Ancient Paths, Modern Prayers: The 2024 Peace and Dignity Journeys
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, […]
Global Water Defenders Issue Nuwiaka Declaration in Colombia's Heart of the World
At the request of the Mamos, the spiritual guides of the Sierra Nevada, please share this message far and wide. From the mist-shrouded peaks of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, I’m witnessing an unprecedented gathering of Indigenous leaders and environmental defenders who have come together from five continents to protect a river sacred to […]
Bringing Prophecies to Life: Indigenous Leaders Converge at Mayan Pyramids
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 […]
March 8: ‘Identity can never be silenced.’ Misak women fight back in Colombia
Reflections of a Misak journalist two and a half years after the femicide of the Indigenous leader Nazaria Calambas. By Angélica Almazán, Tracy L. Barnett and Diana Mery Jembuel Morales. It’s been two and a half years since Nazaria Calambas, an Indigenous Misak leader in Colombia, was shot to death before the helpless gaze of […]
Waste Pickers to Recyclers: Reimagining a Scorned Sector
Waste pickers sort and sell recyclables from open-air landfills. One municipality made the position official — a move that could transform the industry. By Ena Aguilar Peláez, Global Press México. SAN LORENZO CACAOTEPEC, MEXICO — Marisol Mendoza leaves home on her motorcycle at 5:45 a.m. She rides down a brush-lined dirt road and over a […]
Colombia's Call of the Mountain: Restoring the Heart of Sumapaz
The Kunagua Network in the mountains south of Bogotá hosted the 17th edition of this gathering, a Colombian version of the Vision Council, this time with the purpose of preserving and regenerating the Colombian paramos. Text by José Aristizábal G. with editions from Tracy Barnett and Angélica Almazán. SUMAPAZ, COLOMBIA — On the cool, rolling […]
A Mexican Entrepreneur With a Painful Past Is Finding New Purpose With a Recycling Startup
By Maya Piedra, Global Press Mexico. Eleno Ulloa endured ridicule, rejection, drug and alcohol addiction, and two deportations from the United States. Today, he is his family’s breadwinner and, with his recycling business, a sign of hope for many in Nayarit. PASO DE LAS PALMAS, MEXICO — Eleno Ulloa inherited his interest in recycling from […]
Mexican Indigenous Group Fights to Preserve Sacred Sites
By Maya Piedra, Global Press Journal Mexico. This story was originally published in Global Press Journal Mexico. GUADALAJARA, MEXICO — Dressed in white clothing embroidered in colors and symbols representing the sacred universe, Mario Muñoz Cayetano, a man with a good-natured expression and deep gaze, speaks on the importance of a presidential decree to legally […]
Healing the body and the land on Lake Chapala, Mexico
Faced with a public health crisis due to kidney disease in the region, a group of women organized in Agua Caliente – on the shores of Mexico’s largest lake, Chapala, in the municipality of Poncitlán, Jalisco – to launch a community garden of medicinal plants. Although there are factors beyond their control, these women are counting on their collective organization around a budding agroecology project, to help them care for their health.
'Stop the criminalization of planting in public spaces': Agroecology collectives
In the heart of Mexico’s second-largest city, next to a cornfield planted in the median of a major thoroughfare, Radio Coamil was born, in its first broadcast addressing the growing tension around the criminalization of the unauthorized practice of urban agroecology in public spaces.
Land defenders caravan to Mexico City to defend Chimalapas
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 […]
Oaxaca Mural Documents Struggle to Defend Native Corn
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 […]
Mine Resisters Denounce the Dangers of the New "White Gold" Rush
Editor’s Note: The U.S. eleventh-hour climate policy — to pin global greenhouse gas reduction on the proliferation of individual electric vehicles made with lithium exclusively from the American continent — appears to be having a domino effect nationally and in countries south of the border. In April, when Chile’s President Gabriel Boric announced his intention […]
Maya Villagers Resist Mega Hog Farms in Yucatán
“The smell was what woke us up. The green flies, the mosquitoes. The headaches. The pestilence, which at night no longer lets us sleep. Then something appeared in the fruit, as if it were smoke. The bushes looked sad and would soon dry up. When we realized it, the Kekén farm had already been running for a year.
Guardian of Temaca: “I had to see with my own eyes”
TEMACAPULÍN, Jalisco, Mexico — The fight was clearly worth it, was the feeling of the residents of this colonial town, who showed up punctually to observe the destruction of part of the curtain of the El Zapotillo Dam, a megaproject that threatened to flood the town along with two of its neighboring villages, Acasico and […]
Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta: Reversing a Century of Colombian Tragedy
When I visited the floating palafito fishing village of Nueva Venecia in early 2021, I found myself staring out across the calm, reflective expanse of the coastal lagoon complex known as the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta. Looking back at that moment, I understand why Ernesto Mancera has spent the past 35 years studying the region’s mangroves […]
Agroecology Center revalues agriculture - and culture - in Oaxaca
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 […]
Permaculture for Climate Change Resilience in Mexico
Tikkun Eco Center works with Mexican villages to solve water crisis
Tikkun Eco Center : Spreading seeds of change
SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, MÉXICO – Victoria Collier and Ben Ptashnik are a couple with a vision: they want to teach how to create self-sustaining ecological community where people can grow food, disengage from destructive systems with the use of renewable energy and green building, and create community projects that benefit everyone while raising the […]
Countdown in Sinaloa: 15 years left to save critical coastal habitat
Fishermen of southern Sinaloa and the migratory birds of North America have something in common: they suffer the impacts of environmental degradation of the Huizache Caimanero lagoon system, one of the most productive along the Mexican Pacific coast. The pangas (open fishing boats) that used to return loaded with shrimp have been left empty, and […]
Ecuador: After National Strike, extractivism and equity debate begins
QUITO, Ecuador— The National Strike this summer in Ecuador mobilized people from all 24 of its provinces, concentrated thousands of protesters in the city of Quito, and lasted 18 days. Although it has left as a consequence, so far, seven people dead, this new social outbreak compelled important advances in the fight for the defense […]
LIVE TODAY at 11 am CDT: Gaia University founder Liora Adler on 'Retrotopia'
Since the turn of the century humans have been building communities structured on technological and industrial practices that are steadily destroying the ecosystems that support life on this planet. “Retrotopia”** is an alternative vision that supports the re-emergence of sustainable community living focused on ecosystem regeneration and restoration. Register HERE to join us for this weekend’s lineup […]
Call of the Turtle: LIVE Mini-Vision Council on Sunday
The Call of the Turtle, a Mini Vision Council Sun. Aug 7, gives a small taste of this south-of-the-border phenomenon that has transformed lives and communities throughout the continent.
EcoSapien Speaker Series + 'Call of the Turtle' Mini Vision Council
This monumental monthlong convergence features conversations with indigenous visionaries and activists, eco-elders in the fields of bioregionalism, ecovillage design, permaculture, earth-regeneration and humans we see as helping us connect to our animist roots while restoring elements of sacred culture.
Indigenous Women build movement to tackle ‘Terricide’ in Argentina
As the rising sun lit the Andean foothills above the town of Chicoana in northern Argentina on May 22, 2022, around 300 women circled around a ceremonial fire on the grounds of a rural school. They hailed from Indigenous communities all across the country, from the sweltering Gran Chaco region bordering Bolivia and Paraguay, to […]
18 days of resistance: Women leaders in Ecuador speak out
Today these words can finally come out on paper, because the fear and the lump in the throat — for now — are appeased. The peace agreements with social justice between the organizations and the Ecuadorean government were signed on Thursday, June 30. Now they are in the vigil process with a term of 90 […]
Mayan leaders fight bill privatizing archaeological sites
Archaeologists, anthropologists and members of the indigenous communities of Guatemala are making an appeal to the Guatemalan government to reject a controversial bill affecting the administration of the country’s archaeological sites. Law 5923, called “Rescue of Pre-Hispanic Heritage,” has been proposed as a matter of national urgency both by the Ministry of Culture and Sports […]
Wixárika community takes back financial autonomy in historic vote
In a forceful step against corruption and discrimination, San Sebastián voted to manage their own federal tax dollars — joining the ranks of a growing number of indigenous communities in Mexico. And they will do so with women at the table under an agreement of gender parity, a rarity among Indigenous governments and, indeed, governments in general.
"Indigenous people shouldn't have to beg for justice"
After 32 days of pilgrimage, the Wixárika Caravan arrived at the National Palace in Mexico City. The march began on April 25, 900 kilometers away in the Western Sierra Madre. Since that time, they have been asking for an audience with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to request restitution of their stolen lands.
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