Urban green space Archive

Guadalajara by foot: Trek reveals many faces of historic avenue

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 21, 2012Posted in: Biking, Ciudad Para Todos, Com:Plot, Environmental education, Featured, GDL en Bici, Guadalajara, Transportation, Urban green space, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Guadalajara by foot: Trek reveals many faces of historic avenue

By Tracy L. Barnett
The Esperanza Project

It was a beautiful day for a hike – and a fascinating, if not always beautiful, route. The Fifth Annual Camina por Guadalajara, an event sponsored by the sustainable cities group Com:Plot, drew a lively and diverse crowd to Plaza Juarez on Avenida de la Independencia.

The idea of this walk – as with the previous ones organized by Com:Plot and a sister organization – Ciudad Para Todos, City for All – was to focus attention on a cross-section of the city, step by step and block by block. The entire day would be spent traversing this historic avenue, from the city’s historic center and beautiful plazas to the newly developing suburbs and beyond, to a spectacular surprise (for this reporter, at least) the very end. (These two groups were profiled in my 2010 visit to Guadalajara during the initial yearlong voyage through Latin America: Com:Plot conspires to take back a city and A city for all, not just for cars.)

Along the way, zigzagging back and forth into the neighborhoods that line this avenue, the group would observe and document the city’s historic treasures and glaring deficiencies – or, as the diplomatic Com:Plot leader Alfredo Hidalgo puts it, “opportunities” – sometimes just a few paces apart.

“The Calzada de la Independencia is a territories full of challenges, surprises and history, and it will surely give us an opportunity to reencounter the city,” said Alfredo in his welcome to about 100 people who had gathered to take part in the walk. “Here we will get to look at the city with an eye to the past but above all with a lot of optimism at the future.”

Alfredo, like many of those who joined the walk, is an architect and an advocate of progressive planning for a more inclusive, more sustainable and more walkable city. Guadalajara, despite its nearly 500 years of colonial history, is a metropolis that grew up with the automobile, like most U.S. cities, but with little long-range planning, and the modern metropolitan ills of congestion, pollution and deforestation plague an otherwise beautiful city.

A perfect example was the park to our immediate right, Parque Agua Azul. It’s a lovely, shady park alive with Tapatíos (Guadalajarans) enjoying a sunny Sunday – but the blue water the park was named for has diminished to a shadow of its former self. This entire area, almost as far as the eye could see, was an enormous lake, explained journalist and historian Guillermo Gomez, who narrated a fascinating section of the walk. During the Porfiriato – the time when Porfirio Diaz was president – elegant bathhouses lined the lake, and people would come and take the waters.

The advent of the automobile changed all of that, along with the rest of the city, Gomez said. The lake was gradually drained to build avenues like this one, and the river that fed Agua Azul was channelled under the street in an enormous storm drain. Now the once-grand Rio San Juan de Dios is long forgotten, just another carrier of the city’s sewage.

But not to dwell on unfortunate decisions of the past… the upbeat group headed off toward a lovely set of arches, past a florist shop and out into the sunny day, cameras at the ready to document the face of the Calzada, for better and for worse.

Soon we took a detour to the east into the nearly forgotten neighborhood of Analco. We hadn’t gone a block when the sidewalk disappeared.

“Where’s the sidewalk?” exclaimed an indignant Guillermo, pointing to a long stretch alongside the street where the foot traffic made its way along a long stretch of dirt and gravel. “It’s one thing to have a destroyed sidewalk, but quite another to have no sidewalk at all.”

The Analco neighborhood, Guillermo explained, had been a thriving hub of activity in its day, but had always been working-class. The more monied folk built their homes on the western side of the street, and to this day, a marked difference can be seen in the character of the neighborhoods. But Analco’s fate took a nosedive on April 22, 1992, the day a gas line exploded under the neighborhood, killing at least 300 people (according to the official count; unofficial reports put the number of dead closer to 2,000.

Jesus Arreola, a professor of urban planning at the University of Guadalajara, grew up in this neighborhood and remembers it as vibrant and full of life – a place where a young boy could easily go anywhere he needed to go on a bicycle. Now most of the young people have moved to the suburbs, leaving the elderly and marginal to inhabit the deteriorated infrastructure.

“We citizens need to convince the government to take on the necessary projects to bring life back to these barrios,” he said.

Abandoned lots filled with weeds and trash line the street near the corner where the explosion took place, twenty years after the fateful event.



Lots of opportunities here, he pointed out. A once beautiful art-deco building…

An abandoned corn-flour mill, where people would bring their corn for miles around…

A thriving local market, a bit dilapidated but still a historic gem…

And also home to the sweetest elotes in the city, according to Guillermo…

But also home to some serious problems.

Here we also passed by the once-glorious Coloseum Arena, the biggest and best of its day, where all the famous boxing and lucha libre giants of the ’30s and ’40s would fight for international glory.

Here, fortunately, it was time to head back to the Calzada – just a block back to the west. And what a difference a block or two or three can make! … as we were soon to see…

Monument to Mexican Independence

Site of the historic and formerly grand Alameda Theater, whose inaugural gala in 1942 was attended by the beloved Mexican Golden Age film stars Maria Felix and Cantinflas, it closed in 1980 and remained abandoned for 20 years, when it was demolished to make way for the shopping mall that is now home to McDonald’s and Cineplex.

Thankfully, the nearby Hospicio Cabañas enjoyed a much different fate. Built in 1791 as an orphanage and hospital, it continued to operate until 1980, when the Cabañas Institute took it over and restored it into a beautiful cultural center and home to some of the most spectacular murals of José Clemente Orozco.

Behind the hospicio could be found the likewise historic, vast and somewhat chaotic Mercado Libertad, more commonly known as the Mercado de San Juan de Dios, named for the neighborhood, which was named for the no longer extant river… here you can buy anything from traditional handmade candies and serapes and handcrafts to handguns and ammunition, Guillermo informs me – this latter comes as a surprise to me, because handguns are actually strictly regulated here in Mexico… or so I thought.

Here we were now in the famous Plaza de los Mariachis, also recently refurbished …

And then the beautiful Plaza Tapatía, one of a series of interlinked plazas lined with historic buildings and monuments that are the pride of historic Guadalajara.

We could have easily lingered in the historic center all day, watching the people, listening to music, exploring the iconic cathedral and museums and plazas filled with public art and tempting restaurants and cafes. But we were on a mission – the Calzada called – and we marched on.

Again, just a block or two away from the beautifully restored Calzada, a different face of the city was evident.

(Translation: Dear Virgin of Guadalupe, I am a sinner; send me the punishments that you want but please don’t send me another government by the PAN – the conservative National Action Party.)

But soon we were arriving at the recently restored Parque Morelos, considered by some historians to be the city’s oldest landmark. Still with its original kiosk and wrought-iron benches, the park is an oasis of green in a concrete jungle.

Now it was on to the historic Barrio Retiro, named for the fact that it was on the outskirts of the growing city at the time of its founding. The neighborhood became known for its thriving tannery industry and was home to the beautiful Templo de Nuestra Señora del Rosario…

… and for something completely different, a little architectural oddity, referred to by Norma, one of my walking companions, as “Guadalajara’s tiniest block.”

Soon I caught up with Patricio Alva from Ciudad Para Todos. He had taken along spray cans and stencils to draw attention to the most grievous errors in city planning that the walkers observed along the way – such as the lack of ramps for wheelchair users:

… spectacular holes in the sidewalk:

… and a wheelchair ramp so steep that to traverse it would mean an almost inevitable crash at the end:

Alfredo’s children quickly became Patricio’s alert assistants, spotting pedestrian affronts on every corner.

Another Cuidad Para Todos intervention was the widespread distribution of “wikimultas,” or citizen tickets left on the windshields of rude drivers who blocked pedestrian walkways or otherwise invaded the space of non-drivers.

In this case, a large swath of grassy green public park was fenced in and empty, while children played in a dirt-covered lot nearby.

“Why close up a park? Parks are meant to be open, and free…” lamented Jesus Arreola.

(Translation: FINED by vigilant citizens….We invite you to cooperate in the improvement, harmony and mobility of our city. Respecting each other we will achieve a city that is worthy of all of us.)

I also caught up with architecture students Andrea Cornejo and Juan Pablo Morett, who were on their first Caminata and loved the opportunity to see a much-traveled route from a different perspective.

“For one thing, you realize all the obstacles a differently abled person has to face,” said Andrea, “and you also realize that there are some areas that are very much taken care of by the government and others that are super deficient – but you also see beautiful parts of the city that are really beautiful that you never noticed before.

“I hope the government will realize there are many people who care about the city,” she added, “and that we are aware of the problems that exist, that it’s not enough to just put in a Macrobus to cover up the problem in one area.”

I also ran into Yeriel from GDL en Bici, another of the energetic and innovative groups that are pushing Guadalajara to be a better, more livable city – in this case, for bicyclists. On this particular walk, Yeriel was observing how the recently installed MacroBus – highly controversial before its installation, but heavily used now – has changed the dynamic of the avenue. The traffic flows much more smoothly now, he said. And there’s another big advantage, he added, only a little bit ironically. “We now have a huge super bike lane.”

As he spoke, a bicyclist pedaled swiftly down the Macrobus late – completely illegally – but also completely unimpeded by traffic, and probably much safer than he would have been in normal traffic. Yeriel says the cyclists usually hear or see the Macrobus coming and get out of the way but if not, the drivers will honk.

It was after 2 by the time we reached the stadium and the group broke for “lonches” – the tapatio word for sandwiches – and I made a break for the Plaza de Tecnologia, back in the center, where I had an errand to do. Sadly, thanks to traffic and parking issues, it was two hours later when I was finally able to catch up to the group. I missed the Guadalajara zoo, the beautiful colonial pueblo of Huentitan – now swallowed up by the metropolis but still filled with charm – and the only stretch of perfect sidewalk on the whole avenue, according to the ever-observant Karla Preciado of Ciudad Para Todos – in front of the Coca-Cola corporate headquarters.

I had grabbed the new Metro Bus, a highly efficient, clean and speedy bus line that traverses the length of the Calzada, and it whisked me past traffic and through the bustling neighborhoods of Independencia and Huentitan, then through an area that seemed under construction. Finally the bus stopped; it was the end of the line.

I was able to reconnect with the group just as they finished the walk – and this is where I was in for an amazing surprise.

Karla was waiting for me at the bus terminal and we entered a park called the Mirador, meaning lookout. Suddenly the trees opened and my jaw dropped. The vista at the end of the Calzada de Independencia is nothing short of spectacular. I shook my head and took another look. The grandeur of the Barranca de Huentitan, or Huentitan Canyon, spread out before me like a panoramic postcard.

And there, posed in front of the barranca in a perfect group shot, was our group of walkers – some 60 or so made it through the day to the very end.

For more information about Com:Plot, and to learn how they will follow up on this action, follow their blog at http://citacomplot.blogspot.com/

For more innovative actions from Ciudad Para Todos, or to download their wikimulta for your own use, see their blog at http://ciudadparatodos.org. They are also very active on Facebook.

To follow the wealth of activities sponsored by GDL en Bici and a plethora of other biking groups, go to their Facebook page and blog: http://gdlenbici.org/

And here’s another great GDL group I just learned about: Las Otras Caras de la Ciudad, The Other Faces of the City, on Facebook at Lasotrascaras Delaciudad.

Little finca, big dreams: Laura and eReciclaje

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: November 8, 2010Posted in: Colombia, Featured, Food Security, Organic agriculture, Permaculture, Recycling, Urban green space, WhyTags: , , , , , ,
Little finca, big dreams: Laura and eReciclaje

My other Pato contact was Laura Montoya, an elusive sprite of a woman who only sporadically answered e-mail and telephone. Laura had temporarily inherited the leadership of eReciclaje, an urban permaculture group established by her partner, Felipe Rrague, upon his departure to study in the States.

I finally caught up with her at a presentation at a local university, and she was worth the wait.

Laura Montoya of the peacock-feather earring, the disarming smile and the passionate rapid-fire defense of the Pachamama, is a one-woman Earth revolution in action. Over coffee, she sized me up and apparently decided I was worth her time, and she invited me to her home and the new headquarters of eReciclaje in the marginal barrio of Belen, up in the hills on the outskirts of the city.

The trip itself was almost as memorable as the actual visit. Starting from the classic Hotel Nutibara, whose elegant neoclassic lines are meant for others with far greater budgets than mine, I climbed into a bus destined for the outskirts. After nearly half an hour of traffic through the modern world of esthetic salons and shopping malls and residential neighborhoods we began to climb up and up into another world, one in which houses begin with brick and end with sheet metal and black plastic, where women still carry water in jugs and corn in tubs on their heads, where the smoke from cooking fires curls hangs in the air, where you or your neighbor may or may not have electricity or running water.

It was here that eReciclaje located its second project, the first one, an urban permaculture center in the rougher Barrio Triste neighborhood, having been undone by a devastating robbery.

Here, according to Laura, Felipe started over again, building terraces and irrigation ditches and working the land. Here is the regional headquarters for A Limpiar el Mundo or Clean Up The World, an international group working to organize mass cleanup projects, and here the plastic detritus of the neighborhood becomes eco-bricks of the sort David had demonstrated to me earlier.

But first, I had to find it. The neighborhood was a network of streets without names, and a misunderstanding led me to get off the bus in the wrong place. Finally, there she was, smiling, brilliant in her green hindu pants, big white sunglasses and peacock feather. We embraced, long-lost friends who had only met, and she led me up the hill to her “finca” next to the brick factory, where trucks rumbled up and down all day long, carrying away red bits of mountain in their cavernous beds.

Ironic, and someone poetic, that their little eco-brick workshop is right next to a brick factory of quite a different sort.

I thought of what David told me the other night in Sajonia as he tended his little fire. The Center for Ecological Arts is similarly situated in a truck-traffic zone near the cantera (quarry) and trucks rumble past all day long. Here, too, one can look out from this little mountain paradise and see the mountain across the valley being slowly eaten away.

“Some might see this as a negative thing, and sure, it’s sad to see the way they are altering the mountain – I wish they wouldn’t do it,” David had said, thoughtfully. “But this is exactly the mentality we are working to change – so it’s better that we are here, rather than isolating ourselves from it.”

Laura, it turned out, is not so different from me at 25, in love with an activist completely dedicated to his work, taking on the mantel of his cause as her own. Only hers had left the whole operation in her young hands. Suddenly I understood her reluctance to meet with me. She had been simply overwhelmed.

Still, her words flowed crisp and clear like the mountain stream outside the window. She spoke of dreams and visions, of tarot and shamans and sacred medicine, of greening and cleaning the world.

“Everything has a message, if we listen,” she told me.

I listened.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

A Mother’s Day greeting from the Racoons

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 11, 2010Posted in: Biking, Featured, Forest protection, Guatemala, Mapaches, Reforestation, Urban green space, WhyTags: , ,
A Mother’s Day greeting from the Racoons

Mother’s Day is celebrated here in Guatemala on the 10th of May, regardless of what day of the week it falls on. So today was the big day – and I do mean big.

It began at 6:30 am with a mobile loudspeaker blasting an upbeat blessing from the streets, mañanitas-style. That was followed by fireworks, and all day I continued to receive kisses and hugs and very sincere blessings just for the fact that I have a beautiful daughter – which is already blessing enough.

But then, when I arrived home and checked my e-mail, I found the best Mother’s Day greeting of all. I just had to share it with you all.

This greeting came from the Mapaches, or Racoons, a lively group based in Guatemala City that has been using creativity and community-building to raise awareness about the need for a more liveable city.

Their greeting card is a gentle reminder:

“Thank you, Mom, for teaching me to love the Mother Earth.”

A Mother’s Day thanks to Guatemalan world changers

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 9, 2010Posted in: Climate Change, Ecotourism, Forest protection, Guatemala, Indigenous rights, Reforestation, Urban green space, WhyTags:
A Mother’s Day thanks to Guatemalan world changers

Sunset, coming into Quetzaltenango/Xela

QUETZALTENANGO, Guatemala – I awoke this sparkling Mother’s Day to the sight of the Santa Maria volcano from my rooftop, rising green and conical over the mountains that surround this charming city in the highlands. Quetzaltenango, known to Guatemalans by its indigenous name, Xela, is quite literally a breath of fresh air.

The slap-slap-slap of the ladies in the kitchen next door “tortillando,” making tortillas, is punctuated by laughter and chitchat.

My beautiful mother and daughter are well – I’m grateful to them for all they’ve given to me, and I’m grateful to Skype, which allows me to stay connected from so far away. I’m grateful, too, for the capable and loving hands of all the mothers around me, who will be honored today with family dinners, special events and the spectacular bouquets being sold in the streets and markets.

But most of all, I am grateful to the Mother that sustains us all, the Madre Tierra whose fertile soil, abundant rivers, fruitful forests and vast oceans feed and shelter us, century upon century, and I am grateful to all of those who work to protect and nourish her. Since I have arrived in Guatemala, I have met so many.

My conversations with them have revealed the daily destruction of the environment on so many levels; people from taxi drivers to street vendors comment daily on the the increasingly intense heat, the rising floods, the contamination of rivers and lakes and air. The bad news is everywhere, and it can be overwhelming at times. But so is the good news: the fact that so many are dedicating their energy and talent to turning the tide.

To name just a few of those who have inspired me in their labors for Mother Earth in two short, interrupted weeks in Guatemala, and I wish them all a Happy Mother’s Day:

Magalí and Alejandra

Magalí Rey Rosa, the beautiful and eloquent voice for the wildlands whose work over the past three decades has awakened so many, and her daughter, Alejandra Marroquín, who is carrying the torch;

Bayron Medina

Bayron Medina, a descendant of Maya farmers in Alta Verapaz who now works for the Ministry of the Environment and the United Nations, empowering farmers in the countryside to protect their watershed and understand the value of the natural resources that are entrusted to their care;

Maria Jose España

Maria Jose España, Mario Rodrigo Gonzalez and Karla Maldonado of the Mapaches, a vibrant group in the capital who started out to save a forested canyon and evolved to a much broader mission;

Masa Critica Guatemala

Manuel Gomez and the rest of Masa Critica Guatemala, a group of dedicated cyclists determined to establish a right-of-way on the capital’s busy streets;

Steve Dudenhofer

Steve Dudenhofer and the rest of the crew at Ak Tenamit Maya School, where protecting the earth is an integral part of the curriculum, and graduates are making waves around the country in sustainable development, community health, women’s literacy and ecotourism projects;

Maite Rodriguez Blandon

Maite Rodriguez Blandón of Fundación Guatemala, whose work to empower Guatemalan women at the grassroots has taken many forms; lifting women out of poverty and giving them control of their land, she says, is one of the best ways to protect the environment;

Mega and Amanda from Rasta Mesa

Amanda and Mega at Rasta Mesa, working in Livingston to preserve the Garifuna culture and the land;

Eduardo Gularte y Gaby Diaz

Eduardo Gularte, Gaby Diaz and others from the Center for Communication and Development (CECODE), a group of dedicated communicators working to empower people at the local level to use communications tools for social change;

Edith Panameño

Edith Panameño, a schoolteacher working to establish a network of eco-clubs in the Lake Izabal region;

Silvia, Maria Isabel y Luis Rey

The Reyes family of Hotel Ajau, and all the other Guatemalan businesses striving to make their businesses sustainable under the Green Deal and Great Green Deal programs;

Rodolfo y Rai

Rodolfo Trinidad and Rai Aguirre

Rodolfo Trinidad of Campus Sustentable, Universidad Rafael Landivar, and Rai Aguirre of EcoCinergia, Universidad San Carlos, two groups working in a variety of imaginative ways to raise awareness on campus;

Community Radio activists at a CECODE workshop in Xela

Sandra, Tino, Maribel and many others in a network of community radio activists, who have labored in the face of government repression to bring relevant news and analysis to the indigenous and campesino communities of Guatemala, in their native languages;

Movimiento Agua y Juventud workshop in Xela

Alejandra Tiguila and a host of others with the Guatemala chapter of Movimiento Agua y Juventud (Water and Youth Movement), a dynamic group whose combined energy and commitment lit up the night – and my heart – at a Quetzaltenango retreat center recently.

The list could go on, and soon it will: my contact list has mushroomed, and I won’t be able to visit with a tenth of the worthy groups working on conservation issues around the country. Still, what I’ve seen in these two weeks gives many reasons for hope. Keep reading in the days and weeks ahead to meet these and many other world changers along the path of The Esperanza Project.

Guadalajara Guerreros: Fighting for a better world

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 15, 2010Posted in: AJAGI, Camara Rodante, Ciudad Para Todos, Climate Change, Com:Plot, Ecovillages, Featured, Forest protection, GDL en Bici, Guadalajara, Huichol lands, Indigenous peoples, Indigenous rights, Mexico, Permaculture, Reforestation, Spiritual, Transportation, Urban green space, What, WhyTags: , , ,
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 my life and gave me hope for a better future.

To read about them, please visit Guerreros de Guadalajara, a bilingual entry in my Flickr account.

La Minerva, warrior woman of old and symbol of modern-day Guadalajara, photo courtesy of TheLittleTx, Flickr Creative Commons.

A City For All – not just for cars

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 3, 2010Posted in: Ciudad Para Todos, Featured, Guadalajara, Mexico, Transportation, Urban green space, WhyTags:
A City For All – not just for cars

I’ll never forget the day in November when I opened my Facebook page and discovered that the trees that had shaded the boulevard a few blocks from my friends’ home in Guadalajara were being marked for the chainsaw.

Ciudad Para Todos (City For All) had issued a call to arms – or, more precisely, a call to tents. Within 24 hours this group of young professionals – architects, computer technicians, journalists, and others – had mobilized an encampment at one of the city’s biggest intersections, drawing attention to a project they considered emblematic of a city transportation policy gone mad.

(Photo courtesy of Ciudad Para Todos)

Regular Esperanza Project readers may remember the chain of events that followed from the series of posts I republished from their blog, “Pasalo Aún Mejor.”

It didn’t take me long to find myself at the forlorn site of this encampment. Once there were yoga workshops under the trees, children’s painting parties, nighttime showings of classic films. Now the place is overrun with bulldozers, noise and dust and enclosed in about a half-mile of chain link fence. Any sign of trees has been proficiently eradicated. And prominently located on both ends of the construction project are banners proclaiming: “Obra en proceso: Trabaja por tu beneficio” (Work in progress: Working for your benefit.) I take my life in my hands every time I have to traverse this stretch, since there are no sidewalks and the traffic flies by, but the alternative is to add 20 minutes to my walk.

The group first captured my attention in October when I was in Guadalajara for the Society of American Travel Writers conference. They were opposing a $76 million dollar overpass, the “Puente Atirantado,” which was planned to ease traffic congestion along one of the city’s main thoroughfares. Spending so much of the overtaxed treasury on a single bridge, when the city lacked a cohesive public transit system, bikeways, crosswalks and sidewalk maintenance just didn’t make sense, they argued. Ciudad Para Todos and other groups like Com:Plot called instead for a comprehensive transportation plan.

Ultimately the monthlong encampment failed to stop the bridge, but it did achieve something else: It raised awareness throughout the city for the dire need of a more multifaceted, organized approach to transportation (or, as they call it here, mobility). Now the members are regrouping after a much-needed rest to decide their next strategy.

Jesus Carlos 'El Negro' Soto, Felipeno Reyes, and Karla Preciado of Ciudad Para Todos

Recently I sat down with three of the most active leaders, Jesus Carlos “El Negro,” Karla Preciado and Felipeno Reyes. They shared their thoughts about the encampment, social change, mobility and more.

Jesús Carlos “El Negro” Soto

The first thing one notices about “El Negro,” as his friends call him, is his engaging smile – not the bronze skin that earned him the common nickname. Soto first became interested in the environment from his passion for social justice. Now a computer specialist, he studied philosophy at ITESO, a Jesuit university in Guadalajara, and he always identified with the downtrodden.

“I always loved nature, of course,” he said. “But what really called my attention were the social questions: poverty, exclusion.” He joined with the Jesuits to work with at risk families in the outskirts of the city, families where sometimes 19 people – grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, children – would all live in a single room. Eventually he left the Jesuits, but he kept working in the communities on his own, and at one point he had the idea to start a bicycle workshop. He managed to pull together a collection of 15 used bicycles and repaired them, lending them out to the neighborhood children.

It was around that time, in 2007, that the city decided to turn Avenida Lopez Mateos into a citywide viaduct, eliminating the red lights and making it virtually impossible for pedestrians to cross without risking their lives.

On Sept. 22 of that year, several local citizen groups decided to join the international Day Without Automobiles, promoting a day of alternative transportation. Various groups launched a protest along Lopez Mateos, and that’s when Soto began to see the connection between the environment and the social justice issues he’d always pursued.

That group went on to form Ciudad Para Todos. Despite the group’s origins at a protest, its strategy quickly evolved beyond placard-holding picket lines. Instead, they began organizing festivals to present sustainability issues in a fun, family-friendly context. In Guadalajara’s conservative, family-oriented environment, the movement quickly gained ground where others did not.

“We know that tapatíos (Guadalajarans) are a people who are basically apathetic,” he said. “They don’t like to involve themselves in political matters, in community issues. They’re more a conservative type of people, who like to be at home and at work, with their families and friends, and maintain themselves in a world that’s very private, very personal.”

It challenged the activists to think about a way to present issues that would be proactive, instead of reactive. “We had to think about what we really wanted, and not just what we didn’t want.”

Many of the original members are gone now, and others have come to take their place, but the group has retained its original mission: to promote a more people-centered form of city planning, in a way that’s fun, creative and enticing.

But when the trees started coming down in the camellon of Lopez Mateos, the strategy quickly changed. The camellones are broad, tree-lined medians between the traffic lanes, and in huge expanses of the city, they are the only public green space. Some have walkways and are the most convenient place to walk the dog or go jogging. So few open green spaces are left that people feel the loss of every tree. So Ciudad Para Todos decided to take a stand.

The encampment, with its lineup of entertainment and educational activities for the community, always attracted a crowd, and gave the activists an opening to talk about the need for public space, and for a cohesive city transportation plan, one that provided options for everyone, not just those who own cars.

Karla “La Sub” Preciado Robles

Karla, for her part, grew up in a conservative family focused on work, family and neighborhood, but she got a completely different view as a communications major in the liberal environment of ITESO. She started working with human rights groups and environmental groups on campus, but when it came time to graduate, she ended up working in the construction industry.

“It was then that I really started getting interested in how communities are formed,” she says. “How the city grows, how the air becomes contaminated, how areas that were once green and only had trees are now full of people – how a highway that was just constructed two months ago to ease the traffic is already full.”

The company took over a tract in Barranca de Huentitán, an ecologically sensitive canyon that was supposedly protected, “and they just started selling it like pieces of bread,” she said.

“So from those roots, I ended up leaving my job, because it was depressing me.”

She drifted for a few months, trying to find her place, then began working on the campaign of a man who was running for public office and part of his platform was developing a system of bike lanes. This put her in touch with Felipeno Reyes, a local architect who is the author of a popular biking blog and one of the founders of Ciudad Para Todos. He and Jesús recruited Karla to be their communications person.

“That’s how I started out, but it didn’t take long before I was doing everything – I started out as the nice face of Ciudad Para Todos and ended up being the rude face,” she laughed. Soon her background in communications took hold, and she became an eloquent spokesperson for the encampment and for a more sustainable city. She discovered a new, more assertive side that some called bossy – but she didn’t mind. She adopted the nickname “La Sub” after Subcommandante Marcos, as a joke, and it stuck.

“One of the big lessons of Ciudad Para Todos that we want to share with the people is that this is your city – and you can live well or you can live poorly, and it’s really up to you.”

“We want to show that another city is possible,” Soto added. “That even though we have all this traffic, even though we have a city that’s disorganized and polluted and badly planned, it’s still possible to fix it, because they’ve done so in other places.”

Upcoming: Forgive me, folks, but I’ve run out of space, time and steam. On the agenda: A thought-provoking interview with architect Felipeno Reyes, author of the biking blog Felipeno and one of the founders of Ciudad Para Todos.

Com:Plot conspires to take back a city

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: January 25, 2010Posted in: Com:Plot, Featured, Guadalajara, Mexico, Urban green space, WhyTags: , , , , , ,
Com:Plot conspires to take back a city

One of the most intriguing groups in Guadalajara is Com:Plot, whose name is a play on words; “com,” for “community,” and “plot” as in “scheme” – plus the word “complot” means “conspiracy” in Spanish.

Com:Plot’s mission is to encourage the city’s development in a more sustainable, more human-oriented direction. One of the most successful projects to date has been the City Walks, or Camina por Guadalajara. The city is divided up by participants and a route stretching across the city is mapped for each team. The 40-kilometer walk is done over two days, and along the way, participants take note of the changes along the way.

“The idea is that we go along discovering the city: how it’s growing, what’s happening, how it smells, how it feels at different times of the day,” said Patricia Martínez, an environmental journalist and occasional Esperanza Project contributor who has joined forces with Com:Plot. So we experience the city with all our senses. It’s more than a recognition of what occurs within our urban borders, it also proposes other ideas like the recuperation of public spaces.”

They pass through posh suburbs, working-class neighborhoods, abandoned byways and truly depressing locales. When each team returns, members put their heads together to identify a problem area where they will plan an “intervention,” an action that will help turn the tide in that troubled area, or at least bring public awareness to the problem.

Patricia shared with me some stories and photos from the second Caminata, held last fall. Right now they are gearing up for the third Caminata, to be held the second weekend in February in conjunction with the city’s 467th anniversary. If you’re interested in participating, check out their website here for more info. Meanwhile, here’s a little “before” and “after” from one of the group’s most creative “interventions.”

Miravalle Playground: Before

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Miravalle Playground: After

The destruction was too costly to repair or replace. What the group did do was clean up the area and use stark white stenciled letters to illustrate what should have been there: Proud mother, lovers, children, tree, paint, trash can, basketball game, green. The result:

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Another intervention, equally as poignant, took place at Las Pintas lake. This lake between Tlaquepaque and El Salto has been polluted since the late ’70s, and the children of young families who live nearby have no place to play.
The intervention: Com:Plot members created sillhouettes of children playing, fishing, spending time at the lake like they used to do.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

El Parque Nómada, or Nomad Park, was a profound statement on the need for a more inclusive transportation policy. The team created crosswalks and bikeways where there were none, literally rolling out the red carpet for pedestrians to demonstrate that they were really “kings of the road.”

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

In their own words:
“El Parque Nómada questions the monopoly of the use of public space by automobiles, liberating the space monopolized by cars to enable the use of other activities and more inclusive transportation alternatives. The citizen on foot can experience the possibility of a city at a more human scale in his or her own neighborhood, with pleasant spaces where they can circulate by bicycle, walk, or rest, meeting other walkers or having the chance to develop their own dynamic. With this exercise, we evoke the longing that is dispersed amid the auto exhaust and the noise of engines, so that this desire will grow and these neighbors will take up the idea themselves.”

One more intervention, the bus stop, was very practical. The team built a bus shelter from discarded wooden pallets. When a government inspector complained and threatened to remove it, they simply ignored him; commuters showed their approval with appreciative use, and the shelters remained.

Click Patricia_Martinez_interview to see the interview with Patricia.

The Organi-K whirlwind

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: January 13, 2010Posted in: Climate Change, Featured, Mexico City, Organi-K, Permaculture, Reforestation, Transportation, Urban green space, WhyTags: , , , , , , , ,
The Organi-K whirlwind

By Tracy L. Barnett
Yesterday I met with some of the most influential leaders of Mexico City’s environmental movement. Between all the cell phone calls and agenda-checking and detail management, Organi-K founder Arnold Ricalde de Jager shared a few insights in an interview I’ll post a little later. I also got a little window into the whirlwind that is Organi-K.

On the agenda: an alternative forum for the upcoming COP16 talks, to be held in December right here in Mexico City; Pepenafest, a festival to celebrate creative uses of garbage, scheduled for the spring; regrouping for a referendum among the residents at Lomas de Platero, the Ecobarrio project the group is helping to organize;a reforestation project; a ban on plastic bags; a new edition of their seminal book, EcoHabitat; green roofs and recycling, animal rights, the list goes on and on.

But right now, between meetings and phone calls, Arnold has been asked to give a few moments to a wandering journalist, and his attention focuses on the big picture. Ricalde, a founder of the Mexican Green Party, broke ranks with the party when it veered to the right, has served as a city counselor and an advisor to Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, an author and a teacher of sustainability principles, but above all a charismatic organizer, capable of inspiring and mobilizing the masses over the long haul. He flashes a megawatt smile worthy of a Brad Pitt and launches into an impassioned analysis, barely stopping to take a breath.

Mexico City’s growing emphasis on sustainable principles, promoted by Ebrard but carried out by environmental departments in every city agency and ratified by a cooperative legislative assembly, has been driven by necessity, Ricalde says – by the arrival of peak oil, by the dwindling water supplies, by an increase in prices. “It’s not that we woke up one day and it occurred to us to become environmentalists.”

“We had to do it, of necessity,” he said. “20 years ago, we were the most contaminated city on the planet, and we paid the price with our economy, with our health, with our citizenry, and now that we’re running out of oil in this country, we see that the costs of public transport are increasing, and we’re seeing the prices of consumer items increasing, too. We have to make the transition to sustainability; we have no other option.”

Organi-K works to push legislation, like a ban on plastic bags that went through last year, with companies given a year to comply. But more important, Ricalde says, is the change going on at the personal leve.

“After getting various environmental laws passed, trying to move the issue at the governmental level, we realize that this is important, but the most important is the change in each person, in his or her consumption habits; in how one transports oneself, in how they manage their waste, if they separate and recycle, if they make compost – everyone can make compost in their own home.

“Over the years, we’ve learned that ecological change begins within oneself, what we can do in our relationship with the environment. From how we transport ourselves – how I move throughout the day, how much trash I generate, am I consuming organic products or no, do I go by bicycle or by Metro, for example…”

There was much more, and I’ll come back to this with a translation of the interview, but now I have to prepare to meet with the grandfather of the Latin American environmental movement, “Subcoyote” Alberto Ruz, founder of the Rainbow Caravan for Peace.

First I want to mention briefly the others at the meeting, because I’ll be coming back to them, as well: Noelle Romero, a tireless organizer of the Green Circle project and many other initiatives, and Laura Kuri, founder of the bioregional movement in Mexico. I’ll be meeting Noelle on Friday to learn more about green roofs, and I’ll be visiting with Laura at her ecocenter in Cuernavaca later in the month.

Now, for a visit with the Subcoyote…. hasta mañana, amigos.

From left, Lupita (Arnold's assistant), Arnold Ricalde de Jager, Laura Kuri, Noelle Romero

Taking the encampment to a bigger field

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: December 4, 2009Posted in: Ciudad Para Todos, Featured, Guadalajara, Mexico, Transportation, Urban green space, WhyTags: , , , , , , ,
Taking the encampment to a bigger field

By Tracy L. Barnett
Lead photo by Gerardo Montes de Oca Valadez

A Guadalajara citizen encampment aimed at stopping a $76 million bridge construction project has packed up after a month of awareness-raising activities about sustainable urban development, from movies and plays to classes and workshops. But they’re not going away, they promise.

This video from Ciudad Para Todos is their colorful and defiant farewell to the encampment.

From Ciudad Para Todos on YouTube:

“After a month of cultural and informative activities, face to face with our fellow citizens and confronting the authorities, cold weather and annoying motorists, our encampment has moved (but it’s not going away).

“The motive: A wish to change for other (less contaminated) airs, to shift strategies, to continue the struggle on many other fronts.

“We’ll continue camping, we’ll continue showing movies, we’ll continue sowing and harvesting the future on every sidewalk that will receive us. For a city for all, for an inclusive city, for a sustainable city that guarantees a future for generations to come.”

Translations of the signs in the video:

“Let’s exchange the bridge for quality of life.”
“Let’s exchange the bridge for democracy.”
“City of humans, not of cars: Con-science!”
“Your bridge crosses me: through the Millenium Arches and under the Arcediano (Arcediano Dam: A $300 million project flagged by American Rivers as a threat to the region)
“Let’s exchange government for bicycles”
“Let’s exchange the bridge for common sense”
“SEDEUR (Secretary of Urban Development) = Secretary of Urban Despotism”
“Keep the coins, we want change”
“Let’s exchange the bridge for public space”
“The encampment has moved, it has not gone away…. to be continued!”

Read the whole story here (in Spanish)

We are looking for volunteer translators – please write to tracy@theesperanzaproject.org if you’re interested!

Greening the barrios in Mexico City

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: October 28, 2009Posted in: Mexico City, Organi-K, Permaculture, Urban green space, What, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , ,
<!--:en-->Greening the barrios in Mexico City<!--:-->


Saving your garbage is a tough sell in a place where gardening is seen as peasant labor. But that doesn’t stop Dulce María Vega from rolling up her sleeves, going door-to-door and recruiting her neighbors for a grand mission.

Here's how it's done
Dulce is the friendly face of sustainability in her neighborhood. With more than 30,000 residents, Lomas de Plateros is one of Mexico City’s largest apartment complexes. When she first teamed up with Noelle Romero, a member of Organi-K and who works for the city’s Comission for the Integral Development of Solid Waste as coordinator of the Green Circle project, to establish a pilot for an Ecobarrio at the massive complex, people thought she’d lost her senses.

“First we ask them to do something very simple: to separate their organic waste from the inorganic waste,” she explains. “Most of them don’t want to work with the compost because they consider it dirty work, playing with the soil – but that’s ok.”

It took awhile, but soon the neighbors grew accustomed to seeing her, and a few of them even began to join her out in the garden. “Now they’re beginning to understand it to the point that at least it doesn’t disgust them to take their organic waste and put it in a bucket so we can pass by for it. “

And as they began to see the tasty fruits of her labors – tomatoes, beans, broccoli, lettuce and strawberries, for example – more of them started coming around.

IMG_0477

“Now you can begin to see the contrast,” she said. “They come by and see the seeds have germinated and they’re amazed to see it’s a living thing because they’ve forgotten that food comes from nature.”

Ten families in her section of the complex are now participating, saving their garbage and their recyclables for pickup and even getting their hands dirty by working the compost and planting. Now a group of 15 families in another section of Lomas de Plateros and who collaborate with a subdivision of the city Ministry of Social Development known as “Participacion Ciudadana” (Citizen Participation) have expressed an interest in starting their own composting and gardening project, and Dulce will be the one to organize it.

A recycling dropoff center will be installed in the complex to collect paper, plastic, metal, glass and tetrapack – this latter being the boxes used to package milk and juice that are nearly impossible to recycle in the United States. At the same time, the groups will be experimenting with vertical crops and organoponics. Finally, the Comission for the Integral Development of Solid Waste and other local organizations is launching the Green Circle in a similar project in Section F, the largest of Lomas de Platero’s sections with more than 10,000 residents.

Early this year, the Green Circle initiated an urban agriculture program, granted by the city Ministry for Rural Development and Equity for the Communities (SEDEREC). Lomas de Plateros Section I-4, where Dulce lives obtained the grant and soon the place will have intensive urban crops,

But this project is about more than gardening and recycling, Noelle explains. It is a seed project for an Ecobarrio.

Dulce and Noelle

Dulce and Noelle

“We need a new vision, a new paradigm,” said Noelle. “With the Green Circle we’re giving a great message: Minimize your solid residues, minimize your consumption, take advantage of your organics and make them into compost, which in turn will give you the fertilizer for urban organic agriculture.

“So this is how we’re going to close the cycle; and thousands of people who live here will be able to see that you can grow your own food and be sustainable food-wise. This is going to change the vision.”

Dulce, an avid gardener and recycler, had been thinking for some time about how to get her neighbors involved in greening up the city. So when Noelle approached her about starting a pilot program for urban organic agriculture, she jumped at the chance. The composting and gardening project, called the Circulo Verde or Green Circle, is designed to teach people to close the cycle in their organic waste production by bringing it full circle, converting it to soil and then to food for neighborhood consumption and eventually to supplement volunteers’ income.

Organi-K, an environmental group founded by former Green Party leader Arnold Ricalde, is the hub for a variety of initiatives ranging from reforestation to recycling. Organi-K implements the concepts of permaculture, an environmental design system invented in Australia in the 1980s and making its way around the world.

Early this year, Organi-K received a grant from the city’s Commission for the Integral Development of Solid Waste to initiate an urban agriculture program, and Noelle became the coordinator. She began scouting for places to launch the program, and Lomas de Plateros seemed a logical place to start because of its size and the green spaces available.

The Ecobarrios, project, as Noelle explains it, revolves around the establishment of a community that holds a new vision of sustainability. Participants will be given tools to help them track their progress in waste reduction and consumption of resources. The long-term plan has three phases:

1. The Green Circle composting and gardening project. “Once they change their food consumption habits and grow their own food, a new vision can be born regarding responsible consumption and food sustainability,” Noelle says.

2. Sustainable water consumption. “How can we harvest water in times of an approaching cut in water services? What water saving systems can be implemented in people’s homes, and what water consumption habits can be encouraged in these families, such as using biodegradable products or using less water while washing dishes, taking showers, doing laundry, washing cars, etc.”

3. Sustainable energy consumption. Here the community implementation of energy saving systems, installs energy-efficient light bulbs, installs solar water heaters and if possible, solar panels.

“By the end of the third phase of an Ecobarrio, we would expect to have a community that holds a new vision and that follows a new life paradigm of love and collaboration with the planet,” Noelle says.

Looking ahead, another Ecobarrios project set to begin soon is in the Pemex housing complex, home to 7,000 people. The Tlalpan municipality is funding the project here, and the group is just waiting for a change in administration in the housing complex to begin another Circulo Verde project.

Organi-K has applied for funding from the Instituto de la Vivienda (the housing department) for an even more ambitious project that would implement ecotechnologies on a new housing project in Iztapalapa, on the western outskirts of the city.

Keep an eye on this blog for future developments, and contact Noelle Romero at noelleromero@yahoo.com.mx or Arnold Ricalde at despertares222@yahoo.com.mx if you want to pay a visit to Organi-K and lend a hand with one of its projects.

IMG_0472 See the slide show here.

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