Category Archives: Huatulco

Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

When the Sign Becomes the Artwork

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By Jesús Rafael Arguelles Rangel—

A hand-painted sign does more than tell you where to buy tacos, get a haircut, repair a tire, or order a glass of agua fresca. In Mexico, the sign itself often becomes part of the place: letters lean, swell, cast shadows, turn gothic, or explode into color; a smiling pig may advertise carnitas, a fish may point toward a seafood stand, and a price can be painted with as much personality as a mural.

That visual language is easy to overlook precisely because it belongs to everyday commerce. Rotulismo grew as a practical trade, not as something made for museums. Sign painters learned to make a business visible from across a street, often working directly on walls, shutters, glass, metal, or food stalls. The result was advertising, but it was also authorship. Two shops selling the same thing could look completely different because the hand behind the brush was different.

Today that distinction matters more than it once did. Printed vinyl, digital templates, and standardized branding can make a sign cheaper, faster, and easier to reproduce. They can also make one neighborhood look more like another. A hand-painted sign carries small decisions that are difficult to standardize: how thick a shadow should be, which word deserves red, whether a letter should stretch to fill an awkward corner, whether a mascot should be funny, elegant, or slightly absurd.

Those choices have begun to receive formal cultural recognition. In late 2025, Mexico City’s Galería José María Velasco opened Los rótulos no deben morir, an exhibition that brought together nearly one hundred pieces and presented rotulismo as craft, visual language, and urban memory. In February 2026, the gallery also hosted Encuentro Rotulismo. Tepito, where sign painters, artists, researchers, and the public gathered around an art form long associated with neighborhood businesses rather than elite institutions.

The lettering itself tells stories. Researchers at UNAM have noted how gothic forms, for example, continue to appear on food stands, bakeries, wrestling-related businesses, product logos, and tattoos, where they can suggest tradition, age, prestige, or toughness. In a hand-painted commercial sign, typography is never only typography. It becomes a social signal: a promise about what kind of place you are entering and who it is speaking to.

That is why the old question – is it design or is it art? – may be too narrow. Rotulismo has always needed to work. It must identify, persuade, and survive weather, dust, grease, repainting, and changing businesses. But usefulness does not cancel expression. If anything, the constraint makes the creativity more visible. The painter has to make something memorable while obeying a wall, a budget, a deadline, and a client’s request.

A printed banner can do the job. A hand-painted sign can do the job and leave a trace of the person who made it. That trace is what turns a commercial object into part of a city’s visual memory. When the sign disappears, the business may still be there, but one small piece of the neighborhood’s voice is gone with it.

Jesús Rafael Arguelles Rangel is a Mexican writer and creator whose work explores culture, identity, and storytelling across literature and digital media.

Huatulco

November in Huatulco

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By Britt Jarnryd—

By November, Huatulco is beginning to welcome back its winter visitors. Restaurants and beaches are getting busier, familiar faces are returning, and the town is settling into another season.

But at El Sueño Zapoteco/A.C. Bacaanda Foundation, our work continues year-round.

The beginning of the school year in August and September is always our busiest period. We welcome and train new community educators participating in our Smart Rural School program. Hundreds of iPads must be cleaned, updated and programmed. Equipment and internet connectivity are checked, and teachers receive training in technology and our Spanish, mathematics, reading and writing programs.

By November, the school year is well underway, and our focus shifts to supporting educators in their classrooms. Our team continues to visit rural communities, some more than three hours from Huatulco, providing teacher training and educational guidance. We also meet with parents because their involvement is essential to their children’s education.

Our Continuing My Dream scholarship program is also in full swing. This year, we are supporting 26 students from rural communities as they pursue their high school education. Each receives financial assistance for enrollment, uniforms, shoes, school supplies, an iPad, transportation and meals.

Beyond this practical support, students receive mentoring in mathematics, English, study habits, emotional and social development, community projects and spelling. Our goal is to help them develop the skills and confidence they need to navigate both academic and personal challenges.

Alongside our educational programs, we continue organizing fundraising events, welcoming volunteers and donors, and developing new projects.

While Huatulco prepares for another busy tourist season, we remain focused on ensuring that growing up in a rural community does not limit a child’s opportunities to learn, grow and build a better future.

But we cannot build this dream alone. Every donation, every volunteer and every person who shares our mission helps us reach more children and young people.

To those who have supported us over the years, thank you for walking alongside us. And to everyone returning to Huatulco this season, we welcome you back with open arms and a special invitation: come and be part of this dream.

Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

Looking Back: Satisfying Reads of 2026, Part 1

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By Carole Reedy—

Reading is a deeply personal undertaking that, on reflection, can reveal an unknown side of the reader. It continually gives us new ways to view the world and the roles we choose to play in it.

The following books proved most satisfying to me this year, all unique in theme, approach, and style.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
The biggest surprise of the year was this compelling read by an author totally unknown to me. The core of the novel is a topic outside my interest zone, but a rave recommendation by a respected editor/friend piqued my curiosity.

The story takes place on an island off the coast of Antarctica, where an environmental research team has just closed its operation due to rising waters, which will soon overwhelm the entire island.

One family remains to finalize the departure, and this is their story. It’s an exciting, intricately plotted story, with twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue
Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue
You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue’s highly energetic and entertaining novel, recently brought him deserved attention from both north and south of the border.

Enrigue’s newest, Now I Surrender (these words spoken by Geronimo), is a more serious yet equally engaging novel.

Although the story’s emphasis focuses on the Apaches, including Geronimo and The Long Walk, it reveals the truly convoluted history of the struggle in the region, now Arizona, New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Sonora, in the early nineteenth century.

Varying points of view zero in on the manipulations of those in power within Mexico and the US in an effort to annihilate the Apaches and other tribes. The manner in which Enrigue analyzes the governments of Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt addresses the cultural differences of the parties involved and reveals the author clearly in his element.

It is truly a work of art.

I couldn’t stop there. I had to read more of Enrigue’s work.

Sudden Death (2016) is a rollicking novel starting and ending in the sixteenth century with a tennis match between the controversial dynamic Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, both well known for hot-headed impulsiveness.

The novel roams from the court of Henry VIII, in which the locks of Anne Boleyn’s severed head play a role, to the conquest of Mexico, where Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous interpreter and adviser, Malintzin, play central roles.

Enrigue’s imagination and style are unmatched, and his talented translator Natasha Wimmer deserves equal praise.

The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
These two books come from different eras. Sontag’s novel is set in eighteenth-century Naples, while Finkel tells a true story from the late twentieth century. The lifestyles and circumstances also couldn’t be more disparate.

The tie that binds them is an obsession with collecting. The main character in both books is a collector who is fixated beyond reason with obtaining the objects of his desire.

It’s difficult to accept the facts of The Art Thief. Between 1995 and 2001, a young man named Stéphane Breitwieser casually slipped into 172 European museums in broad daylight and left just as easily with 239 works of art.

He never sold one piece. He simply took them to his mother’s house, up to the attic, where he also lived. Here he had the joy of looking at them. In his own mind, perhaps, he was a pure collector, interested not in selling the works but in possessing them.

Finkel does a marvelous job of telling this story straightforwardly from start to finish. It’s both this simplicity as well as the writing that make the book deeply engaging.

The Volcano Lover is a longer, richly detailed story, highlighting the consummate collector British Envoy Sir William Hamilton, who dedicates most of his life in Naples (1764-98) to collecting objects of beauty. He is particularly obsessed with the vases of Italy and elsewhere, becoming a most famous collector held in high regard.

The other significant character in the novel is Mt. Vesuvius, the active volcano that dominates Naples’ coastal landscape as well as the lives of the Neapolitans in its menacing shadow.

The outstanding feature of the novel is, of course, the descriptive atmosphere Sontag provides with her precision prose.

The Predicament by William Boyd
Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd
I find it impossible not to be thoroughly engaged by a William Boyd novel. You sense that each of his books was as smoothly and easily written as it is to read. Of course that cannot be true, as we know authors spend hours mulling over their words. Their editors and copyeditors give equal blood, sweat, and tears to the final product.

Boyd’s subject matter varies widely, but never the quality of his writing. In these two diverse selections, one is set at a research facility in Africa and the other is a political detective thriller spanning the globe.

The Predicament is the second novel in Boyd’s Gabriel Dax trilogy. British Dax is a travel writer who finds himself caught up in the midst of some rather dicey situations. This gem takes us from Guatemala to Berlin and the US. You don’t have to be an espionage fan to become engaged in Dax’s adventures. The novels are more about the human condition, focusing on human reaction more than complex plotlines.

The first in this trilogy is Gabriel’s Moon, and the third, Cold Sunset, is already published in the UK and scheduled for US release in November. Fans, including yours truly, are eagerly anticipating it.

Brazzaville Beach is definitely not a lighthearted beach story. In fact it’s quite the opposite. This serious novel draws in part on Jane Goodall’s research in Africa.

Its main character, Hope, is studying the behavior patterns of chimpanzees and is not always in tune with her colleagues’ assumptions. Hope also is dealing with conflict from her husband on the home front.

More of my best books of the year to be continued in the December 2026 issues (both Huatulco and San Miguel de Allende editions) of The Eye.

Carole Reedy has been writing for The Eye since 2011. She is an avid reader who has made Mexico her home for many years.

 

Huatulco

Death: Muse of American Art

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By José Palacios y Román—

For the Indigenous civilizations of the Americas, death was not simply an ending but part of an eternal cycle connecting the living, their ancestors, and the spiritual world. This understanding found expression in stone carvings, codices, murals, ceramics, and ritual objects.

The Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Mexica, among others, developed artistic traditions that reflected their beliefs about life, death, and the cosmos. At Teotihuacan, the famous Tlalocan mural depicts a paradise associated with the rain god Tláloc, illustrating how art gave visual form to ideas about the afterlife.

Following the Spanish conquest, Indigenous beliefs encountered Catholic traditions, creating new forms of religious and artistic expression. Over centuries, these influences contributed to the imagery associated with Día de Muertos, including decorated altars, marigolds, candles, and offerings for departed loved ones.

Death also became a subject of humor and social commentary. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, printmakers Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada popularized images of skeletons and calaveras. Posada’s satirical figures reminded viewers that death makes no distinction between rich and poor. Later artists, including Diego Rivera, incorporated these images into their own work, helping establish the calavera as a recognizable symbol of Mexican identity.

Today, artists continue to explore mortality, memory, and cultural heritage through painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and mixed media. Traditional symbols are reinterpreted, connecting ancestral beliefs with contemporary artistic expression.

This November, Art Gallery Copalli and the collective La Magia del Color present México Is Memory, Color and Life, an exhibition of selected works from their 2026 painting competition.

The award ceremony and exhibition opening take place on November 2 at 6:30 p.m. in Tangolunda, Huatulco.

The exhibition continues through November 30, with free admission, offering visitors an opportunity to discover how contemporary artists interpret Mexico’s traditions of remembrance.

Huatulco

Before It Was Art: Objects From Copalita

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By Randy Jackson—

Around the turn of the twelfth century AD, the Mixtec conqueror 8 Deer Jaguar Claw demanded tribute from a town at the mouth of the Copalita River, the place now known as the Copalita archaeological site (Parque Eco-Arqueológico Copalita). We know this because a highly skilled Mixtec artisan painted the conqueror’s story on a long strip of deerskin. That brightly coloured ‘book’, now called the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, is housed in the British Museum, where it is admired as a masterpiece of ancient art.

Art, as we now understand it, is the work of individual creativity, made to be displayed and admired for its own sake. The codex was not created primarily to be admired as art. It was created to proclaim authority. Yet an object’s purpose does not exclude its beauty, nor does it keep us from appreciating it on our own terms. Like the codex, objects found at the Copalita archaeological site are often beautiful, and knowing what they were made to do can enhance our appreciation of them.

The Axe-money Stone

The axe-money stone is one such object, and its location, the site’s ball court, is significant. Every Mesoamerican town of any consequence had a ball court, and this one had its court by about AD 600. It shows the town was a civic and religious centre, sharing the same ritual world as great cities such as Monte Albán.

Axe money, represented on a carved stone in the ball court, was a form of currency made of flat, thin pieces of copper shaped like small, stylized axes. People often used the pieces to pay tribute. Archaeologists have found them bundled in burial sites, suggesting they represented not only wealth but also symbolic or ceremonial value in the afterlife.

Why the axe-money symbol was carved in the ball court is unknown. It could declare prosperity, or even indicate that the ball court hosted high-level, elite competitions in which axe money was wagered or awarded as a prize. Whatever the reason, like the codex, the stone was not made to be admired as art. It had a job to do.

Clay Figurines

On the hillside above the Copalita River, archaeologists have uncovered household compounds dating back more than 2,000 years. At the time, homes were not the private refuges we think of today, nor were the objects found there decorative art. Among the finds were many clay figurines, nearly all of them women, and most were broken.

Examples of similar clay figurines from the same era, found in central Mexico, are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection in New York. We see them today as art, but that was not their original purpose.

Each figurine was hand-shaped, so no two are alike, and each was small enough to fit in the palm. This craft tradition lasted for centuries. Archaeologists have found them in homes and graves, suggesting a ceremonial role, perhaps tied to fertility or daily rituals, though exactly how they were used remains unknown.

Although their original purpose was not art, their stylized depictions of the human form are themselves artistic. The anthropologist Ellen Dissanayake calls this impulse “making special”: making something ordinary extraordinary. It may be where creativity and art begin. The broken figurines found in ordinary homes on the hillside above the Copalita River testify to that artistic impulse.

What the Codex tells us

For the ancient inhabitants of Copalita, appearing in the Codex Zouche-Nuttall was no honour. It shows that Copalita was conquered and owed tribute (and it makes no mention of the beach). But the fact that Copalita was represented in some way speaks to something fundamental in Art: Representation.

Take, for example, the conqueror himself, 8 Deer Jaguar Claw. His illustration was not an attempt at realistic portraiture, but a representation of his name and his power. For centuries, the codex’s representations have served multiple purposes. Art is only the latest.

The Codex Zouche-Nuttall is an eleven-metre strip of deerskin coated in white plaster, folded like an accordion into 47 panels, painted on both sides. One side is dedicated to the founding and ruling families of several Mixtec kingdoms. The other side is devoted to 8 Deer’s biography, conquests, and rank as king. Taken together, it functions like a title deed for his kingdom and a claim to legitimacy for his descendants.

One panel in particular shows the ceremony in which 8 Deer received a turquoise nose ornament, a symbol of Toltec royal authority. These are representations within representations: the ornament represents royal authority, the codex represents 8 Deer receiving it, and the British Museum now represents the codex as Art.

The three objects discussed here tell us something about this ancient place at the mouth of the Copalita River, and something about Art. For the people who lived here, these objects and the images on them were familiar, and they carried meanings everyone understood. The artisans who made them put their time, care and attention into making them as beautiful as they could. Centuries later, those meanings have faded, but the care remains. The makers gave these objects their beauty, a gift for all time. We gave them the name Art.

Randy Jackson blends local reporting from the perspective of a seasonal Huatulco resident with explorations of life and change in Huatulco, Oaxaca, and Mexico. Email: box95jackson@gmail.com

 

Huatulco

Editor’s Letter

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By Jane Bauer—

“Great art picks up where nature ends.”  ~Marc Chagall

I get very excited when I see a piece of art that resonates with me. And when I can afford to acquire it, I am besotted. Art that I love doesn’t just sit on the wall. I will sit and stare at it the way one watches the sky for birds.

I have no idea why some pieces affect me so profoundly, but I suspect it has something to do with the creative impulse we all begin life with. As children, our creativity was encouraged; to play an instrument, to paint, to draw, to write poems and stories, to nurture this creative force each of us has within. Up to a point. As we get older these pursuits are treated as childish rather than essential to life. Art has always presented itself as a contradiction.

What is it that causes us to make art? Dogs don’t appear to do it and they seem perfectly content. Birds may indeed consider their nests art; a collage of sticks and objets trouvés.

In the ocean, off of Seattle, in a patch of garbage it has been discovered that Giant Pacific octopuses are flourishing. These are not the small octopus we eat grilled for lunch, these are huge badass octopi whose arms can span 20 feet. They are creating all sorts of stuff with the things they find. One was found to have made a sort of apartment out of an old fridge and another had collected hundreds of golf balls and arranged them into interesting designs.

Some orb-weaving spiders add zigzags, crosses and other decorative silk patterns to their webs. Scientists still debate their precise functions, which may include attracting prey or warning larger animals away. Whatever the purpose, they produce something that looks remarkably like deliberate design. Maybe we aren’t the only species trying to find some order in this world.

Art is rarely a waste of time, even if it isn’t good art. Artistic expression is the moment when we sit with ourselves. It is not about finding perfection in a reproduction of what we see before us; it is about conveying some truth that lives within our soul.

Conveying is communication, and maybe that is all decent art is: something that transmits to the viewer an aspect of our collective experience. A painting might capture the light in a certain way or combine colors that remind us of a moment of loss. Someone else might see the same painting and remember something entirely different. That is the magic of art.

While art can be about beauty, I think good art is most often about truth.

See you next month,

Jane

Huatulco

Alebrije

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By Julie Etra—

This whimsical and intricately painted form of wood sculpture is unique to the state of Oaxaca, and more precisely to the Valley of Oaxaca, where it originated. Primarily animals, the fantastical objects can include hummingbirds, coyotes, jaguars, unicorns, rabbits, raccoons, dinosaurs—well, you name it.

Origins

Last winter, while in Oaxaca City, I had the dumb luck to stumble upon a special, temporary exhibit of alebrijes at the museum in the Church of Santo Domingo.

The art form’s origin is relatively recent. In Mexico City in 1936, artisan Pedro Linares developed a high fever and accompanying nightmares that included imaginary animal-like monsters shouting the word “alebrijes.” Upon awakening and recovering, he recalled the creatures from his dreams and began creating them using cardboard and paper (aka papier-mâché, or a version thereof).

Manuel Jiménez Ramírez took the original concept of the cardboard figures created by Linares and transformed it using wood from copal trees native to the region. Jiménez Ramírez, an Oaxaqueño, was from San Antonio Arrazola, a community on the outskirts of Oaxaca City.

The original location of Jiménez Ramírez’s workshop is still active and run by his family successors, with the men primarily preparing the wood and doing the heavier work of sculpting, and the women pursuing the painstaking, patient and detailed work of painting the figures.

Lucky me, I was the only visitor on a sunny Saturday in February 2026 and received a very personal tour of the family facility, complete with a pictorial history, workshop, gallery, cats and dogs, various family members, and a garden where I had a chance to ask one of Jiménez Ramírez’s sons a few questions.

The Wood

The wood is soft and malleable and comes from trees in the genus Bursera (commonly known as copal). This group of trees is common in the tropical dry forests of coastal Oaxaca and produces fruit on which a variety of birds and mammals feed.

There are more than 100 species distributed throughout the Americas, with many found in Mexico, particularly in the states of Guerrero, Michoacán and Oaxaca. I have identified five species in our area, but the botanical inventory Flora de la Costa de Oaxaca, México: Lista Florística de la Región de Zimatán lists 11.

These trees are common in our forests, with one recognizable species being Bursera fagaroides, known locally by various common names and recognizable by its peeling bark.

The Jiménez Ramírez family explained that not all species of Bursera are suitable for carving and that Bursera tecomaca is one they prefer. After a little research, I found that copal resin, rather than the wood itself, also has uses as a preservative and is commonly burned as incense.

Other species of Bursera used for sculpting include:
Bursera glabrifolia: Commonly called copalillo, this is a preferred wood due to its softness and lightness.
Bursera bipinnata: This species is known as copal santo or copal blanco.
Bursera copallifera: This species is commonly known as copal ancho.

Jiménez Ramírez also worked with other woods, including zompantle (aka colorín, Erythrina coralloides), palo de águila and cedar. The first two were collected locally, while he purchased the latter from vendors in Valle Nacional and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Regulation

As one of Jiménez Ramírez’s sons explained to me, artisans and communities play a role in managing the supply of wood to avoid overexploiting the resource. Wood may be sourced from local forests, communal lands or private initiatives.

There are also independent reforestation projects. Faced with the risk of overharvesting and shortages due to high demand, communities such as San Martín Tilcajete have launched conservation projects, including Palo que Habla (Sticks That Talk), to cultivate copal trees, primarily copalillo.

There have also been efforts to protect the identity and origin of Oaxacan alebrije handicrafts. Such protections, however, are distinct from the rules governing the harvesting and sale of wood.

Given the variation in figures available at tourist destinations, I don’t know how consistently these protections are enforced.

Jiménez Ramírez obtained his wood from vendors in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and Valle Nacional, as well as locally.

Creating the Figures

Tools used for carving the green wood are typically quite basic, consisting of knives and machetes. Wood is selected for its shape and its correspondence to the animal or figure being created, which often includes delicate appendages such as ears, spines and tails. These are inserted or pegged into the main body of the sculpture and can be conveniently removed for transport.

Commercial enamel paints were initially used, but these days, once the piece has dried and hardened, a coat of white base paint is often applied to enhance the brilliance of acrylic or vinyl paints. Tiny dots, lines, symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns, and even fibers sometimes adorn the sculptures.

Where to Shop

Since the early days, dozens of sculptors have continued developing the art form, with varying degrees of complexity.

I am told that very elaborate (and expensive) pieces can be found in San Martín Tilcajete, south of Oaxaca City, where there are workshops and galleries. Street vendors generally offer simpler carvings and a seemingly endless supply of hummingbirds.

Several stores in Huatulco offer high-quality pieces if you want to shop locally, as do shops in Oaxaca City.

The small but lovely Museo Estatal de Arte Popular de Oaxaca in Santa María Coyotepec, south of Oaxaca City, also had some excellent pieces in its museum store. It is worth a visit.

Since I have not been to San Martín Tilcajete, I can’t compare it with San Antonio Arrazola, which I thoroughly enjoyed and where I purchased an outstanding sitting coyote.

Julie Etra is a vegetation restoration
specialist and botanist.

Huatulco

A Year of Learning and New Opportunities for Rural Education

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By Britt Jarnryd—

In a rural school, access to technology opens up new possibilities for teaching and learning. For a young person finishing middle school far from the nearest high school, receiving a scholarship and ongoing support can make it possible to continue their education. During the 2025–2026 school year, Fundación El Sueño Zapoteco A.C. / Bacaanda Foundation worked toward both goals through its Smart Rural School and Continuing My Dream projects.

Smart Rural School: Technology in the Service of Learning

The Smart Rural School project reached communities along the coast and in Oaxaca’s Sierra Sur region, providing technological equipment, internet connectivity, Spanish and mathematics curricula, and activities designed to strengthen reading and writing skills. These resources expanded learning opportunities for children and adolescents in rural schools facing challenges related to access and the availability of educational materials.

Educational guidance and ongoing teacher training were fundamental to the project. Our team of trainers worked closely with teachers to plan lessons, answer questions, and make the most of the technological tools and curricula provided. This support helps ensure that resources are used effectively and respond to the needs of each group. During the school year, rural teachers also received financial support in recognition of their commitment and the challenges involved in teaching in their communities.

Assessments and monitoring conducted throughout the year showed considerable, gradual progress in Spanish, mathematics, and reading and writing skills. Students strengthened their knowledge and developed skills through activities suited to their learning levels. Each achievement reflects the collective efforts of teachers, trainers, students, and families. We know that consolidating these gains requires practice and consistency, which is why we will continue supporting the schools.

Continuing My Dream: Supporting Young People Through a New Stage

For many young people from rural communities, starting high school means much more than changing schools. It involves traveling, living in a different place, adapting to new academic demands, and learning to manage daily life away from familiar surroundings. The Continuing My Dream scholarship aims to help students navigate this transition through financial assistance, school supplies, and ongoing personal support.

During the school year, we observed gradual improvements in scholarship recipients’ adjustment to high school and their academic performance. We also identified areas that require continued attention, including study habits, submitting assignments on time, and developing confidence in their own abilities. Helping students remain in school means listening to their difficulties and working with them to find ways to overcome those challenges.

Throughout this process, the work of our mentors is especially valuable. With dedication and personal attention, they support, guide, and prepare scholarship recipients to navigate daily life, both at school and in their new place of residence. Their guidance extends beyond academic subjects, helping students develop independence, confidence, and decision-making skills. For these young people, knowing that someone is there to offer guidance can make a significant difference.

We are grateful to the donors who made these projects possible; to rural teachers and CONAFE for their collaboration; to the mentors for their dedication; to families for their trust; and to the entire foundation team for its continued hard work.

We invite you to be part of this dream. Through your support of Smart Rural School and Continuing My Dream, we can continue assisting students and teachers while opening up more educational opportunities for Oaxaca’s rural communities.