The scent of sizzling pupusas and hot tamales mingled with the smoky tang of pho-seasoned chicken wings. Music spilled into the courtyard of a 400-year-old monastery-turned-Secretariat of Culture headquarters in downtown Guadalajara, where a crowd gathered beneath colorful banners. On stage, a Chicano rapper who goes by Wombay welcomed the audience with a freestyle, his […]

The auditorium at the ITESO university was filled to capacity on the evening of September 2 as students, faculty, civil society leaders, and an international delegation from Loyola Marymount University gathered for the inauguration of Guadalajara’s new Clínica Jurídica de Migración Binacional (Binational Migration Legal Clinic). Applause broke out again and again as speakers underscored […]

At 8 a.m. on a sweltering Saturday morning, a convoy of pickups and cars rumbled out of the mountain town of Bacoachi, banners fluttering in the desert wind. Families leaned out of windows waving signs that read “No to dams!” as the “Megacaravan” began its 262-kilometer trek through the whole mountainous region. Along the way, more […]

As part of Green Action Week 2025, Guadalajara’s Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco is rallying citizens to confront the plastic waste crisis with science, creativity, and community action — from global treaties to neighborhood parks.

For The Guadalajara Reporter The people of San José de Tateposco still tell of the day their patron saint wandered through the village. Some said they saw him in the fields, others glimpsed him barefoot among the mezquites, his robe shining green in the sun. “Suddenly, he disappeared and went back to his temple,” recalled […]

Dawn takes its time in the Chihuahuan desert. By the time the first light brushes the hills above Wirikuta, Wixárika pilgrims are already moving, with gourd bowls and candles in hand, and stories carried in footsteps along a 500-kilometer thread of sacred sites that ties mountains to springs, desert to sea, and families to their ancestors. Last month, UNESCO wove that thread into World Heritage. 

All Photos by Tracy L. Barnett COLUMBIA, Mo. — “No Kings, No Hate; We don’t want ICE in our state!” The cries filled an overflowing Courthouse Square and rallied the ranks still flowing in from the streets as one of thousands of cities around the country commenced its largest protest in many years. The “No […]

Mexico’s first presidenta pledges full restitution and recognition of sacred sites as Wixárika leaders celebrate long-overdue justice in the mountains of Nayarit. LA YESCA, Nayarit — Under a blue sky and the watchful eyes of the Sierra Madre mountains, Mexico’s first woman president made history on May 8, 2025. Claudia Sheinbaum arrived in Wixárika territory […]

In this jubilee year of International Mother Language Day, a new generation of Indigenous artists, creatives, and educators is passionately working to promote the resurgence of Native languages. As we reflect on the alarming statistic that a language dies every 40 days, it becomes clear that preserving these languages is crucial for maintaining cultural identity […]

I recently sat down with Gabriel Meyer Halevy in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, where the mountains meet the Caribbean Sea in northern Colombia. As we spoke, I was reminded once again of how much Latin America has to teach us about weaving together spirituality and resistance. Gabriel carries forward a powerful legacy: his […]

COLUMBIA, MISSOURI, USA — On a bitter January afternoon, hundreds of citizens crowded into a community room in this college town, their winter coats piled in corners, their breath still visible from the cold. They had come to weave their resistance to an administration about to take power in Washington – though inside, the atmosphere […]

Yesterday, in an explosion of celebration, dance, music and pure love, the Peace and Dignity Journeys runners from the North — the Route of the Eagle — met their counterparts from the Route of the Condor. It was a long-awaited encounter south of Bogotá, Colombia, with runners that started their journey in Alaska in May, […]

Para leer este artículo en Español ir a Defendiendo lo Sagrado en Colombia: Un Llamado a la Acción Today I write to you from the “Heart of the World,” the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, where Indigenous communities—the Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo peoples—are facing intensifying violence after decades fighting to defend their land and […]

Today in the Aztec calendar is Ce Xochitl, One Flower. A single flower for the bereft. A flower on the grave of the hope that we could rise above, that we could at last be a peacefully coexisting multicultural nation coming home to the fact of the diversity that is our strength. For the hope […]

Dear readers: As you may have noticed, it’s been a long dry spell. We just sent our first newsletter since June; while Mother Earth has been busy prodigiously giving fruit, cereal, root and seed for human and non-human sustenance, this land has been lying fallow. But harvest time brings the fruit of that period of […]

Grandfather’s vision about ‘gallons and gallons’ of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara seeds nurtures tribal college food sovereignty project. Dr. Ruth Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills recalls when her grandfather, Gerard Baker, shared with her some seeds – and his dream that they would multiply. “His wish was that there would be gallons and gallons of jars of these seeds […]

Good news! After three long years of labor, we are showing Legacy of the Andes, the long-awaited second part of our Cosmology & Polycrisis (formerly Cosmology & Pandemic) transmedia series, at the Cosmology & Polycrisis website (cosmocrisis.com). All proceeds from the rent and purchase of the films go to support our independent transmedia work to […]

Over 250 Indigenous representatives and allies unite to forge Sacred Covenant at Palenque’s ancient ceremonial center. It was a scene that could have played out a thousand years ago, or more. Amid a cluster of ancient Mayan temples, a rainbow-hued assemblage of Indigenous elders and young leaders formed a ceremonial circle. They looked on as […]

Walkers, runners, riders join to honor memory of journalist, a defender of land and culture Josh Dini learned and practiced his calling as a water protector under the tutelage of Myron Dewey, his elder brother. Dewey was a beloved Paiute Shoshone filmmaker, photojournalist and drone pilot who founded Digital Smoke Signals. This independent media outlet […]

This past year has been a tough one for many. Devastating wars in Gaza and the Ukraine have taken their toll far beyond their excruciating epicenters. Climate change is no longer a future foretold but a reality unfolding before our eyes. An uncertain economy has been further fueled by tens of thousands of layoffs spurred […]

I learned the news when I was in the middle of a meeting. The notification sounded and I checked my screen – I could only see the last words from a dear friend, “…he was suffering so much.”

In a heartbeat I knew. Alberto was gone.

It’s been nearly three weeks since I left the suffocating conditions of a Mexican heat wave to land right in the middle of another one in Missouri. This one was a little cooler — 94 degrees instead of 98. Along with the Southwestern US, Mexico is suffering a brutal heat wave — but with a […]

In a noisy entrance to one of the oldest markets in Oaxaca City, not far from one of the sites where corn culture originated  9,000 years ago, muralist Mariel García stood on a scaffold in the hot sun for three weeks and painted her heart out. The mural she was creating, more than a year […]

This weekend has been a frightening one for many here in Mexico — at least among the people who care about the land and our Indigenous peoples. The social media networks were on fire after it was announced that a longtime friend, Wixárika land defender and attorney Santos de la Cruz Carrillo, had disappeared on […]