I met Juan José Uxamuire “Katira” Ramírez 10 years ago this coming February. I had just come down from the mountaintop of Cerro Quemado, the Birthplace of the Sun, along with about a thousand other pilgrims, gathered there in a historic all-night ceremony to pray for the salvation of the sacred desert of Wirikuta from […]

The Esperanza Project is a nonprofit, bilingual online magazine and media empowerment project covering social and environmental change-makers in the Americas. It is written and edited by a team of journalists, filmmakers, writers and designers from around the world. We come from different backgrounds, but we share the belief that a better world is possible, and indeed […]

Antonio Sánchez Gramiño was always one of those who would shake is head and laugh when he heard people talk about changing the world. It’s not that he didn’t care; he’s always been ecologically minded. It bothered him to see people wasting water and creating trash. It’s just that he thought it was a lost cause.

“I used to call them pendejos (fools),” he told me with a laugh. “Now, I’m one of those pendejos.”

Esperanza is the Spanish word for hope. The Esperanza Project offers a special blend of hope-based media – one that gives voice to those heroes and heroines who are quietly changing the world from the ground up. Many, but not all, come from countries that we in the North don’t often pay attention to, from people […]

Earth Day 2020 marked a milestone for The Esperanza Project. We took our first baby steps into the world of broadcasting with our very first online program: Esperanza is the Antidote, a lineup of Esperanza Project collaborators from the USA to Argentina.

Coyote Alberto Ruz Reports from People’s Summit, Peace Village and International Rights of Nature Tribunal

Fifty years dedicated to studying, writing, creating, promoting and serving as an international networker have made Coyote Alberto Ruz a first-line pioneer, a veteran and an historian of the intentional communities, ecovillage and bioregionalist movements. In the last seven years he has dedicated most of his time to organizing global, local and national campaigns for an Earth Jurisprudence, recognizing Mother Earth as a living being with rights of her own.

Review by Ana Ruiz Photos by Tracy L. Barnett ZIPOLITE, OAXACA – Nine actors emerge as bats, bees, butterflies and wild felines, pollinating and controlling crop pests as they weave a fabulous dance into the web of life. Monsanto suddenly steps onto the stage, depicted as a fat man with a briefcase and a sprayer, […]

Inspiration thrives in times of darkness. That’s what a decade of coverage of social movements in the Americas reveals. At the dawn of 2019, thousands of Latin American asylum seekers huddle in tent cities along our southern borders, having risked their lives for the hope of a better future for their families. Thousands of children […]

At the dawn of 2019, thousands of Latin American asylum seekers huddle in tent cities along our southern borders, having risked their lives for the hope of a better future for their families. Thousands of children languish in concentration camps and detention centers scattered around the country, their parents unable to claim them. Americans wonder […]

Overlooking the brilliant, placid waters of Bacalar Lagoon, in the breezy shadow of a palm tree, it’s easy to imagine that one has landed in a sort of tropical paradise where the noise and traffic and contamination of tourism magnets like Cancún are a world apart. But Marco Jerico, founder and director of the environmental […]

By Tracy L. Barnett for The Washington Post Looking down from the hilltop through the palm fronds, the sight took my breath away: at least seven hues of blue, stretching out before me to a green-fringed horizon. This was the Lagoon of Seven Colors, and it was everything I’d been told, and then some. Set […]

Left: Cayuco Maya, the venue for the XV Vision Council, “Call of the Water,” was held on the shores of Bacalar Lagoon. Foreground: The Rainbow Peace Caravan’s Circus Tent has been a trademark gathering space for two decades in Vision Councils from Peru to Mexico. BACALAR, Quintana Roo, Mexico — The XV Vision Council – […]

“Coyote” Alberto Ruz Buenfil has devoted his life to nurturing the bonds that connect humans with the place we inhabit and its other inhabitants, from the beaver to the bee to the wind and the water. His ethic has been influenced by and has in turn influenced movements toward intentional communities, ecovillages and bioregionalism. He […]

Left and above: First Encounter, Vision Council: Call of the Sage – Teopantli Kalpulli. By Laura Angélica Almazán The call of the caracol has called us together once again. The family has reunited one more time to continue with a mission that started more than two decades ago, and gets more and more relevant every year. The […]

MEXICO CITY – The old Mexico met the new one Saturday at the massive Foro Sol and together, in an explosion of rhythm and light and living energy, they danced the night away. Wirikuta Fest, a lineup of nearly 20 big-name recording artists, was as much a celebration of Mexico’s indigenous roots and living heritage […]

TEOPANTLI KALPULLI, Jalisco, Mexico – I live at the corner of Earth and Fire streets, around the corner from a pyramid. I wake each morning to the crowing of roosters and the lowing of cattle. On Sundays I join my neighbors in kneeling and entering the womb of my mother in the form of a […]

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Thanksgiving day – I awoke this morning far from home and family but filled with a profound sense of gratitude. Grateful for the sun that was just beginning to brighten the sky outside my window; grateful for the dear friends who have given me a home in this city of cities. […]

Author’s note: Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ruled that members of the Lipan-Apache “Hoosh Chetzel” Native American Church would be allowed space to worship at a sacred site in the headwaters of the San Antonio River within a city-owned park. However, in his preliminary ruling, he wrote that they were to be […]

By Tracy L. Barnett and Hernán Vilchezwith production by José Antonio Calfínphotos from the Esperanza Project film “Legacy of the Andes” For the Mapuche people of Chile and Argentina’s Patagonia region — or Wallmapu, as its original inhabitants know their territory —, the warnings of the pandemic began in the form of a flower. When […]