Diana Manzo has been a Zapotec reporter since 2005. Social critic and dreamer, she likes to read and tell stories that generate harmony and peace. Her biggest dream is to continue learning and writing about women, the environment, migration and indigenous culture.
Land defenders caravan to Mexico City to defend Chimalapas Indigenous communities in Oaxaca decry government neglect in protecting biodiversity hotspot
Editor’s note: Last year we featured a two-part series by award-winning Zapotec journalist Diana Manzo about Indigenous community forestry initiatives to defend the biodiversity hotspot that is the Chimalapas forest reserve against illegal logging, mining, territorial invasion and other threats. The situation has continued to deteriorate and the government has failed to respond to community […]
Agroecology Center revalues agriculture - and culture - in Oaxaca Centro Santa Cruz teaches children to plant, heal the soil, care for the Earth, and enjoy their native traditions
Ixtepec, Oaxaca – It is morning, and the sun’s rays have barely come out. And at the Santa Cruz Agroecological and Cultural Center, an independent space located in the Zapata neighborhood in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, there is already a bustle of girls and boys eager to learn how to make compost, plant a garden and care […]
Community Foresters Unite to Save Biodiversity Hotspot Part II: New mining, timbering threaten Indigenous forestry in Oaxaca's Chimalapas reserve
Chimalapas: Building community to save a forest Part I: Indigenous villages in Oaxaca join forces in border conflict zone
Their footprints mark the trails beneath the pines, oaks and oyamels. Once a week, 10 men walk through here with machetes on their shoulders, flashlights and jute bags of food, to defend a piece of the 594,000-hectare communal forest that makes up the Chimalapas. They are young people who inherited the management of this woodland, […]
Turning trash into groceries in Oaxaca Mexican student's innovative plastic waste initiative cleans up rural town
The Water Sowers of Oaxaca Zapotecs of the Ocotlán Valley wage a groundbreaking battle for the defense of the aquifers
San Antonino Castillo Velasco, Oaxaca, Mexico — Twelve years ago in the verdant Ocotlán Valley of Mexico, a group of men and women of Zapotec origin watched as their crops of vegetables and flowers began to wither away. A long drought seemed destined to turn their fertile valley into a desert area. But through a […]