and force a return to migration. And rumors that bats spread coronavirus may provoke communities to kill them, thereby disrupting their role in the ecosystem as critical pollinators of cactus fruit and other desert flora. 

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     We hope the coronavirus now working its way though North America will disperse and the TCBR can return to “normal”, i.e., a gradual increase in the number of visitors, a gradual extension of services, and a continuing expansion of scientific and historical knowledge benefiting everyone. And to the extent we have managed to institutionalize to some degree awareness as to secure resources, recruit allies, and plan strategies at least some communities in the TCBR will have greater resilience. We are by no means indispensable. Certainly it would be nice to think that out there some current or prospective Fulbrighters are preparing to share some of these challenges and responsibilities. Xoconostle makes really tasty jam.   

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     In a larger sense the pandemic is at heart an exercise in crisis management. Some crises unfold quickly, like the Oaxaca earthquakes of 1999 and 2017 while others  unfold slowly but are no less disruptive, as in the civil disorders of 2006. We need to ask thoughtful questions, seek the correct answers, and be prepared to respond with profound commitment to those most vulnerable to the crisis. Senator William Fulbright would expect us to do no less.