Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Learning the Lay of the Land" from No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy by Wendy Call:

"On the porch of the general store fifty villagers sat on piles of wood or carefully stacked bags of cement mix, waiting. The murmur of their words, in the throaty tones of Mixe, mixed with the thrum of late September rain. The porch was large enough to accommodate the whole group without crowding, small enough to allow them to speak without raising their voices and still be heard. Beyond the porch, webs of barbed wire separated backyard gardens of banana, papaya, mango, and tangerine trees from velvet patches of low-slung forest. Past the gardens, buses and tractor-trailers grunted along a two-lane highway, slowed by axle-cracking speed bumps and potholes. Far beyond the highway, greendraped hills undulated toward blue mountains, the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca State.

Carlos Beas ducked his head under the rusted edge of the porch roof, striding into the meeting a bit late. He wore old blue jeans and a t-shirt; the villagers wore wide-brimmed hats and sun-bleached work clothes. People nodded and mumbled their hellos to Beas as he stepped onto the porch. “Buenas tardes. Ya llegaste.” They welcomed him to their village with the normal greeting, “You have arrived.” He bobbed his head in response. A smile skittered across his face but his light brown eyes stayed serious. The villagers’ huaraches scuffled the cement floor as they moved forward to shake his hand. Only a few—mostly the local leaders—looked up to meet his gaze directly. Beas towered over everyone, though he is not quite six feet tall. He was the only one who sweated as the rain’s steam rose around them.

The meeting had been called a few days earlier, after villagers had seen several strangers poking around their farmland. Those strangers had said they were surveyors working for the government. They offered no further information before they finished whatever it was they were doing and drove away in their shiny trucks. News of the visiting surveyors spread from house to house, crossing dirt roads and lines of flapping laundry. People got to thinking. Was this somehow related to the rumor that had been floating around for the past couple of years? About the new highway? What were those strangers doing, tromping through their fields, looking through boxes attached to metal tripods, taking notes and measuring distances? Did all this interest in their land mean that the rumored highway would cut right through their village?" 

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase No Word for Welcome, visit http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/No-Word-for-Welcome,674829.aspx.