Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The mural Mariel García was creating, more than a year in the planning and execution, is a tribute to Mexico’s long struggle to protect the country’s more than 1,000 native maize varieties from contamination by genetically modified corn.
Eslava and Sumano are working together to preserve the region’s chinampas, remnants of the branch and reed rafts that Mesoamerican farmers covered in nutrient-rich lake mud to grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
Every day more Mexicans discover that what we are experiencing today, not only in the country but on the entire planet, is a colossal battle between life and death. In short, social power keeps moving forward!
As part of Mexico’s world-renowned community forestry model for sustainability, the example of the Chimalapas shines. It has produced important results in conservation of a natural biosphere considered one of the most important lungs of Mexico.
Agroecology has arrived at Mexico’s 4T government. It has arrived not as an explicit and coherent State policy, but rather as a set of actions that get better as they are articulated and consolidated.
In this perspective, what must be assessed is how much the 4T government is making its mark by advancing the forces of global emancipation, the forces of those carrying out a great war for the survival of the human species and the rest of the living world.
Coronavirus is hitting México hard and the government is in denial. México is going to have to face some difficult choices soon. It needs to remember what its indigenous ancestors did when the climate changed, civil collapse came, or invasion threatened. They dispersed and downsized… They self-isolated. And because of that, they are still here today.
Rosario del Carmen Carrasco, a young campesina, serves as president of the “Xhuba Binii” group. She has cultivated more than 20 hectares of zapalote chico. Rosario inherited her love of the countryside from her father, and although she graduated as an engineer, she has practiced agriculture her whole life.
What do you do if you are running out of oil, and your neighbour’s President, who has plenty of oil, seems to hate you? The answer is that you develop a renewable-powered economy as fast as you can.
A small but persistent sustainability movement has been slowly growing and I was delighted to find a budding food movement working against the odds to retain their rich agricultural heritage.
Recent reforms would open oil exploration and development in Mexico to major oil companies for the first time in decades. But it’s instructive to look at what actually happened in Brazil since the time its potential as a major new oil producer was touted several years ago under similar circumstances.
