Dear friends all over the world!

After the devastation of the hurricanes Pauline and Rick we immediately decided to rebuild Pina Palmera. As things are turning out this is becoming a great opportunity to build Pina Palmera as it exists in our dreams! We are not just going to repair the old houses that are left, we are building a rehabilitation and teaching center. The only one in the coast between Acapulco and Salina Cruz, and the only one in the Pochutla district with over 132 000 inhabitants. (The World Health Organizatioins calculates that 10% of the population have a disability. That would make 13,200 people only in the Pochutla district that have no where else to go, and we also work with people from the districts of Huatulco and Puerto Escondido.) We had started to make building plans before the hurricanes, it just got more urgent now! We have been short of space for a long time and the houses we had before were built with limited funds and without architects. Our electrical and hidraulical installations were catastrofical even before the hurricanes. Now we have the opportunity to build a decent center that uses solar energy and water treatment plants to recycle the water and with enough space for us all to see patients, prepare the work in the villages, give courses and workshops, have summer school and receive groups of disabled people from the city of Oaxaca that come to visit in order to experience independent living and to interchange experiences with us. We also need housing for the volunteers that we receive from all over the world and that contribute with their work, their energy and experiences and knowledge. Their contributions have greatly added to the dynamic evolution of Pina Palmera. It is also a contribution to increase the understanding between North and South. These young people go back to their contries with a different world view.
Many of our patients have to travel far in order to reach us and need to eat and sleep here when they come. We also receive people with disablities that come for intensive therapy or in order to learn how to make toys in the carpentry or learn a skill in some of our work areas, and need to stay here temporary. And we need a bigger infirmary with an extra room with two beds for hospitalization and a room for births and small surgeries.
Monday morning, the first of december, we arranged for a breakfast at hotel Camino Real in Mexico City with the help of Alicia Molina from the magazine Araru, and Pbto Enrique Gonzales Torres, the rector of the Iberoamericana University. 35 people assisted. Among the invited were the Swedish ambassador Karin Enhbom, Sra Carmelina Molina Ortiz-Monasterio, the president of APAC, Sra Alicia Iracheta Fumero, the president of the "Damas Diplomaticas", M Real Boivin and Maria Nick Tremblay, representants from the Canadian Embassy, Sr Mauricio Guerrero from the MIRA foundation, Sra Elizabeth Guzman from the CONCORD group, Lic Fernando Tovar y Teresa, director of the Patrimonio de la Beneficiencia Publica, Sr Eugene Latham and Lic. Andrea Higuera, representing the American Chamber of Comerce in Mexico, and Sra Mari Paz Palme, and many others.
Tuesday morning Andrea Higuera from the American Chamber of Comerce called us and told us that they will donate 1'000,000.00 pesos towards the construction!! Fantastic! That means that we can start to construct the kitchen and diningroom area, including rest rooms. We can also build a new library where the children can do their home work and where Moises can have classes for deaf children. Sra Mari Paz Palme also comitted herself to raise funds for all the dormitories and the representant from Banamex (a big Mexican bank) promised to give us cement and other building materials. The Canadian embassy has donated a machine that makes adobe bricks to Mazunte and especially asked them to also make bricks for Pina Palmera!
We are now repairing the carpentry as to have a place during construction where to make doors, windows, furniture etc and we have built a temporary kitchen with the funds we have received from Sweden. We still have to repair our vehicles, clean out our wells and continue with the cleaning of the grounds. We also have received enough funds to pay the architects to finish the plans that are fundamental to a construction this size.
It is going to be very exciting to make our dreams come through! For those of you that read spanish I have included a presentation of our construction team. Thanks again for all your support and help and you are wellcome to visit us if you are coming this way!

P.D: To all Gentle Brothers and Sisters and friends of Frank Douglas; We visited his grave in Puerto Angel on the Day of the Dead and it is looking fine. It needs another coat of paint. We will take care of that.

Durante los últimos catorce años, miles de personas han estado y participado en Piña Palmera y cada uno de ellos respondería de diferente manera si se le preguntara que es Piña Palmera. Para unos es una forma de vida, para otros un refugio donde acudir ante las dificultades de la vida. Pero algo en lo que todos coinciden es que es un lugar para la esperanza, un tributo a lo mejor que la raza humana tiene para ofrecer. De todas las más diversas respuestas que uno puede oír, hay un punto de encuentro en el que todos coincidimos. La filosofía esencial, el motor que mueve Piña Palmera no debe cambiar. El deseo de hacer llegar a más gente el trabajo de Piña Palmera, y más recientemente, la necesidad de reparar los daños causados por el huracán Paulina ha unido a todos los directores del proyecto hacia un único reto. Como mejorar y expandir la intrínseca ideología de Piña Palmera sin cambiar sus fundamentos.
El objetivo es crear la misma atmósfera familiar, radiante y acogedora existente, siendo al mismo tiempo un centro de rehabilitación moderno y eficiente. Un lugar de encuentro ubicado en la hermosa costa de Oaxaca, pero que a su vez desarrolle una actividad capaz de extender el trabajo de Piña Palmera al máximo número de gente. Unas instalaciones capaces de soportar los desastres naturales y que pueda integrarse con el medio ambiente sin dañarlo. Hacer realidad ésto que algunos consideran una utopía, requiere el esfuerzo de un grupo de personas muy capacitada. Como en cualquier otro proyecto de construcción, la primera persona y la más fundamental es el Arquitecto. Después de largas deliberaciones y tras haber recibido diferentes solicitudes, se decidió asignar al Sr. D. Raúl Ignacio Fernández Christlieb como Arquitecto y Jefe de Proyecto.
Nacido en la Ciudad de México en 1951, Raúl cursó estudios de arquitectura en la UNAM. A través de sus viajes por tres continentes diferentes, Raúl ha podido observar y estudiar las diversas técnicas arquitectónicas, desde los modernos complejos europeos y asiáticos, hasta las construcciones de paja y barro tradicionales en el norte y centro de África. Trabajó durante muchos años en la Capital de México en numerosos proyectos, hasta que en 1990 decidió que sus hijos debían crecer y desarrollarse en un ambiente menos contaminado, trasladándose toda su familia al pequeño pueblo costero de Mazunte, en el estado de Oaxaca. Raúl es hoy día una experto en arquitectura tradicional de la zona, tras haber vivido y trabajado en la región. Un hombre cuya misión es demostrar al mundo que con los materiales tradicionales, como los bloques de adobe o los tejados de palma, se pueden construir estructuras duraderas, seguras y cómodas, siendo a su vez mucho más económicas y sobretodo sin causar el daño al medio ambiente que tanto han causado las construcciones modernas. Durante años Raúl ha conseguido reunir un equipo de profesionales en este tipo de construcción, que incluye las especialidades de:

• Jorge Ramírez Salcedo, arquitecto paisajista.
• María de los Ángeles Méndez, ingeniero civil.
• Angelo Azzola, ingeniero eléctrico e instalaciones hidráulicas.
• Alfredo Cria, topógrafo.
• Alejandro Marchelli, asesor en plantas de tratamiento.

Anna Johansson de Cano
"Piña Palmera" A.C.,
Apartado Postal 109,
c.p. 70900, Pochutla,
Oaxaca, Mexico
telephone and fax: +52.958.40342
E-mail: pinapalmera@laneta.apc.org
Webpages: http//palmera.webway.se and http://www.laneta.apc.org/pina/

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The Pacific Coast of Mexico www.tomzap.com Tom Penick:  tom@tomzap.com