Arts to Breathe: Guadalajara’s Barrios to Host International Arts Festival
Artes para Respirar, a podcast produced by the Festival for the Dignity of the Peoples Collective. Text: Víctor Ibarra Some dreams disappear when we wake. Others we pursue with our eyes open, working until they become reality. Génesis Velasco and Tavo Rodríguez, from the Jalisco-based theater company Maldita Comedia, share in this first 2026 episode […]
Kites flying in the wind to defend the territory in Tonalá, México
Photos and text: Víctor Ibarra Threads that connect hands to the wind, linking the earth’s present stories with the sky. Glances of joy and surprise that wind through the vivid colors, up there in the heights. Hands raised and intertwined with new family experiences, reviving nostalgia on this hill. Musical voices in solidarity with the […]
‘They listened for a way to make it a yes’: Ohuira communities weigh federal plan
By Tracy L. Barnett Mexico News Daily / The Esperanza Project TOPOLOBAMPO, Sinaloa — When federal officials finally unveiled a plan last week to address the 12-year conflict over a nearly completed ammonia plant beside Ohuira Bay, Indigenous Yoreme activist, rural sociologist and law student Melina Maldonado did not feel relieved. She felt crushed. After […]
Radio Coamil: “Sonic Resistance”. How Music Keeps Mexico’s Social Movements Alive
Text by Melina GilPhotos by Víctor Ibarra Humanize. Connect. Accompany. Politicize. Let the chords liberate. Let them repair what they did not break. Let powerful notes hold space for dissonance, rebellion and the people who refuse to surrender. At Casa Quinqué, a community cultural center in Guadalajara, four musicians recently gathered with the hosts of […]
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 […]
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 […]
Facing Mexico’s zero-waste challenge
The work of civil organizations and citizen efforts as a driving force towards a zero waste economy
México: The 4th Transformation in a Global Context
It is becoming clear that the future of the planet is red and green. It is equally clear that Mexico’s situation is neither exclusive nor unique, but rather replicates what is happening on a global scale, where the citizens of the world take on diverse forces in order to reduce, stop or suppress the double exploitation that a minority of minorities is imposing on the work of humans and of nature. The enormous ignorance prevailing among leaders and theorists of Mexican emancipation about what is taking place in the rest of the world, limits and reveals them. It is not only about keeping in mind the social and environmental struggles of Latin America, but of many other regions.
Covid, Culture and the Codices
This is what is happening, because the Earth is defending herself. The Earth herself is being cleansed.
We came from all over the republic and beyond to show our support and to run this historic “Carrera con Causa” – Race with a Cause – to enjoy the charms of a threatened yet defiant pueblo and to bask in its famous hot springs. Here are a few images from the 11th annual Carrera […]
Wixaritari: "Out with the politicians"
MESA DEL TIRADOR, Wixárika territories, Mexico— At midnight on May 10, 2018, members of the Wixárika (Huichol) community of Wuaut+a (San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán), in the Western Sierra Madre of Mexico, took the dramatic step of blocking all entrances to their community, given the lack of response from the Mexican State for their demand to peacefully […]
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 […]
Bio-Reconstructing Mexico: Toward an Architecture for Life
By Tracy L. Barnett For ArchDaily.com Editor’s note: After the earthquakes of Sept. 7 and Sept. 19 in southern and central Mexico, a nascent natural building movement – known as “bioconstruction” or “bioarchitecture” here in the Spanish-speaking South – has stepped forward, seizing the opportunity to rebuild with an architecture that promotes long-term resilience and […]
Visionary gathering brings regenerative development to Caribbean shores
All the pieces are beginning to come together for the XV Vision Council – Guardians of the Earth “Call of the Water” gathering. This year, the itinerant ecovillage and high-impact social movement has set its sights on Mexico’s Caribbean coast near the border with Belize. The gathering is set for the shores of the magnificent […]
‘A wound to the heart of the community’
by Tracy L. Barnett For Intercontinental Cry Este artículo está disponible en español aquí GUADALAJARA — As commissioner of public lands for the indigenous Wixárika territory of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán, Miguel Vázquez Torres was at the forefront of the legal fight to recover 10,000 hectares of indigenous ancestral lands from surrounding ranching communities. He was […]
Mexican ranchers and Huichol people urge government to solve land conflict
By Tracy L. Barnett For Thomson Reuters News Service LA YESCA, Mexico, Dec 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Audelina Villagrana has run her ranch in Mexico’s Western Sierra Madre mountains on her own since the death of her husband 23 years ago, herding livestock, hiring local Huichol people and even raising a young Huichol boy like […]
Town lives in shadow of El Zapotillo Dam
By Tracy L. Barnett For El Daily Post Photo courtesy International Rivers In the strange world of Mexican water politics, things got a bit stranger this week as a citizen’s coalition filed a formal complaint with the state auditor’s office regarding a $4.6 million hydrological study by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) […]
Victory is theirs! Ahuisculco villagers save their water supply
Tracy L. Barnett for El Daily Post It was one of those heartwarming victories that can renew your faith in the possibility of achieving justice peacefully. Mountain villagers in Ahuisculco, Jalisco, who had camped out for months in front of bulldozers were finally able to broker a land swap with the sugar company that was […]
Jalisco villagers have set up camp against the bulldozers
Tracy L. Barnett for El Daily Post The Jalisco village of Ahuisculco was one of the few places in Mexico where residents could open their taps and drink fresh, clean water. But an anonymous corporation moved in last September and began digging. After a while, the villagers’ crystal-blue springs ran a muddy brown. That’s when the […]
Film chronicles the movement to save a sacred land and a visionary culture
The film Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians will be on a North American tour with 30+ screenings in more than 20 cities in the United States and Canada, with the U.S. premiere at Rice Theater in Houston, Texas, and theCanadian premiere hosted by Cinema Politica in Montreal, Quebec. The documentary presents the emblematic case of […]
Interview with the Last Peyote Guardians: Marakame José Luis 'Katira' Ramírez and son
José Luis “Katira” Ramírez was serving as the governor of his community of San Andrés Cohamiata, Jalisco, when he met Argentine filmmaker Hernán Vilchez. He was not like any governor Vilchez had ever met.
Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians makes its debut
This week Huicholes: The Last Peyote Guardians had its world premiere – fittingly in the remote mountain enclave of Real de Catorce, the picturesque colonial capital of Wirikuta — followed by a second showing after a rugged two-day journey into Wixarika territory in the even more remote Sierra Madre. The most important movie to date […]
Behind the Scenes: What Wirikuta Fest fans bought with their tickets
“Wirikuta is not for sale!” Wixarika leaders and activists take the stage at Wirikuta Fest to the chants of 60,000 fans. Story and photos by Tracy L. Barnett It was a long time coming – but it was worth the wait. Nearly two years ago, more than a dozen of Mexico’s biggest performing artists came […]
Call of Quetzalcoatl: Materializing the Vision
TEMICTLA, Mexico – If there were ever any doubt that Quetzalcoatl lives, that doubt was dispelled in one moist, glistening, luminous week in the heart of Mexico. Here in Temictla, a sacred valley, a tiny ecovillage and spiritual retreat center on the edge of Chalmita, a pilgrimage destination to millions of people of diverse traditions, […]
Canada meets Wirikuta: Canadian author visits Birthplace of the Sun
Canadian author and activist Maude Barlow atop the Cerro Quemado with Wixarika leader Santos de la Cruz. (Tracy L. Barnett photos) REAL DE CATORCE, Mexico – From the moment Maude Barlow passed under the crumbling stone arch and saw the first nopalera laden with red cactus fruits, she knew she was entering another dimension. Accompanied […]
Hacienda Petac: "A little piece of Eden"
MERIDA, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico – Finally, I can relax. The sound of running spring water and the night noises of the jungle surround me, the toil and trouble of the city far behind. This long-anticipated journey with my parents – their first to Mexico, and the first stamp on their brand-new passports – had gotten […]
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 […]
Outside in the darkness, up in the hills not far from here, a chorus of coyotes is greeting the coming of the dawn. How appropriate, I think with a smile. Here in Huehuecoyotl, place of the old, old coyote, I’ve just bid farewell to the greatest coyote of all, Subcoyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil, who is […]
Guadalajara Guerreros: Fighting for a better world
Today I awoke in the verdant mountains near Tepoztlán in Central Mexico, far from the commotion of city life in Guadalajara. Before I move on, I want to take a few moments to acknowledge the work of 24 extremely dedicated, talented and creative people I met during my time in that city, people who touched […]
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