Project Piaxtla: A Successful Example of Participatory Planning in Primary Healthcare

Project Piaxtla
Essay on Primary Healthcare
System04104
6/15/2018

INTRODUCTION
Project Piaxtla was a small program related to primary health care, which was run by the
local villagers, in the mountains of western Mexico. It was named over a local river situated
in the hills of Sierra Madre. The project Piaxtla was started in 1965, with the main objective
to encounter the disease which was arises because of poverty. When Project Piaxtla was
started, the area was totally undeveloped and even there was no road or infrastructure and the
rural people were suffering from number of disease such as measles, polio, pneumonia,
malaria, Anaemia which was arises because of the unavailability of water, foods and basic
resources. The distribution of land, wealth and power was totally in inequitable and some of
them having small piece of land which was in inferior quality. In opposite, a few people of
that area acquire large part of productive and fertile land and had large number of cattle, and
were prosperous people. The man behind this project from the commencement of the project
as an advisor and facilitator was David Werner. Land and wealth distribution was the big
issue in Mexico since 1910, Mexico revolution. When Diaz dictatorship was deposed, a new
revolutionary was constituted, named ‘ejido system’. This system facilitate the small villagers
that they can collectively form an ejido or communal land holding and the local farmland was
allocated impartially among all families which they can use for farming and agriculture but
still the ownership stayed with the ejido. But when the corrupt and brutal Institutional
Revolutionary Party (IPR) back in the government they abolish all the systems and laws that
restrictive the size of land properties and failed to protect the rights of poor farmers.
Work of Project Piaxtla
Establishment of a cooperative maize bank
Project Piaxtla established a maize bank that provide loans to the small farmers on a very
much lower interest rate in compare to rich farmers who charged heavy interest rate on their
loans. The bank charged very minimal rate of interest which was collected because that helps
to increase the lending capacity of the bank (MPMP, 2014). The favourable community
oriented loan program was conducted and spread in five small villages and helped to improve
the economic condition of the community and provide financial security against the rich
farmers and lenders of that area (Warner and Sanders, 2014). The good thing was that people
started to belief in their self and bring confidence in their own ability to improve their
situation and the result of such help was that they were educating them self to fight for
constitutional rights. After that, Ajoya and the near community create an organization of poor
farmers and they were organized and they started to break the control of some wealthy people
having control over them. (Revolvy, 2017).
Fencing of maize farm
Team Piaxtla provide all the fencing facilities to the poor and small farmers to protect their
maize farms from rich agrarian’s cattle from entering their cattle and eating and destroying

their crops. Team Piaxtla team organized all the poor farmers to work together to fence the all
surroundings of hillside to protect the land and maize farm from cattle. This work provided
security to poor people against the loan which was taken by poor farmers from rich people.
Women unite against men’s drunkenness
The Piaxtla health workers united the women community of Ajoya against the men’s
drunkenness habits and conduct a different awareness program and skit dramatizing that
showed the harmful and dangerous adverse effects of men drinking habits that were harmful
for the women and children and cause several diseases. In response to these skit and drama
program, all women of the community were organized and fight against the bar and drink
shops. As a result several women who help the protest rally were jailed but still they fought
against it and held the protest from the jail. At the end they were succeeded in blocking the
bar’s opening (Werner, 2014).
Invasion of redistribution of large land holding
When the small peasants were well organized and confident, they were able to fight with
basic problems like hunger and poor health. They began to cultivate and farming on the land
of rich families and claim on the land on which they have constitutional right to acquire.
They divide the land equally and fairly and asked the government for ejidal land title. But the
authority of state level rejected their demand, so they sent a group of people to Ministry of
Agrarian Reform of Mexico City. The poor farmers keep it up until the officials of Ministry
of Agrarian Reform, relented and ordered the local (state) government to grant ejidal title to
poor farmer’s land claims.
The impact of these various program of Piaxtla towards greater justice- between men and
women, rich and poor people has had a momentous impact on health. The mortality rate was
also improved and the number of malnourished, sickly and stunted children has been very
less. The main agenda was to improve the health of the people and full-fill basic needs of the
people was successfully achieved. But in order to achieve the success they have face number
of problems and even they were not supported by the state government, rich people and
farmers, police and political people (Cervantes, 2012). The corrupt government ruling and
failure of Ejido was the another cause that decrease the effeteness of Piaxtla. The major
reason behind the success of Piaxtla program was the support of poor people, women, and
people’s primacy, awareness and knowledge about the problem. They all cooperatively
joined together to encounter their problem even they faced number of problems or even jailed
as well. The strategic planning was also involved behind every activity that was performed
such as the women rally protest rally against the wine shops and even they continued to
protest from the jail. When state government rejected the petition for the ejidal land titles,
they make a committee and sent it to the central level and persisted until the central
government not ordered the state government about to grant the title for land claims. Then
after, in the decade of 1990s a new policy of the Government which was an agreement
between United States of America, Canada and Mexico, called NAFTA (North American
Free Trade Agreement) threatened to converse the gains in land and heath achieved over the
years by the hard work (Singh, 2011). Under NAFTA Mexico farming sector adversely
affected and the poor farmers are bearing heavy loss but the United States had very clear