Latin America Archive

Call of the Mountain 2012: The First IberoAmerican EcoVillage Gathering!

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 15, 2012Posted in: Featured, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Call of the Mountain 2012: The First IberoAmerican EcoVillage Gathering!

Editor’s note: I wanted to be there but couldn’t! But luckily, kindred spirits and fellow travelers Leti and Ryan of Comuntierra were able to attend the Llamado de la Montaña, Call of the Mountain – a living laboratory and visionary gathering of the souls in the beautiful Cauca Valley of Colombia. Their chronicle of the event follows another, more personal one – Crossing Continents, the story of how they and their solar- and propane-powered bus, Minhoca, made the giant leap from Central to South America.

By Leticia Rigatti and Ryan Luckey
Común Tierra

From the moment we found out about the Consejo de Visiones: Llamado de la Montaña 2012 (Vision Council: Call of the Mountain 2012), we knew we would be there. Even thousands of miles away from the host of the event, Atlantida EcoVillage in the south of Colombia, we heard the call, and marked it on our calendar, a source of inspiration waiting for us in Colombia. We did everything to get there.

Of course it wasn’t easy, as the nomadic life is full of surprises and challenges… we were in Mexico at the time, and had to cross half the continent, through Central America and the Panama Canal to South America. It was months of hard work and many adventures traveling through 6 countries, visiting projects, editing materials, raising money to support the project … with the passage of our pilgrimage to the south, the gathering became almost a mythical destination for us, always giving us direction and motivation to make it to South America.

Our Journey

When people asked us how long it took to arrive at the Llamado, the response of 15 months seemed like a joke, but it was the truest answer we could give! More than a year ago we designed our route and plans to arrive in time for the gathering. Minhoca, our beloved motorhome, has her own rhythm, and is a bit slower and more complex than a normal car, bus, etc…. We had multiple problems with both of our fuel systems (propane and gasoline), and we had to make the most difficult crossing of the trip, crossing the Panama Canal, and then cross the entire length of Colombia to get to Atlantida.

After a successful crossing into Colombia, we took a break on our way South, storing Minhoca with our dear friends Kawak and Sandalo in their beautiful ranch in Antioquia… The two then joined us on the way to the Llamado.

Sándalo, Ryan, Kawak, Minhoca and the dogs!

In early January the four of us set out towards the gathering, finally approaching the event that we had looked forward to for so long. Two more friends joined us in Cali, Katie and Blitz, who had flown down from California to travel with us for a few weeks and participate in the gathering. We headed out the 6 of us, still with severe mechanical difficulties: the engine was so weak that during the long uphill climbs on the way we couldn’t manage more than 5 miles per hour … a pedestrian walked faster than us! But finally, we reached Atlantida at midnight on January 4, exhausted and relieved.

Meeting with ENA

The first two days before the event, January 5-6, we participated in a conference of ENA, the EcoVillage Network of the Americas. ENA is a branch of GEN, the Global EcoVillage Network, and was founded in the 90’s to connect projects and create a network. ENA was created in a different era of the EcoVillage movement and, recently inactive, called the meeting to take a look at the future of the organization and how to accompany the growth and transformation of the EcoVillage movements in the Americas.

Out of this meeting came the proposal to create C.A.S.A., a new organizational platform to include EcoVillages, Eco-Caravans, EcoBarrios and other Urban Sustainability projects. CASA means Consejo de Asentamientos Sustentables de las Americas, or Council of Sustainable Settlements of the Americas, and is a new organization that will work alongside ENA, amplifying relations with parallel movements, creating partnerships and helping to empower all of the eco-community projects to succeed and gain recognition as real-life solutions for the global transition we are in. The organizational process actually lasted all week, and now is in the hands of working groups who are organizing activities for the Peace Village to take place during the RIO+20 conference in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012.

The Call of the Mountain 2012

The Call of the Mountain is a meeting of the EcoVillages in Colombia that has been happening for 5 years, and this year the proposal was to expand the annual gathering to be a Consejo de Visiones, a Vision Council, continuing a tradition that has been building for over 20 years throughout Latin America.

The event officially began January 7 and lasted through the 14, bringing together 478 people from 28 countries worldwide, a very diverse group: ecovillagers, environmentalists, indigenous groups, local communities, holistic therapists, spiritual seekers, etc… Diverse but united in seeking a just and sustainable world for all. Following the organizational structure of the Vision Council, there were 10 different Councils covering topics and cultural themes that together form the worldview and practices to build a better world. In this edition, the Councils were: Ecology, Health and Healing, Arts and Culture, Education, Youth, New Time (Council of the Noosphere), Spirituality and Traditions, Solidarity Economy, Networks and Social Movements, and the Council of Latin American Ecovillages.

A Typical Day at the Gathering

Each day began with a choice of several Energetic Awakening activities: meditation, yoga, breathing, BioDanza, and so on. Those who wanted to sleep in joined the rest for breakfast between 8-9, and then everyone went to the Plenary, where important announcements were made, and then certain leaders and elders were invited to give conferences. From the plenary, we split up into the 10 councils, each organizing their own activities and workshops. After lunch there was some free time for personal activities and a barter market, and then from 3 to 6 more workshops and activities within the Councils.

By late afternoon, we gathered in the great Maloka to practice Universal Dances of Peace, circular dances that incorporate sacred music from around the world. It was always a special moment to come together as a community and feel the power of our unity, singing and circling together, praying for peace in the world.

After dinner was la Noche Magica, (Magic Night) with artistic shows, open mic, and concerts in the Maloka.
Throughout the days we all shared everyday work of the Village, primarily by helping in the kitchen, cleaning and serving meals to the community. The teams were organized according to the color of a badge that each participant received upon entry to the gathering. A fundamental dynamic of these gatherings is that all participants work for the village and are a part of making it all happen.


Cooking in gigantic pots over the kitchen fire

The Ibero-American EcoVillage Gathering

The Llamado was also simultaneously the Ibero-American EcoVillage Gathering, which meant the EcoVillage Council was really active with workshops and presentations from EcoVillages throughout the Americas and Europe, and of course a lot of cross-pollination and alliance-building.


Our new friend Diana Leafe Christian, EcoVillage journalist and researcher

Also, much of the vision and structure of C.A.S.A. was further discussed and developed during brainstorms and meetings within the EcoVillage Council, solidifying the validity and importance of this new organizational proposal.

Común Tierra Activities

During the gathering, we had the opportunity to share some of the learning from our 20 month long (and counting) journey through Mexico and Central America, sharing ideas and stories collected from the projects we have visited so far.


Leti and “Coyote” Alberto Ruz Buenfil, from the Consejo de Visiones/Rainbow Peace Caravan

As part of the Ecology Council, we hosted a workshop on the construction of bike-machines, showing our 2 videos on the topic, and demonstrating Darlene and Burbuja, blending up a banana smoothie and even washing some clothes.

Pedal power!

At night we organized the Cinema Consejo, exhibiting some Común Tierra short films, and opening a space for other people and projects present at the gathering to exhibit their own work.

And of course, SEED EXCHANGE!

RENACE

Colombia has a national EcoVillage Network, called RENACE, which has been organizing the annual Llamados and coordinates other functions of the national EcoVillage movement. Among other activities, RENACE organizes an alternative currency that works throughout Colombia’s EcoVillages, called La Montaña, The Mountain, which was used during the event’s barter market. During the final day of the meeting RENACE met to discuss the network, and decide how to organize next years meeting, the Call of the Mountain 2013.

This Consejo de Visiones was very well organized and planned. With nearly 500 people, the event had tons of activities, always punctual, well communicated and well structured. The timing of meals, the plenary sessions, the activities were always on time, something not always easy in our Latino culture. The beautiful Maloka built for the event held space for the entire gathering with an energy of integration and spirituality. We know that organizing an event like this is a great challenge and a donation of time and energy, requiring a lot of work to manifest.

That’s why we are so grateful to the team of organizers of RENACE and especially of the Atlantida EcoVillage who invested so much energy and infrastructure for the event, and the Atlantida EcoVillagers who offered their love and dedication to make this gathering possible. Through these examples, these labors of love, we are inspired to see it is possible to build together as a community, that we do have all the conditions to be the change we want in the world, and most importantly, we can do it with love and high-quality standards. Thank you familia!

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For more photos, click on our Facebook page here.

Message from the gods: Unite to defend the Birthplace of the Sun

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 8, 2012Posted in: Featured, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Message from the gods: Unite to defend the Birthplace of the Sun

Story and photos by Tracy L. Barnett

REAL DE CATORCE, Mexico – They came by the hundreds from the Western Sierra Madre, native Wixarika or Huichol people on a spiritual quest, seeking to consult with the spirits of their ancestors and of the land where their world began. They came in their ceremonial dress, colorfully embroidered with their sacred symbols of the deer, the eagle and the peyote. They came with offerings they had fashioned from beads and gourds and beeswax, offerings they had made precious with their love and their prayers, as their forebears had done for centuries.

This year, however, would be vastly different from years past. This year, the sacred lands of Wirikuta lay under the shadow of an uncertain future. Vast swaths of the protected, UNESCO-recognized reserve had been concessioned to Canadian mining companies, and hundreds of hectares had been bulldozed by agroindustrial companies. This year they were responding to a call that ran through all their communities, spread out through the Sierra Madre over four states: The candles of life were dying, and they would come together there to pray for their renewal.

What was different about this ceremony – besides the context of the proposed mines – was that they would converge at the Cerro Quemado, the mountain said to be the birthplace of the sun, and perform the ceremony together, instead of coming in small groups throughout the year. Normally, each of their ceremonial centers would send its own mara’akame or shaman and delegates separately, performing a series of intimate rituals in sacred sites all along the way, each group in its own traditional way. The other difference is that we would – perhaps – be allowed to attend.

The Huichols are one of the most vital cultural groups remaining in the Americas, in part because their intricate and carefully guarded rituals, designed centuries ago in order to maintain a living and reciprocal relationship with nature, are only rarely opened to outsiders – or even to Huichols from other communities.

That is how it came to be that the night of Feb. 6, the Cerro Quemado came alive with the songs of more than 800 Wixarika mara’akate or shamans and their followers, connecting with the essences of life found here and praying to their deities in an unprecedented peritaje espiritual or spiritual consultation for guidance. And that is why, for the first time, dozens of teiwaris or non-Huichol dignitaries, activists and members of the media were sent special invitations to attend the event.

The idea was that we would wait at the foot of the mountain and be accompanied by a Huichol shaman in a special ceremony throughout the night as the elders on the peak communicated with their ancestors, their deities and the “essences of life” and awaited a response to their question: What should we do about the threats to Wirikuta?

It might happen that we would be invited up to the peak during the night to join the ceremony. Or it might happen that we would wait until the sunrise, when the mara’akate (mara’akames) would come down to share with us the message they had received.

It was nearly sundown when I started up the mountain on horseback, along with Wirikuta Defense Front leader Carlos Chavez and his family. All along the way we passed small groups of Huichol pilgrims, making the two-mile hike up into the mountains on foot, laden with food and other supplies for the night ahead. We arrived at the casita, a round stone house at the base of the Cerro Quemado, just as the sun was going down. A phalanx of videographers lined the top of the first peak, shooting the pilgrims and visitors as they made their way up, and people were building fires, setting up tents and settling in for the night.

I waited anxiously with other journalists and invited guests, shivering in the below-freezing temperatures, to see whether we would actually be allowed to attend the ceremony. The other concern was whether the predicted rain would come during the night, something we teiwaris weren’t sure we could endure.

For the moment, we watched as the fog arose over the desert below, creating a sea of white that extended for miles across the valley, and made conversation. The word came down to us that the elders were facing a tremendous task in coordinating their ceremony with each other and that they would need space and time to connect with their deities. We were being asked to stay below.

Disappointment ran through the crowd like a current, but the night was long, and many surprises awaited.

At about 10 pm the message came down that the media and invited guests would be allowed to come up for a limited time, but that we were to stay silent and not take any photographs. We lined up in single file and made our way up the mountain one-by-one in silence.

I emerged at the top to see the ridgetop sparkling with campfires all along its spine. A brilliant full moon shone over the sea of clouds below. At the center, in the concentric circle of stones called Tatewari-ta, the place of Grandfather Fire, about a dozen mara’akate milled about. Most wore their broad-brimmed hats covered in eagle feathers, antenna that capture and amplify the messages sent from their deities. Others were wrapped in blankets to shield them from the bitter cold. All wore their thin cotton ceremonial clothing, slim protection from the rising winds. Many had been walking in pilgrimage for days, going without sleep and very little food, and had been caught in an icy downpour in the late afternoon – a much-needed rainstorm in this drought-afflicted desert that many here believe that their ceremonies had invoked.

I huddled with anthropologists Paul Liffman and Johannes Neurath, shivering in our multiple layers of sweaters, coats, gloves and socks, and marveling at the energy and the nonchalance of the lightly clad Huichols. Soon the mara’akate assembled and the plaintive wail of the Wixarika fiddles began to ring out in the darkness. The chants of the mara’akate rose on the wind; the ceremony had begun.

All throughout the long night these priests of ecology, as Liffman called them, sang their entreaties to the spirits that inhabit this place, an improvisation of melodies from different villages and different eras in time. They conducted their ancestral dialog with Grandfather Fire, an intermediary between the mara’akate and their deities. The sacramental peyote they had hunted in the desert the day before was working its magic. The hours passed in a blur and I huddled exhausted near a fire on the ridge, dozing for a few moments before I felt a shift in the wind. I sensed something was happening and returned to the fire to find a change in the energy.

The mara’akate had risen to their feet and began to dance, a rhythmic and upbeat shuffle of the feet, a forward-and-back movement that warmed the body and the soul. Soon the whole crowd was moving in unison, Huichols at the center, visitors on the edge. The cold began to dissipate and the joyful rhythm beat back the fatigue.

Surprised at the upbeat mood given the gravity of the situation, I commented on the apparent levity to Johannes Neurath. “Of course,” responded Neurath, who has observed numerous such ceremonies over the years. “If you want the gods to come to your ceremony, you have to make it interesting. They’re not going to come to a boring ceremony.”

At the appointed time, a calf that had been waiting on the sidelines was brought to the center and the mara’akate prayed over him, asking him to surrender his spirit for the wellbeing of humankind. The sacrifice was quick and as gentle as a sacrifice can be. The poor beast bleated softly once, twice, and kicked its small legs a couple of times before giving up the ghost. Soon its blood was being offered along with heartfelt prayers to the five directions.

More dancing, more singing. A sense of timelessness enveloped us. I went up the ridge to the fire being tended by a group of visitors from the Native American Church and a Mexican counterpart called the Nierika Center. Sandor Iron Rope, vice president of the Native American Church and a Lakota from South Dakota who said he had come to pray with his Wixarika brothers, gave me a warm smile for such a cold night. “Try not to shiver,” he advised. “It only makes it worse. Just try to breathe it in.” I followed his advice, and it seemed to help.

Sandor looked out over the sea of clouds and the yucca trees that stood out like surreal feathered sentinels on the horizon.

“They look like the Wixarika people with their feathered hats,” he observed. “They are guardians of this place.” I suddenly realized it was true; I had had the sensation of being surrounded by gentle spirits, and now I understood the reason why.

“I wonder how the deities are feeling about all of this,” I mused, looking around at the varied collection of humanity strewn over the mountaintop – celebrities, anthropologists, journalists, spiritual seekers, documentarians, and a wide range of activists, observing the intensely private ritual of a reclusive people communicating with their gods.

“Oh, I think they’re very happy,” said Armando Loizaga, founder of the Nierika Center, a center for the study of sacred plants near Mexico City who has worked with the Huichols and other indigenous groups for many years.

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“Well, for one thing, there was the gentleness of the sacrifice – that was a good sign. For another, we’ve been blessed with a clear night full of stars. And for another, here we all are. We were allowed to be here, and that’s a tremendous gift.”

By now the ridge was strewn with the bodies of the unconscious, Wixarika and teiwari alike, who had succumbed to the temptation of sleep. But hundreds continued to dance to the mesmerizing chants of the mara’akate, and the moon continued its slow descent.



Finally the sun began to brighten the eastern sky, and we were given permission to photograph a few moments of the ceremony. A frenzy of photographers converged on the ring of stones and clicked madly until an irate mara’akame shooed us away and ordered the cameras to cease. Eventually a procession began to make its way up the south ridge to the xiriki, a small house-like shrine on the summit, where they centered their prayers once again and made their offerings.



It was mid-morning before the mara’akate and traditional leaders of the communities met in the center to discuss, in their native Wixarika tongue, the meaning of the message they had been given. And it was nearly noon before they assembled there on the circle of Tateiwari-Ta to share their vision with the world.

“They are sad, and they ask, with tears, weeping and pain, that it not be done, that they not tear out the heart, that they not take out the blood of this sacred mountain,” said Mara’akame Eusebio de la Cruz of Santa Catarina, Jalisco, who delivered the message from the deities in Wixarika.

Perhaps more importantly, he said, the gods had entreated them at every ceremony along the way on their pilgrimage, and the same message kept coming back to them. “They asked that all the Wixarika people be united to defend this place, And they asked that all humban beings, even the person who invades or destroys this sacred place, be united with us.”

It was a strong message for a people that has been bitterly divided for more than two decades, with territorial and other disputes breeding rancor between the communities. It was also an indication, along with the decision to permit us to join them on the night of this ritual, of a new openness on the part of the Wixarika people to the outside world.

The ceremony was a trial by fire for the Wixarika leaders as well as for the Wirikuta Defense Front, the network of groups that are supporting them, said Eduardo Guzman, a judge in the desert community of Margaritas and a leader in the movement.

“Finally the word came with the coming of the dawn: They had passed the test and ended with a great unity, a great coinciding of ideas,” he said. “It gives us hope that together we can form a much stronger force to impede the destructive and damaging projects that threaten Wirikuta. I leave with a great happiness and a great sense of hope that it’s something that can be done.”

Paul Liffman stopped by to share his impressions on his way out of town. For him, the event has a broader significance, not just for the people of rural Mexico, but for the world.

“The Huichols are positioned as priests of the rain who benefit the entire world – and that’s why the mine represents such a great threat, because they are trying to be a type of ecological priesthood and everything is at stake. The fact is that we live in an epoch of planetary desiccation due to climate change, and the respect for water that is completely implicit in this ritualization of the acquisition of water of a mountain teaches us to have a relationship of respect and honor of the natural elements, which they treat as divinities. The springs are the earthly corporalization of the ancestors.

Everyone here, including those who are in favor of the mines, believes that the Huicholes bring the rain. And now it hasn’t rained in 14 months and suddenly it rains with the arrival of an unprecedented bunch of leaders of the ceremonial centers. They’ve always made the argument they are an essential link for the ecological reproduction not only of the region, but for the world.”

The sun shone on his departure and that of the hundreds of pilgrims and their guests. As I write this piece, the night has fallen on Real de Catorce and the town is silent once again – except for the gentle patter of a steady rain.

For more information about the defense of Wirikuta, see www.wirikutadefensefront.org. For the full Wixarika statement released to the public at the time of the ceremony, click here.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Facing fears, building alliances in Vancouver

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 21, 2011Posted in: Featured, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , ,
Facing fears, building alliances in Vancouver


Jesus Lara, left, and Cilau Valadez wait to enter the First Majestic Silver Corp. stockholders meeting.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Dressed in their colorful traditional clothing and bearing a carved talking stick as a sign of their alliance with the tribes of the North, two Wixarika delegates prepared enter the annual stockholders’ meeting of First Majestic Silver Corp., the company that has laid a claim for a silver mine in their sacred territory, Wirikuta. A team of stony-faced police officers barred their entry even after they handed over documents explaining that they had been named proxies, giving them authority to enter the meeting, where they hoped to deliver a message to the investors.

Jesus Lara Chivarra and Cilau Valadez had traveled thousands of miles from the remote mountains of Jalisco and Nayarit, Mexico, along with Rodolfo Cosio and Juventino Carrillo to send a message to the mining company and to the world: The Wixarika People will not negotiate for the heart of their mother.

The meeting fell at the end of Mining Justice Week, a series of events designed to draw attention to the increasing presence of Canadian mining companies in Latin America and the countless cases of contamination, corruption, illness and violence that tend to follow them. The delegation was optimistic because the day before, at the annual meeting of Goldcorp, a group of ten mining opponents had been allowed to enter and seven of them to speak, despite only having three proxies. At First Majestic, it was another story. The two had hoped to enter with Jennifer Moore of Mining Watch Canada and Ana Paula Hernandez of the Global Fund for Human Rights, but they were told to wait as dozens of others streamed past.

For half an hour they stood facing the great doors of gold and glass of the Terminal Building as a noisy protest arrived to support them. More than a hundred people, including local religious and tribal leaders and elders, marched from Waterfront Station to the Terminal Building, waving placards and chanting. Finally Lara was granted entry but was told none of the others could enter. After much insistence he was allowed to enter with Valadez as a witness to the company-provided interpreter, but neither of them were allowed to speak. At the end of the meeting, Lara was allowed to deliver a letter the Wixarika Regional Council in Defense of Wirikuta had recently given to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, but he was not allowed to speak.

The delegates were disheartened, but still considered the mission a success. The First Majestic meeting came at the end of a week with mining activists from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and with tribal leaders from Kawkawka, Bear Clan and Coast Salish peoples, an opportunity to learn, build alliances and strategize.

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“We have realized that we are not alone. The past week a lot of activity has been dedicated all over the world at different points against the mining industry,” said Lara. “We have found here the support of the tribes of the U.S. and Canada and this gives us the confidence that we are many. We will see how the mining company reacts but we will not be silent. On the contrary, we will keep intensifying whta we have already defined: No to the mine, no more genocide, no more ecocide in Wirikuta.”

Valadez was positive, too, about the meeting’s outcome.

“They tried to intimidate us, but we are present here to demonstrate that we can come to their land and they won’t intimidate us even though they confront us with police and other obstacles. We already know what they are trying to do, and we are not going to negotiate.”

The mining company has presented a proposal to donate the Cerro Quemado, the mountain at the heart of Wirikuta, to the Wixarika people as a part of its plan to mine the area, but the delegates say the proposal misses the point of Wirikuta.

“How would you like it if they left your body alone but drilled out your heart? Valadez asked. “This is practically what they want to do with our land, and they don’t explain that in their report.”

Juventino Carrillo, a member of the Wixarika Regional Council in Defense of Wirikuta, pointed to the Canadian mining industry’s record in other countries.

They dress the project up to look so beneficial, but don’t believe the manipulations that Canadian companies have carried out in other countries,” said Carrillo. “Who’s going to believe them, with all the dirt they’ve thrown throughout Latin America?”

Cosio, who serves as a jicarero, one of those chosen by his community to care for the ceremonial center and make pilgrimages to the sacred sites, was indignant that the mining company proposes to give only the surface rights of the Cerro Quemado when Wirikuta goes much beyond the Cerro and in fact beyond the region delineated as a protected nature reserve. Wirikuta also includes all its subsoil, he said – “That’s where the essence of Wirikuta lies.”

He added, “I would say that’s deceptive. How can they give us something that has always belonged to us since time immemorial?”

Here are some images from the delegation’s week in Vancouver.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Urgent letter from the Wixarika People to the President of Mexico and to all the Peoples and Governments of the World

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 13, 2011Posted in: Featured, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , ,
Urgent letter from the Wixarika People to the President of Mexico and to all the Peoples and Governments of the World

(photos courtesy of omananda.com)

To the President of the United States of Mexico Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
To the People and Governments of the World

PRESENT

We come personally from the Western Sierra Madre to deliver this urgent letter to demand that you keep your word that you publicly announced when you committed to respect and protect our sacred places in the pact of Hauxa Manaká in 2008 and to do so according to the fundamental laws of our country and the agreements, decrees, pacts and national and international conventions that the Mexican State has subscribed to guarantee the respect of our living and millennial culture.

We are a commission of agrarian and traditional authorities from the Wixárika People, who together form the Regional Wixarika Council in Defense of Wirikuta, and we bring the word that unites the sentiment of the councils of elders, of the wise chanters, of the pilgrimage groups entrusted with sustaining the arduous work of more than 500 community ceremonial centers and family ranches; we bring the word that together is one united decisive expression of the feelings of the families of all the communities in Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and Zacatecas where the Wixaritari live and we want you to respond respecting our rights according to your commitment.

The Federal Government of our country granted 22 concessions that span more than 6,000 hectares in the Sierra of Catorce to the mining company First Majestic Silver Corp. and Real de Bonanza, S.A. de C.V. But the Sierra of Catorce and the whole of Wirikuta, Mr. President, is one of the altars of major importance where our pilgrims balance fertility and the equilibrium of the world for all its creatures and we have evidence that the mining operation would affect in a deep way the ecology, contaminating the zone and drying out our sacred springs.

In these times of extreme violence in our country, which are destroying our social fabric, with this megaproject you are kidnapping and want to assassinate our mother, The Earth, which you have threatened, and seek the forced disappearance of an entire people, the Wixarika People.

For this reason we demand that you immediately cancel these concessions and any others that have as their goal the extraction of minerals or the destruction of Wirikuta in any other way because if the object of all of this tragedy is money, with conviction we inform you that it will be infinitely cheaper to cancel these concessions than to lament the ecological, spiritual and social tragedy that digging and extracting the entrails of Wirikuta could provoke.

Wirikuta is the heart of our essence. If it ends, we die as a people. We have been making pilgrimages to Wirikuta for thousands of years and we know the Ancestors who live in each hill, each stony glade, each rocky crag, and each flower by their names and we have for that reason, according to international standards, the right of traditional, ancestral possession. We respect nevertheless, the communities and farmers who live in the area and we pray also that they may sow and reap their food, so that they may live well, care for and be protected by this sacred land whose vocation is not mining but the enlightenment and renovation of the heart of the world.

We see with much concern that despite the aforementioned Pact of Hauxa Manaká and despite the public opposition of our people to the mining operation in Wirikuta, you have maintained an inexplicable silence in the face of our demand, while our territorial rights have been violated, similarly our previous, free and informed consent, in addition carrying out this mining project will violate the environmental laws of our country, because the area is a Natural Protected Area by governmental decree with its management plan.
The fundamentals of our claim are in the first terms of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, in its articles 2, 6, 7, 14 and 15; likewise, in Article 2 section b subsection IX, article 27 section VII, second paragraph of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico and its related laws.
It worries us even more, that some members of the federal government and the mining company itself are trying to convince us to accept the mine in exchange for granting us one of the sacred places from part of the expanse of Wirikuta, the Cerro Quemado o Raunaxi.

We have already explained that the Sierra of Catorce is a whole unit, where the spiritual energy and power of our ancestors, who allow us to live our lives now and in the future, resides between the lowlands and the highest peaks of the mountains and throughout its interior, and it coincides best with the area of more than 144,000 hectares of the natural protected region. We will not accept for any reason that this type of activity be developed in the area as it is too great an affront for our people, for Mexico and for all of humanity, besides the obvious illegalities that these concessions represent.

Mr. President, we are the original people of this country, we are the ancient root and we reiterate, don’t destroy our Wixárika culture, don’t destroy yourselves for the ignorance of not knowing what these valleys of Wirikuta contain, and the mountains which illuminate the world.

For this reason our commission comes all the way here to deliver this written statement to you. We bring you our urgent word in a timely fashion. We are chanting pilgrims, cultivators; we are the legitimate authorities of our people of corn, deer and sun. We are Mexicans and we dress ourselves with flowers because we chant of peace.

Cancel the mine in Wirikuta, raise to the federal level the environmental and cultural protection and all of our descendents will thank you, otherwise the present generations will walk a difficult but firm path in the conviction of detaining this threat, we await your formal answer in your capacity of the Chief Federal Executive and the one principally responsible for the economic, environmental and social policy of our country.

Pampariyutsi.

Attentively,

Regional Wixarika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta
Mexico, D.F., May 9, 2011

Huicholes march for peace

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 11, 2011Posted in: Featured, WhyTags: , , , , ,
Huicholes march for peace

Sunday’s National March in Mexico City and throughout the country drew headlines around the world. A delegation of Wixarika authorities who had traveled from their communities in the faraway Western Sierra Madre were convened in Mexico City for a meeting, and they decided to join the protest in solidarity for the 35,000 victims of the drug war that began 4 1/2 years ago when President Felipe Calderon brought out the military to fight the narcotraffickers.

Tears of sadness and of rage were visible in the crowd as speaker after speaker who had lossed loved ones to the violence shared stories of their loss and horror and demanded a shift in government policy. Tens of thousands stood together in a long moment of silence, followed by the ringing of bells in the colonial cathedral.

The message of the Wixarika marchers: Toxic mining is violence, too. Stop the mine in Wirikuta.

Here are the words they delivered in a letter to President Felipe Calderon the next day:

“In these times of extreme violence in our country, which are destroying our social fabric, with this megaproject they are kidnapping and want to assassinate our mother, The Earth to which they have incarcerated, and they seek the forced disappearance of an entire people, the Wixarika People.”

Some images from the march:


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Tourists and Turtles

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 11, 2011Posted in: Featured, WhyTags: , , , , , , ,
Tourists and Turtles

Story and photos by Melissa Gaskill

This blog frequently covers travel that makes a difference – trips that incorporate volunteering, are culturally sensitive, support local businesses, and respect the human and natural environment – or all of the above. I wrote a guest post about such a trip about a year ago, Turtle Rescue on the Eco Side of Baja. More and more places, particularly in developing countries, see this kind of tourism as a sustainable way to protect sea turtles. At the 31st Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation, held in San Diego April 12-16, several presentations reported on programs that have seen success, so I thought I’d share them here.

SEE Turtles, a US based non-profit, promotes travel that supports conservation, organizing its own trips to Baja California, Costa Rica and Trinidad.

“We know tourism can be bad for people and animals, especially when done in an unplanned and uncontrolled way,” director Brad Nahill told symposium attendees. “Or it can have positive impacts, including direct financing of conservation and research, reduced dependency on direct use of resources (such as eating sea turtle eggs), increased monitoring, and an increased local constituency. We use local businesses, share commissions, and do additional fundraising, education, volunteer recruiting, and advocacy.”

The organization uses detailed criteria for selecting trip sites, follows established guidelines for trip activities, and monitors trips to ensure they don’t have a negative effect. Locals are always involved either as guides, or as the source for provisions and souvenirs. Fees and donations go back into the community.

So far, Nahill reported, SEE Turtles has generated more than $230,000 for conservation and communities. At least 250 people have visited turtle sites, 1,000 volunteer shifts have been filled, and more than 15 million people have been reached with education and conservation messages. All of this, he pointed out, despite starting the program in a terrible economy. The organization helps programs tap into adventure travelers, volunteer tourists, domestic travelers, and day trippers. In addition to offering organized trips, it also will match up travelers with reputable sea turtle programs near almost any destination in the world.

Lindsey West reported on the efforts of Sea Sense, a small marine conservation organization protecting a small nesting population of green and hawksbills on Tanzania’s Mafia Island. This island contains two-thirds of all sea turtle nests in the country. The organization monitors six nesting sites, four within a marine park, conducting daily patrols and relocating nests at risk of tide inundation.

So far, it has trained 48 locals elected by their villages as conservation officers. Its nest incentive program pays a small stipend to anyone reporting the location of a nest to these conservation officers, and another small incentive when a nest successfully hatches. This program has reduced poaching from more than 80 percent to less than two. Half of the revenues generated by eco-tourism are directed into a village environmental fund, so the community sees direct benefit, West said.

That revenue also covers the cost of monthly allowances for monitors, field equipment, and nest incentives. Sea Sense is exploring the potential to expand sea turtle tourism by incorporating turtle experience into village tours, nature walks, and beach picnics. “We need long-term sustainability and decreased dependence on donations,” West said. Challenges the effort faces include very remote nesting beaches, plastic debris on beaches, the tour guides’ lack of confidence and skill, visitor expectations, cultural considerations, and communications. seasense.org

Alarmed by the slaughter of turtles in northern Trinidad in the 1970s and 80s, the local communities of Grande Riviere, Matura Beach and Fishing Pond joined forces with Nature Seekers, assisted by the government’s Forestry Division, to protect nesting leatherbacks, hawksbill and green sea turtles. Some 5,000 turtles nest on a beach roughly a mile long here. The program offers guided educational turtle tours nightly March through August – and has carefully monitored and tested the potential effect of lights, photography, touching and the size of groups on the turtles. Its activities also include beach cleaning, sand turtle contests, and tagging and data collection, which are highly dependent on volunteers, often from Earthwatch. SEE Turtles brings groups here as well.

Locals in these communities have also been trained to create jewelry and other items from glass bottles that wash up on the beaches. This program raises funds for locals and sea turtle conservation and leaves the beach cleaner for turtles as well. Turtles tagged in Trinidad have been observed as far east as the Mediterranean and as far north as Nova Scotia, so Nature Seekers’ effects reach far beyond the Caribbean island. natureseekers.org

Consider including one of these destinations and programs, or others like them, in your future travels. You’ll see a beautiful place, and do a beautiful thing – help save the sea turtles.

For more of Melissa Gaskill’s stories, visit her blog.

“Wirikuta is the matrix of life”: Wixarika Regional Council

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: April 14, 2011Posted in: Featured, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , ,
“Wirikuta is the matrix of life”: Wixarika Regional Council

(Photos by Gerardo Ruiz Smith)
Editor’s note: The declaration of the Wixarika Regional Council in the Defense of Wirikuta is a powerful commentary on the increasing frequency of natural disasters and the lack of understanding in our contemporary cultures. May we heed their call before it’s too late.

Declaration of the Wixárika Regional Council for the Defense of Wirikuta

To the Wirikuta Defense Front of Tamatsima Waha’a
To the Civil Society in General
To the Three Powers of the Mexican State

Will they understand in time? Will the governments and corporations that control the material order of the world be capable of understanding in time that the disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis, which they only manage to define as natural phenomenon, are the furious words of those our people know as kaka+yarixi, deities or fundamental forces of nature that feel, think and have the word that permits us to live?

For us, these disasters have an urgent message, calling on humanity to try another way of relating with nature. We don’t know if government officials will be capable of listening and attending to the call in time, because they don’t show any signs of being good at dialog.

After our sacred site of Wirikuta was ordered by governmental decree and a management plan that protects it, the government granted concessions to a Canadian mining company that threatens the Sierra of Catorce and the desert lowlands that comprise this sacred zone, in the municipalities of Charcas, Villa de la Paz, Villa de Ramos, Zacatón, Catorce, Matehuala and Villa de Guadalupe.

We have been for more than seven months demanding that the government of our country cancel the concessions of the mining company First Majestic or Real Bonanza in the Sierra of Catorce and we have heard no response from any of the municipal, state or federal institutions. So what good, then, are the agreements, the decrees, the management plans and the word of Felipe Calderón dressed as a Wixárika promising the protection of our sacred places at the hour of signing the pact of Hauxamanaka just two years ago?

We have been demanding for more than seven months and once again, we make our demand:

That the federal government cancel the 22 mining concessions to the Canadian company First Majestic Silver Corp. and its Mexican “prestanombres” (one who loans his name in order to conduct business), Real Bonanza S.A. de C.V. Mining, in this sacred place not only destroys a fundamental pillar of the Wixárika culture, it is an attack that brings as a consequence many natural disasters and death.

The mining company asks us to let them extract minerals from the sierra in exchange for giving us the Cerro Quemado. We explained to them that the Sierra of Catorce is a sacred whole and therefore it is impossible to mine the area and to respect the Quemado. From the South to the North, the sierra is a collection of kaka+yarixi or fundamental ancestors and the springs that are essential for the rain and the fertility of our country. Wirikuta free of mining and of projects that destroy her natural fragility is what we are demanding that the government enforce.

We are not alone in this struggle. Every day more support is growing for the defense of Wirikuta. The Tamatsima Waha’a front, of which we are the point of the arrow, is constituted of numerous Mexican civil organizations and from other places in the world who are working intensely to offer solutions and build alliances with other peoples and other movements that also defend the roots of life.

We appreciate the support of the indigenous people of the United States and Canada, organized in the Native American Church and of course our brothers of the National Indigenous Congress.

We have organized conferences, debates, festivals to spread the word of our right to be respected and we plan still more musical festivals and gatherings and creative activities so that this threat of extermination be detained.

This is the path of our struggle. In what other way does the government want us to remind it of its historic and moral constitutional obligation to respect our fundamental patrimony, the patrimony of all Mexicans and all of humanity?

Listen, ladies and gentlemen of the government and who dominate the corporations: Wirikuta is the matrix of life. Matrix of the rain and of fertility. A place to remember our origin and the natural future of humanity. There is no room there for either mines nor industrial tomato growers. There is room for other projects so that the ejidal campesino families who live in Wirikuta, and those of us in the Wirikuta Defense Front have proposals for that.

We salute with respect all of those who have put forward their dignity in the face of so many years of dispossession and discrimination that today Wirikuta has one of the zones with the highest emigration rates in the country. We salute with the same respect the campesinos of Wirikuta who await this criminal exploitation with hopes of an improvement in their living conditions and who await too with the pain of seeing their children go to the United States, Monterrey and other places to never return, and who await the beginning of the mining exploitation with the pain of seeing that the uncontrolled ambition for money wants to do away with the sacred rain that keeps us alive, to throw them off their lands or make them accept with humility the mining alternative, who await First Majestic with the pain of living with the contamination of heavy metals left behind by the mining activities of the past.

To you, our brothers, our proposal is to change from below, from the local organization of so much injustice that you are now living, reconstructing your social fabric. We have made your situation our own and we are working so that between us we may demonstrate that we are capable of constructing dignified alternatives.

We appreciate the initiatives that are being worked on in an organized manner for the realization of cultural festivals, especially the group of artists and intellectuals who have joined this struggle. We exhort them to continue with this historic force and to trust in our organizational structure headed by our assemblies and traditional authorities, projected in the path of the Wirikuta Defense Front of Tamatsima Waha’a.

We send our recognition and congratulations to the companions with whom, together, we are the Wirikuta Defense Front of Tamatsima Waha’a for the nomination of an international award in the category of Human Rights, which is our demonstration that civil society can organize using the tools of communication that we count on, for which we call on the civil society to support this nomination by voting for our website and the other campaigns that have been launched by our movement.

We wish to reiterate the need to maintain an interlocution and coordination of confidence through the Jalisco Association in Support of Indigenous Groups (AJAGI), and to avoid delays in communication in our communities, which is indeed complicated.

This is what we wish to communicate to the people of Mexico and the Mexican State. It is what we reiterate from the Colonia Rivera Aceves, locality of Waut+a, in this tenth reunion of the Regional Wixarika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta conformed by our traditional and agrarian governments, kawiterutsixi and mara’akate and this is what we communicate to all of our friends of the Front, the journalists, intellectuals, groups of artists, politicians and to the society and general.

Attentively

Wirikuta is not for sale. Never again a Mexico without us.

Regional Wixarika Council for the Defense of Wirikuta
Tiway+la – Colonia Rivera Aceves, C.I. San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán on April 9 of 2011
For Waut+a San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlan and Kuruxi Manuká

Gracias a Gerardo Ruiz Smith por su colaboración fotográfica. Vea su hermosa colección entera aquí.

The fight for Wirikuta crosses the border

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: February 19, 2011Posted in: AJAGI, Borderlands, Featured, Indigenous peoples, Mexico, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
The fight for Wirikuta crosses the border

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By Tracy L. Barnett
Translation by Yvonne Negrin

MIRANDO CITY, TEXAS – It was an unforgettable meeting of cultures: Lakota and Navajo, Chippewa and Cree, Coahuiltecan and Chichimecan and more, joining hearts and minds wth their Wixaritari brothers in a hogan in South Texas.

“Never in my life did I imagine that this moment would come,” said Efren Bautista Parra, a diminutive yet powerful marakame, or shaman, and the traditional governor of San Andrés Cohamiata, with tears in his eyes. “Just like the joy of this moment, our suffering brings us together in a bond of brotherhood.” Around the fire, cradled in the curve of a crescent moon, the language of spirit transcended words to merge all souls into one.

Efren was one of eight Wixarika leaders chosen by their communities in the highlands of Jalisco, Durango and Nayarit to travel from their communities to this town in Mirando City, Texas. They were there to attend the International Convention of the Native American Church, a union of Native American peoples of North America dedicated to preserving the right to traditional use of the sacred peyote plant, or medicine as it is known.

“Never did we imagine that there were others who, like us, use the sacred hikuri as we do in their ceremonies and prayers,” he said.

The Native American Church is comprised of various tribal peoples from the United States and Canada, who consider peyote a sacrament and use it in their prayers and ceremonies. Upon learning that a Canadian mining company, First Majestic Silver Corp., has acquired 22 concessions, granted by the Mexican government, to exploit minerals in the sacred land of Wirikuta, the birthplace of the Wixarika’s Father Sun and the ecosystem where the sacred plant grows, the Native American Church invited representatives of the Wixarika communities (also known as Huichol) to attend its convention on 11, 12 and 13 of February in Mirando City, Texas.

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Some of them had been traveling for days to arrive in Guadalajara, where a race to acquire visas and passports culminated in a 15-hour overnight bus ride from Guadalajara. An hour of lines and paperwork at the border was followed by an hour of travel from Laredo to Mirando City in a rented van through the desert considered a sacred place for members of the Native American Church.

Unfazed by the lack of rest, the delegation arrived energized and eager to meet their northern counterparts. In the Mirando Community Center, festooned with hearts and balloons for the upcoming Valentine’s Day celebration, the delegation was welcomed with open arms by the Indian nations of the north, a greeting which was followed by an extensive and sincere dialogue.

“We are the keepers of the sacred land of Wirikuta,” said Felipe Serio Chino, secretary of the Wixárika Ceremonial Centers of Jalisco, Durango and Nayarit. “We conduct our pilgrimages there every year, as our ancestors entrusted us to do, so that life can continue to be reborn. It is inconceivable to us that from one moment to the next, a site this sacred can be destroyed. This Canadian company is very powerful, but we hope that perhaps with partnerships like this one we can win in the defense of Wirikuta.”

Santos De La Cruz Carrillo, an attorney and an appointed official from Bancos de San Hipólito, Durango, explained the process of the formation of the Wirikuta Defense Front of Tamatsima Wahaa.

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“We know they are in violation of our rights. What they have planned is an attack on our culture. We want this to be known not only nationally but internationally,” he said.

“We are here to build bridges and join forces with the indigenous peoples of the North. We invite you to work with us and to integrate into the Front in any way you can to help defend what is sacred in life. Our prayers and ceremonies are to renew the candles of life, not just for the Wixárika people, but for the whole world.”

Sandor Iron Rope, a Lakota leader from South Dakota and Vice-President of the Native American Church of North America, was the first to answer.

“We understand the process of colonization on both sides of the border,”he said. “We can unite in the defense of our medicine. We are the legitimate guardians of this continent and we must create a struggle to continue spreading awareness among those who do not understand.”

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Sandor shared a song he had written for Wirikuta in his native Lakota:

Several members of the Native American Church told of how the peyote had changed and even saved their lives, such as Lance Long, a member of the Ho-Chunk people of Wisconsin. Long told of how as a baby he was on the verge of death, and medical doctors could do nothing to help. Finally, his parents gave him his first peyote tea. “I am alive today thanks to medicine,” he said.

Members of the Coahuiltecan delegation of Texas reiterated their support as an indigenous sister nation bound by the long history of medicinal use of peyote by both indigenous groups. They expressed that the desecration of sacred sites must stop and that the defense of Wirikuta is the same as defending Our Mother Earth.

The two-day dialogue included a ceremony in which several saw visions of the Condor and the Eagle, symbols of North and South. Sandor Iron Rope expressed it as a vision from the beginning of time, in which the Eagle and the Condor flew together as in the beginning of the world.

Agreements were manifested in the Native American Church of North America signing of a letter by the Wixárika delegation, proposing a collaboration with the Church and a pledge of brotherhood and solidarity. The assembly of the Native American Church of North America unanimously voted to join the Wirikuta Defense Front.

José García, spiritual leader of the Coahuiltecan nation, sang during the ceremony in his native language and in a voice that resonated from another dimension. Later he explained that he had actually visited Wirikuta during the ceremony, and he shared the story behind the song.

“Several years ago I was commissioned to talk to the Wixaritari (Huichol) to tell them that our elders dreamed that something bad was happening in Wirikuta,” he recalled. “At that time I didn’t understand. Tonight I realized what it meant, as I visited this sacred place and spoke with Wirikuta during my song. ”

Armando Loizaga and Cristian Chávez contributed to this story.


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Eagle and condor meet in visionary gathering of souls

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: November 26, 2010Posted in: Climate Change, Ecovillages, Featured, Food Security, Forest protection, Indigenous rights, Mexico, Organic agriculture, Permaculture, Recycling, Reforestation, Spiritual, Watershed protection, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , ,
Eagle and condor meet in visionary gathering of souls

By Tracy L. Barnett

CHALMITA, Mexico State, Mexico – Long before the sun appears over the towering white cliffs all around us, this temporary village comes to life. The guardians of the ceremonial fire are stoking the flames for the temezcal; the kitchen crew is chopping and peeling and stirring; smoke is rising from the women’s tipi. Suddenly the resonant call of the conch rings out over the valley, calling us to the salutation of the sun, and the cry of an eagle pierces the air like a blessing.

We are gathered in this enchanted valley for the Call of the Eagle, the tenth intercontinental gathering of a group of dreamers and doers who are quietly changing the world from the inside out: the Consejo de Visiones – Guardianes de la Tierra (Vision Council – Guardians of the Earth).

Some 500 visitors from as far as Australia and as near as neighboring Chalmita – filmmakers and farmers, psychologists and shamans, artists and teachers, spiky-haired punks and lyrical poets – are learning to live together under the blue skies and bright stars of an itinerant ecovillage conceived more than a decade ago under the banner of the Rainbow Caravan for Peace and the Mexican Bioregional Movement. By the end of the week, this event will have touched the lives of more than 1,000.

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This tenth gathering is a very special event for many reasons, chief among them that it is seen as the fulfillment of an Inca prophecy. When the Eagle and the Condor fly together, according to the prophecy, this will signal the dawn of a new era – the Eagle representing the North, and the Condor representing the South. Here in this sacred valley, lying in the shadow of an ancient pyramid amid the fertile Bosque de Agua, a high-energy group of visionaries, artists, and activists from North and South has come full circle.
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Fourteen years ago, a now legendary group of them, led by among others Alberto Ruz Buenfil, otherwise known as the Subcoyote – cousin of Fidel Castro and son of the archaeologist who discovered Palenque’s fantastic hidden treasures – set off from this region for an epic journey that was to create the foundation for an intercontinental environmental, spiritual and social movement. After holding the first intercontinental congress of the Vision Council, they headed off in a bus painted like an ear of corn through the Zapatista territory of Chiapas, through the volcanic highlands of Central America and the tropical lowlands of Amazonia all the way to the tip of the continent in Patagonia. Using theater and the arts to plant seeds of hope, peace and sustainability in conflict zones, indigenous villages and crime-ridden barrios, they connected and nurtured social movements throughout the continent.

Their second international event, the Call of the Condor in 2002, brought some 1,300 activists and artists to the Sacred Valley of Machu Picchu in Peru to begin the work of consolidating a vision for a transition to a new age. The third, Call of the Hummingbird, was held in Brazil in 2005 and drew more than 1,500.

Now, after 13 years, that caravan has finally come back to its roots, and the seeds they planted here in Mexico and across the continent have come full bloom in an astounding event that is awakening even the most cynical and reserved among us. Tears flow freely in the circles of dance, in the darkness of the temezcal, in the embraces of long-lost friends who have only just met.

But this is far from a feel-good encounter group. In fact, it’s far from anything I’ve experienced. These folks are facing the future with their eyes wide open, painfully aware of the resource and climate crises that loom on the horizon. It’s also not a hand-wringing session. No one here is waiting for government to resolve these pending crises, although government leaders are here to participate in the forums, workshops and demonstrations in areas encompassing ecology, health, spirituality, appropriate technology, and education among many others. Local schoolchildren, too, are brought in to participate in panels teaching self-reliance; local youth participate in forums organizing political and social action preparing for turbulent times in a post-petroleum world. Gaia University is here, sharing a revolutionary model for participatory education, granting diplomas, bachelor’s and master’s degrees while its students are engaged in planetary transformation.

One team is building an oven from mud and bricks, while another is building a solar clock; another group is learning about native herbal healing techniques, while still another is raising the ceremonial tipi that will be the headquarters of a powerful women’s healing circle, and another is discussing strategies for protecting this valley, a strategic but highly vulnerable center for water conservation. Another initiative is gathering momentum to support the Huicholes in a struggle to save their most sacred site, Cerro Quemado in Real de Catorce or Wirikuta, from a transnational mining operation.
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Sacred rituals from the world’s great traditions mingle with dance and creations of art and song to raise the energy throughout the week to a level I never thought possible. Activities run from sunup to 3 a.m., but sleep seems superfluous.

The culmination of the event comes after an all-night vigil to greet the dawn; a spectacularly feathered and painted group of Aztec dancers await us around a blazing fire, and a mandala of dance and rhythm and song erupts.
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As I sit down to try and put this phenomenon to words, I recall those of Coyote Alberto as we stood together on the last day.

“It’s all so perfect,” I told him. “My only regret is that it’s just impossible to put into words.”

He laughed knowingly – the author of several books about the caravan and its Rainbow Warriors, and now involved in a project to bring the lessons of the caravan home in Mexico City, he has struggled with this problem daily.

“Nobody believes you when you try to explain it,” he said. “They say, ‘You’re just writing what you want it to be.’ There’s no way to explain – you just have to live it.”

Never has a human being lived his words more authentically, more powerfully, more beautifully than the man at the heart of this vision turned reality. I can do no better than to end with some of those words, which Alberto shared with us during the closing ceremony.

“Two hundred years ago these lands were the scene of bloody battles; much blood was shed among our grandfathers and grandmothers to make a step forward in the process of evolution, of growth, toward our liberty as individuals, as a people, and as a nation…. A hundred years ago, again in these lands, much blood was spilled once again among our people, with the same goal, to be able to walk with a bit more liberty, a bit more strength.

“Today we are here together for the same cause, but together we are creating our own liberty, not just for Mexico but for the entire planet. Two hundred years ago we began the process of our independence. Today, what we have realized is that we are interdependent. Everyone for everyone… independence doesn’t exist. We are creating a planetary nation, interdependent.

“This day will be carried in the hearts of each of us as we take one more step on this road to liberty, this road toward dignity and justice. Everyone is responsible for everyone else. Our commitment is to this struggle, no longer with weapons of war but with weapons of dance and music, art and ceremony and ritual.

“If a hundred years ago a process of revolution began, today we also come to take a new step forward; we come to celebrate a re-evolution. We are standing here today, people from all over the planet, and each of us carries with us all our ancestors, all our traditions, all our grandparents, all those who struggled in the past to create a better future. Each one of you is the fruit of all the blood that was shed in these struggles, so that today we could be here present, celebrating, together in the same circle, with one heart and with one vision, on this day.

“Our grandparents spoke of prophecies. Today they are watching, and they see in us the ones they were waiting for.”


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Permaculture Institute heals the wounds of war

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: November 12, 2010Posted in: El Salvador, Featured, Permaculture, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Permaculture Institute heals the wounds of war

By Tracy L. Barnett

SUCHITOTO, El Salvador – A gentle breeze ruffles the thatched roof of the hilltop shelter here at the Permaculture Institute. An electric-blue morpho butterfly flits past, a sharp accent against the muted blue of Volcano Guazapa in the background. An incongruously peaceful backdrop for the violence, massacres, scorched earth and forced evacuation that razed this region less than two decades ago.

That mountain, the hideout for guerilla forces for miles around, was bombed daily and burned repeatedly; the town of Suchitoto itself became a battlefield. Hundred of tons of artillery, white phosphorus and napalm rained down on the once lush jungles of these lands, drying up even the springs where people once retrieved their water.

But the Earth has a way of healing herself, and her inhabitants, and this land and the people who work it are living proof of that reality.

The Permaculture Institute of El Salvador or IPES (pronounced EE-Pace), for its Spanish acronym, has staked its claim on a stony, hilly hectare in this region. In part because of the strong community organizations that formed before the war, Suchitoto has proven fertile ground for a new approach to community development pioneered by peasant farmers, ex-combatants and a British permaculturist with a stubborn streak.

Karen Inwood was a community development specialist looking for a different approach when she met Juan Rojas, a former Salvadoran dissident forced to flee his country at the height of the civil war. Rojas, by a twist of fate, had ended up in Australia, where he met Bill Mollison, founder of an innovative new system of ecological design known as permaculture.

Rojas was excited by the idea of the system as an approach to rebuilding his country after the war, and returned in 1993 after the peace accords were signed to see what he could do. Realizing that permacultural principles have much in common with ancestral agricultural practices, he began in the heavily impacted department of Morazan, which is also where the largest concentration of indigenous Salvadorans still live. He began working with local farmers to learn their traditional practices. Utilizing the farmer-to-farmer method, he began working to disseminate these ideas along with permaculture principles, and later began working with leaders in the departments of La Libertad and his native Sonsonate.

The first Mesoamerican permaculture design course was held in Perquín, Morazan, in 1998 with the participation of campesinos from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Guatemala. These first Mesoamerican permaculturists went on to form the base for what later became IPES in El Salvador and IMAP in Guatemala, among others.

In 2000 he made a trip to England to attend an Ecovillage Training Course at the Findhorn Foundation and Karen, whom he met there, was intrigued with his project.

She headed to El Salvador to help him build the Permaculture Institute, and arrived to find a country in desperate need for the lessons in self-sufficiency and sustainability that Juan and others were working to spread.

“I’d always thought of ecovillages as an alternative lifestyle for those with the resources to buy land and move out to the country and do their thing,” she says. “My interest was to use permaculture for social change rather than as a lifestyle choice, and I came to El Salvador to do just that.”

Permaculture, as Inwood explains it, can be applied in everything from agriculture to architecture to community design. Its main application here, at the moment, is in teaching sustainable agriculture and living practices to the subsistence farmers that struggle at the edge of survival throughout the Salvadoran countryside. In practice, it can mean the difference between malnutrition and misery, and a life of good health, dignity and autonomy. And in an era of climate change, when this tiny and densely populated Central American nation has been named among the world’s most vulnerable, food security is on everyone’s lips, and permaculture seems to be taking on a new and bigger life.

After a decade working in the obscurity of this rugged countryside, with a bare minimum of financial support, mostly from individual donors and foundations in England, Inwood is beginning to see the group’s efforts bear fruit. More than 1,000 families have adopted permaculture practices on their land and are growing organic produce for self-consumption and for sale. A team of promotores, or farmers turned permaculture teachers, is using the farmer-to-farmer method, working through the regional ecological networks, spreading permaculture principles throughout the villages.

And this rugged, typically hilly and not particularly fertile parcel has been converted into an educational center and demonstration site for the dissemination of a new approach to rural life here in El Salvador, an approach that promises to lift its practitioners out of poverty and into self-sufficiency, in harmony with each other and with nature.

It’s a rustic and simple site, with structures built mostly from natural materials found on the land, and with a vast diversity of crops worked by a simple yet passionate team of campesinos.

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Other projects in the remote department of Morazán, one of the poorest regions of the country and one of the hardest hit by the war, have taken off and are blossoming; municipal governments are lending their support, and several hundred families are now practicing permaculture, with a team of promoters there beginning to branch out even further into the countryside.

Now, after years of trying to meet with and work with other community development organizations in the region and being repeatedly ignored, regional leaders are beginning to seek out the advice and input of IPES.

And most recently, representatives of the new leftist government of Mauricio Funes have expressed interest in applying permaculture principles to a national food security program aimed at strengthening the role of the family farm.

Inwood isn’t sure what has caused the sudden surge of interest, but speculates it has to do with the recent crises brought on by climate change: crops are failing due to intense flooding, followed by drought. A huge part of Central America’s bean crop has failed, and the price of what remains has gone sky-high; the price of the family basket has risen 300 percent in September and October.

Ironically, just at the moment when IPES has begun to break the ice with government agencies, and just as the group’s services are being widely sought, its funding sources have declined precipitously. The drop in the price of the pound has taken a toll, just as the financial crisis has left funders with less to share.

At the same time, the Funes government inherited the traditional patronage system of agricultural assistance, in which $33 million in agricultural “packages” consisting of hybrid seeds and agrochemicals are distributed throughout the country.

In the first year of its administration, before the young government had a chance to organize an alternative, the agricultural packages went out in the traditional way and there was an outcry among those who weren’t on the receiving end. The government realized the old system wasn’t working, and is now looking for new alternatives, Karen said. Permaculture is one of those alternatives.

“We’re excited but at the same time, it’s challenging,” she confesses, her expressive blue eyes widening. Those blue eyes, together with her gentle, sweet manner and her British-accented Spanish, have worked their magic with more than one hard-hearted bureaucrat, I imagined, watching her present her ideas to a pair of authorities from the United Nations Development Fund. The pair left impressed with what they saw, and were scheduled to attend another meeting with IPES the following week.

Contrasting with Karen’s feminine, British touch are the passionate and very Salvadoran approach of Agustin “Maclobio” Duran and Alejandro Martínez, two former Salvadoran guerillas who took the design course and ended up converts to the permaculture cause. Both see permaculture as a means to achieve the same goals they strove for in the revolution: a dignified life for their families.

After the war, an army of nongovernmental organizations descended on El Salvador, each with a different proposal for solving the country’s deeply entrenched problems. Like others from IPES, Agustin is critical of their approach. None that he has seen were ultimately viable, he said, and some were even deceptive; together, they left communities with a dependency mentality and in some ways, worse off than they were before. Permaculture, on the other hand, offers a different model, one that empowers people to take control of their own lives.

“I see it as a different kind of revolution, one that achieves just what we were fighting for – a dignified life for our people, healthy food and an education,” he said.

“From what I’ve seen since the war and in fact in my whole life, permaculture is what convinces me the most; it’s a more integral proposal. Of course it requires a lot of sacrifice, but if we were able to withstand all the risks and hardships of the war, we can do this, too.”

For Alejandro, the shift to this form of agriculture is urgently necessary, not just individually but at the community level.

“If we continue with the same agricultural practices we’ve inherited, we are going to suffer a great famine,” he said. “If we can spread the ideas of permaculture, we can all live well, and have a better system to pass on to the future generations.”

Agustin nodded his agreement. “That’s the challenge we face,” he said. “If we can successfully transmit these ideas, in 20 years things will be very different here, and maybe we can shift a little the destructive direction we’re headed in. We already have the effects of climate change upon us – but from this battle trench of IPES, we can minimize the impact, the consequences that we have already been suffering.

“We as campesinos, people who don’t have economic power, want to show the world that relying on solutions and alternatives so simple as learning from what surrounds us in nature, we can have multiple solutions to great problems, and we can solve them. It’s just a question of education and consciousness.”

For more information about the Permaculture Institute of El Salvador, to pay a visit or to sign on as a volunteer, see their website and/or their Facebook page.


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