Latin America Archive

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.


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Listening to myself at the Center for Ecological Arts

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: November 7, 2010Posted in: Colombia, Featured, Permaculture, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Listening to myself at the Center for Ecological Arts

By Tracy L. Barnett

SAJONIA, RIO NEGRO, Colombia – My main contact in Medellín, passed along by friends from the Rainbow Caravan in Mexico, is a mysterious leader in the environmental movement, café owner, attorney and permaculturist known to me only as Pato. Sadly for me, Pato was in Peru for the duration of my stay, but he put me in touch with a couple of his young compañeros, and I duly followed his leads.

The first one took me out to the countryside for a blessed respite from the city at the newly founded Centro de Artes Ecologicas. I’d been asked to collaborate on a book about permaculture projects throughout the world, and I was excited to see what these creative paisas had come up with. I’m not sure what I expected – ecological houses, fragrant gardens and a busy staff, perhaps – but it’s not what I got.

There to meet me at the bus stop on the gravel road in the one-bar town of Sajonia, Rio Negro, some 40 minutes from Medellin was David Rojas, a volunteer who was holding down the fort in Pato’s absence. He shouldered my heavy pack and together we headed down the road.

“Someday we plan to build buildings, but for now we just have the carro-casa“, he was telling me.

Sure enough, the Cento de Artes Ecologicas is currently based in a broken-down RV, donated by a German who used it to travel through Latin America. It seemed I’d be camping. “I hope you’re not disappointed,” David said.

I quickly recovered from my initial disillusionment and began to listen and look at what was around me. David was a soft-spoken, tousle-headed young man who seemed to weigh the value of each word against that of quietude. I soon found a wellspring of wisdom in that quietude and in the conversations we shared in this beautiful mountain retreat.

“Most people are so busy they don’t really take the time to even listen to themselves, much less to others or to the nature that surrounds us,” he told me. “I come here to do just that.”

He took me on a tour of the site, filled with insights about the innovative permaculture practices the group is employing as they develop the property into a training center for ecological design. The hectare of land that the group has chosen is enormously diverse, with habitats ranging from wetlands to hardwoods to pine forest to pasture, and it slopes upward to a spectacular view of the hills all around.

He gave me a demonstration of the eco-bricks technique being used throughout Latin America, in which plastic bottles are packed tight with trash and used as bricks to build water storage tanks, benches, roads and even houses.

As darkness fell, we built a fire and cooked a simple dinner of pasta and onions, tomatoes and cheese, served with aguapanela, a delicious drink typical in the region made of hot water and panela, an unrefined chunk of condensed sugar cane syrup.

I awoke to the patter of rain on the metal roof and felt an enormous sense of gratitude for the shelter of the carro-casa. I spent awhile listening to the rain, the birds, David’s quiet breathing in the bunk above the cab – and to myself.

The next day we traveled together to the nearby mountain town of Ceja, where I met his friend and colleague Andrés Correa, another energetic and charismatic young leader. The two of them are working on an ecological design project for an ecoresort in Cocorna, Tierra de Agua, and they took me on a tour of a new agroforestry project established by the YMCA where they conduct workshops with local youth.

Here we are in front of the center, as darkness is falling, on a bench made from eco-bricks by Andrés and his crew of youngsters.

Over coffee, Andres quizzed me about my travels. He was intrigued by the concept of my journey, and wanted to know what I had seen. More than anything, he wanted to know if I had found what I was looking for: Hope.

He and David are recent converts to the permaculture cause, and he sees a growing back-to-the-land movement in his country evolving because of the change that’s in the air – changes preached by politicians who do little but ultimately manifested by nature itself, by the pending scarcity of petroleum and other substances that our economy depends on, and by the prophecies in the Mayan calendar, which ends in 2012.

“Basically, we’re getting ready,” he said. “I’d like to be hopeful, but mainly, I think we need to be prepared.”

In many of my conversations here in the South, I ask people how they see the coming transition, and in front of the campfire, David had left me with an image that stays with me still. I recalled it that night over coffee, and we ended our conversation on a hopeful note.

Back at the campfire, David had responded to my question with a gesture at the mountains that surround us.

“I see a future where this mountain will be dotted with little fires like this one, and everywhere you see a little fire will be a family,” he said. “They’ll be cooking together, sharing aguapanela, talking to each other, just as we are.

“Right now, everywhere you see a light is a family – a family that is most likely seated around the television or the computer, but probably not talking to each other. I think that will change.”

I think so too – and for all the fear that change may generate, in the end, it may not be a bad thing at all.


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Permaculture in Paraguay: Building a better world with bamboo

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: September 4, 2010Posted in: Featured, Organic agriculture, Paraguay, Permaculture, Reforestation, WhyTags: , , , , , ,
Permaculture in Paraguay: Building a better world with bamboo

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CERRO ROKE, Paraguay – The red school bus rattled its way down the red dirt road, cutting a path through the grey mist. The driver assured me we had not gone too far; my destination was the last stop on the line. Finally he lurched to a halt.

The bamboo gate was the only clue that I’d arrived at Takuara Renda, Paraguay’s permaculture center. Guillermo Gayo, the bio-architect at the heart of it all, was there to greet me, a welcoming South American double-kiss at the ready.

I learned about Takuara Renda at the Social Forum of the Americas in Asuncion, where Guillermo had transformed a corner of the intensely busy forum into a peaceful retreat with one of his bamboo houses.

It was there that I learned of his unique take on permaculture, built on a foundation of bamboo and his lifelong work as an architect devoted to the field of bioconstruction, a form of construction that emphasizes natural materials and sustainable technologies.

Takuara Rendá, his permaculture reference center, takes its name from the Paraguay’s native language, Guaraní, and means “home of the bamboo.” As an architect and a designer seeking to dignify peoples’ lives while lightening environmental impact, he had gravitated toward bamboo as a rapidly renewable and highly versatile construction material.

He invited me to come out to his permaculture center, about two hours outside of the city of Paraguarí, to see it for myself, and so I did.

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What I found there in the lush green woods was something between a zen retreat, a woodsy inventor’s workshop and a hands-on learning center. Here a crew of Paraguayan, Argentine and Brazilian students were busy assembling bamboo creations, from doors to chairs to light fixtures.

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What wasn’t as visible was the infinitely slower work of creating an agroforestry reserve from a depleted wasteland.

The restoration, the agroforestry, the garden and the bamboo workshop all work together to create an integrated way of life for Guillermo, who has earned his living teaching bioconstruction with bamboo all over the continent. Guillermo was teaching tools for planetary survival long before he discovered David Holmgren’s guide to permaculture, translated to Spanish, at the home of a Brazilian friend. But reading the book brought many aspects of his thought and practice into a sharper focus, and that focus eventually led him to get his training in permaculture design and to establish Takuara Rendá.

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“If you had seen this place 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have believed it,” he was telling the guests from Asuncion who had arrived for a tour of the place. Overworked, overgrazed and burned over and over again, as was the agricultural practice in these parts, the land had reached a point where natural regeneration would be next to impossible. “It was like scar tissue,” he said. “We had to rebuild the soil, and that takes time.”

Looking around now at the lush and incredibly diverse growth – coconut palm and acacia, guayaba and papaya mixed with cactus and pineapple, interspersed with patches of moss and fern – it was hard to imagine.

The land here seems as if it could grow anything. But that was the result of years of clearing away thorny brush, building soil with compost, and nurturing the baby palms and guayabas and papayas with water and nutrients.
“We humans have a great capacity for destruction, but we also have a great capacity for recuperation,” he said.

Later Guillermo took me to harsher, more stubborn places on the land where he is gently coaxing native grasses from the earth, and another place where he is nurturing baby macadamia nut and mango trees amid vegetable plants. The idea is to plant for tomorrow while planting for ten years from now, he explained. The vegetables will feed them until the trees grow large enough to provide fruit and nuts.

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But Guillermo the grower switches quickly into Guillermo the inventor as he explains to his students the law of aerodynamics and how it applies to a windmill they are building to pump water, or as they pore over plans for a pendulum-powered woodsaw.

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And Guillermo the inventor can just as easily switch into Guillermo the architect, explaining the reason for the curving lines of the roof and walls that frame this building.

“We have to break with rectagonality – the way our structures are created in the city, they are designed to increase productivity. But nature is organized outside of linearity. What we’ve tried to do is create a habitat that is compatible with biology.”

As is typically the case with permaculturists, Guillermo’s own story is at least as interesting as that of his learning center. He was born in Argentina and came of age in the 1960s and ’70s. Like many of his generation, his involvement in social movements drew the attention of the repressive government and he was forced to run for his life or avoid meeting the fate of friends who had been tortured and killed.

He chose to head north into Paraguay. He lived for years in Asuncion, where he shifted to a more spiritual form of resistance – one in which he could continue to work for a more sustainable world, but without risking his life under a different dictatorship. He was teaching the Mayan calendar at a center for alternative thought when he and his friends began to reflect on the indigenous history of these lands, where the Guaraní still lived in harmony with the earth – marginalized and in extremely remote pockets of forest, but surviving in the way of their ancestors.

“The Guaraní didn’t leave huge monuments, but what they left behind was something better… an integrated environment.

“We’ve destroyed a total habitat, and it’s going to be very costly to fix it. But they left nothing out of place.”
After much discussion, Guillermo recalls, “We came to the conclusion we had to ask pardon – of the Earth, of the ancestors, of the indigenous people. To ask pardon you have to offer something – not just to say I’m sorry and that’s it.”

Guillermo’s offering was his practice as a teacher of bioconstruction, working with low-income and indigenous people to help them create comfortable, dignified living spaces; he worked with the Guaraní of Paraguay and with the Maya Kiché of Guatemala to create water reservoirs that would free the women and children from hours of backbreaking water-carrying from faraway water sources.

In 1999 he bought the Takuara Rendá, a demonstration center of sustainable living, where graceful bamboo structures scented of sweetgrass are scattered among the trees.

“We try to make the interior living space as small as possible, and it extends outward into the outdoors,” he explained. “We believe that with less you can live much better.”

My short time at Takuara Rendá seemed to confirm the truth of this statement. I slept in one of these bamboo houses on a bamboo-frame bed padded with a grass eco-mattress; washed dishes in a bamboo-sheltered outdoor sink, with water carefully portioned through a series of recycled plastic bottles in an ingenious conservation system; sat in a bamboo chair at a bamboo table, and drank mate from a bamboo matero with a bamboo straw. I used the clever spiral-shaped bamboo composting toilet, with no ill effects. Manoel, the Brazilian student, helped me fashion my own drinking cup from a section of bamboo.

I breathed in the fresh air; my eyes soaked in the green freshness; and I felt better than I’d felt in weeks.
I reflected on a question Guillermo had asked: “What is health – is it just physical, or is it spiritual? And by spiritual, I’m not talking about a religious system that keeps putting patches on a structure where everything is going wrong.”

My time with Guillermo, with his assistant Milciades and with the Argentine and Brazilian students was all too short. I wandered among the misty woods and strange rock formations, listening to the back-and-forth birdcalls. I ate delicious organic food prepared by the young men on a simple wood stove under a hand-painted sign with the words of Hippocrates that modern medicine seems to have forgotten: “Make your food your medicine, and your medicine your food.”

Back in the city now, I look out at a landscape of squares and straight lines, and I sigh. One day, I’d like to have my own Takuara Rendá. Until then, I have my bamboo drinking cup.

Takuara Rendá accepts volunteers for a minimum period of two weeks and a maximum of three months. During that time, you can learn by doing: principles and practice of bioconstruction, agroforestry, alternative technology and permaculture. For more information, click here.

Here’s a little photo tour of my misty September stay at Takuara Rendá.


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Cultural Survival: Using radio to preserve endangered cultures

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: July 14, 2010Posted in: Belize, Community Radio, Environmental education, Featured, Guatemala, Indigenous rights, Latin America, Mexico, Mining, Spiritual, WhyTags: , , , , , , , ,
Cultural Survival: Using radio to preserve endangered cultures

(Above: Concepción Aganel of Radio Niña in Totonicapan, one of the community radio stations fighting for legitimate status.)


Mark Camp, Operations and Interim Director, Cultural Survival

By Tracy L. Barnett

ANTIGUA, Guatemala – Between trips to the Guatemalan capital to stalk evasive Congress members and strategizing meetings with community radio activists from Huehuetenango to Lake Atitlan, Mark Camp is a tough man to slow down.

But I managed to catch up with him just as he prepared to pack up his big red truck and head north in his annual migration to Cultural Survival’s headquarters and his other home in Cambridge, Mass., to hear a little about what he’s been doing down here.

Cultural Survival is going on its fortieth year as the leading international organization in promoting indigenous rights and the preservation of indigenous cultures around the world. Mark, as its operations coordinator, can talk for a long time about needs assessments, political strategy, organizational development and the like.

But when he starts to talk about Miguelito, he really comes to life. Miguelito is the 8-year-old president of the youth auxiliary of Radio Sembradora, the community radio station of San Pedro La Laguna in Lake Atitlan, and in many ways he symbolizes the future of community radio and, indeed, the future of indigenous Guatemala.

Camp met Miguelito in a recent visit to the station, where Miguelito and his group of 8, 9 and 10-year-olds had created an alliance with local NGOs to organize a campaign to clean up Lake Atitlan. The iconic lake, once celebrated for its crystal-clear, volcano-encircled waters, has suffered epic proportions of wastewater and agricultural runoff, as well as a more visible problem: floating masses of plastic trash.

Miguelito’s group was broadcasting every Saturday morning, putting on a full lineup of environmental programming, encouraging listeners to fill up and bring in their plastic bottles to be used in building ecological housing.

“This guy’s going to be mayor one day,” Camp recalls with a chuckle.

Community radio in San Pedro and in towns and villages across the country has been giving voice to indigenous people young and old who are trying to preserve their environment, their cultures, their languages and their way of life, and Cultural Survival has tapped into this movement as a high-power way of supporting indigenous communities.

In Palin Esquintla, community radio helped to revive a culture and a language that was on the verge of extinction. In Sumpongo Sacatapequez, it brought a local musical tradition back to life. In town after town, community radio has given indigenous communities information about their rights, about their health, about local political and social issues, about their traditional teachings and much more – in their own languages.

Camp came to realize the potential of community radio when he was working on a publication for Cultural Survival called Voices, a publication aimed at disseminating information about indigenous rights and culture to indigenous groups around the world. The problem, he said, was that even with foundation funding, they were only reaching about 30,000 readers – less that a tenth of 1 percent of the 370 million indigenous people on the planet – and only in colonial languages – Spanish, English, French and Russian – not in their native languages.
Cultural Survival Quarterly, the organization’s venerable award-winning magazine, is an excellent publication, but it’s in English, and it’s mainly geared toward non-indigenous people.

Once the funding ran out, Camp was looking for other ways to get the message out among indigenous peoples.
“After thinking about it a very short while, the obvious choice is radio – and very local radio, because language in lots of indigenous communities is very local,” said Camp. “The people in the next alley might speak a different language – or at least a very different dialect. So we started thinking about community radio and how we could work with community radio stations to put more information on the air for indigenous listeners that might help them defend their own rights.”

In 2004 he began sounding out community leaders throughout Guatemala, and by 2006 they had found funding for a full-fledged Community Radio Project.

Access to community radio stations was one of the rights guaranteed to indigenous communities under the peace accords, but the government never followed through by setting up a system that would really give access to the communities. Frequencies were auctioned off to the highest bidders, and commercial radio operators were willing to pay sums that indigenous peasants would never dream of seeing in their lifetimes.

So the campesino groups decided to operate their stations anyway, and hundreds of them set up pirate operations in whatever facilities they could find and with whatever equipment they could cobble together. The stations were not technically legal, however, and they endured harassment from local government officials, raids on their stations, confiscation of their hard-earned equipment and even, in several cases, imprisonment of the broadcasters. Several associations of community radio stations had tried to get legislation passed that would solve the problem, but had failed. This was the situation when Camp came on the scene.

Cultural Survival’s goals were straightforward. First and foremost, the objective was to get all the community radio associations working together on a consistent piece of legislation guaranteeing each community the right to a radio frequency; second, workshops to teach radio volunteers how to generate high-quality content; third, to help the stations become financially self-sufficient; and fourth, workshops to help them with the nuts and bolts of running a professional radio station.

Three years into the project, the goals are well on their way to completion; most importantly, all the associations have agreed on the same piece of legislation and are working together, alongside Camp, for its passage. Camp is optimistic; all the major parties and many minor parties have signed on to the legislation, and folks at the grassroots, like Tino Recinos (see “Ex-Guerilla changes gun for microphone), are working hard to persuade the last holdouts.

A vote in the Guatemalan legislature is scheduled for Aug. 9, International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. Stay tuned to Cultural Survival’s page at www.culturalsurvival.org and to The Esperanza Project for news.

For excerpts from Mark Camp’s interview in Antigua, Interview with Mark Camp

Planting the Kingdom of God in Sibinal

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: June 30, 2010Posted in: Ecotourism, Featured, Guatemala, Indigenous rights, Mining, WhyTags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Planting the Kingdom of God in Sibinal

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SIBINAL, San Marcos, Guatemala – Juan Pablo Morales and Nate Howard come from vastly different religious traditions, social circumstances and geographies. But in the end, it was their faith that brought them together in their opposition to the mining industry, and in their project to provide economic alternatives in one of Guatemala’s poorest regions.

For Juan Pablo, it was his faith in a just and loving God; for Nate, it was a faith in the potential of humanity. And for both, as they work together to establish sustainable development options in a region slated for strip mining, it’s a faith that the people can find a way to earn a living from the land without destroying it.

“We are constructing the Kingdom of God among the poor in Guatemala,” Juan Pablo began, his smile as wide as a child’s. “Poverty is not part of God’s plan; poverty is the anti-kingdom. When I speak of the anti-kingdom, I am speaking of the forces of darkness, the forces of empire, of neoliberalism, which tend to flow from the North to the South.”

Juan Pablo speaks the language of liberation theology, an approach to Catholicism born in the deeply divided Latin American continent when brutal dictatorships held sway. Some religious leaders in those days saw the brutal repression coming from the government and chose to side with the poor; many paid with their lives. Eighteen priests and 150 catechists were murdered in Guatemala, according to Juan Pablo’s reckoning, and 400 villages were massacred.

“The Evangelicals are preaching the coming of the apocalypse – but we went through our apocalypse during those 36 years of war.”

The numbers are close to home for him; his brother was among those catechists who were killed. But far from driving him away, it left him with a commitment to follow in his brother’s footsteps. After four years of study he, too, became a passionate teacher of the Catholic faith, and soon he moved into a position with Caritas, a nonprofit Catholic organization serving the poor.

Nate is softer-spoken but no less passionate about the church’s calling to empower the poor. Like many Indiana natives, he was raised an Evangelical Christian, but drifted away from the faith in his youth. He studied at Indiana University and then Eastern Pennsylvania University, getting an MBA in international economic development. Now he is working for the Mennonite Central Committee, helping communities to build sustainable, locally based economic models.

His hands-on experience in Guatemala gave him a completely different view of economics from that he had learned from his economics textbooks.

“Economics is not a science; it’s really the study of human relations,” he says. “It’s about our relations with the earth and with each other; it’s about theology, ecology, sociology.”

He sees his work here as primarily supporting Juan Pablo and the villagers, rather than running the development project. “Our goal is to try to help people see themselves as powerful actors and to work together to see what’s possible,” he said on our bumpy chicken bus ride up the mountain.

Living and working in the San Marcos district in the mountainous western side of Guatemala, close to the Mexican border, has been an eye-opening experience for this Midwesterner. Economic opportunity is so limited here that about 70 percent of the male population of this region has migrated at some point to the United States, and the money they send back is what raises the standard of living above that of extreme and grinding poverty. Now, however, with the economic crisis and increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, more and more Guatemalan immigrants are finding themselves out of work; many are heading back home, some compliments of U.S. Homeland Security.

Nate and I rose at 4 a.m. this morning to catch a bus for the two-hour drive to the town of Sibinal, and from there we were going to climb a mountain to La Vega del Volcán and see the fish hatchery. But the top of the mountain is cloaked in a blackish grey, and as we order our eggs and black beans and coffee, Nate’s contacts in La Vega call to warn him that the village is being deluged in a downpour.

The sheer rocky climb is hard enough when it’s dry, Nate tells me, and Juan Pablo arrives and seconds his concern. “You can probably make it, but you will suffer,” he said. So I settle in for an interview instead.

What Nate and Juan Pablo are focusing on is a loosely organized network of cooperatives in several rural villages in the municipality of Sibinal. One is a trout hatchery in La Vega, where the clear, spring-fed mountain streams make this hard-to-cultivate species a natural. The hatchery has been such a success that the community is now working on Phase II, raising fingerlings to sell to surrounding communities.

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(Trout farm at La Vega del Volcán: Nate Howard photo)

Other agricultural projects, including potatoes and ornamental flowers, have helped diversify the regional market opportunities beyond subsistence maize and beans, and have brought in a little cash.

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(Flower farm at La Linea: Nate Howard photo)

But what has Nate most excited at the moment is the ecotourism project, which would take travelers on a variety of treks, most of them through the unspoiled wilderness of the Tacaná volcano on the border with Mexico.
After breakfast with Nate and Juan Pablo, they took me down to the municipal building to speak with local council members, and I fielded a lineup of rave reviews for their work.

“There’s been a lot of international aid organizations here over the years; they’ve spent millions of dollars, and little has changed,” said Elfego Zunún Ortiz, one of the council members. “But we’re seeing now how these folks are doing an extremely effective project without spending a lot of money, just by involving the people in the leadership and planning of the project – and we have great hope.”

Domingo Javier Godines, another council member, stressed the importance of sustainable development projects like these as an alternative to mining. “We see the mining as bringing development to the United States, to Canada, to Europe – but it brings very little development to us, the poorest people in Guatemala – just 1 percent of the profits stay in Guatemala,” he says.

I’ve heard the statistic many times and have verified it; as hard to believe as it seems, it’s true.

Godines went on to describe the scene at a mining project he’d visited in El Salvador. At the foot of the mountain, 35 communities had lost their water source – a situation he predicts will happen here if the mining is allowed to continue.

Howard, for his part, underscores the importance of these development projects as an alternative to the mines.

“We believe that this type of community organizing and economic development will have a major impact on how communities like Sibinal respond to mining proposals in the future,” he wrote in a recent report. “Why would the people of La Vega del Volcán consider selling their natural springs and land to a mining corporation if they are being used for their trout production and other sustainable agricultural enterprises? Why would the communities of Sibinal acquiesce to the destruction of the mountains and bird habitats that attract paying tourists to their villages?”

Why indeed. He’s shared a few photos with me, and it’s enough to make me return – when it’s not rainy season. I want to see this breathtaking beauty for myself, and I want more than anything for the group to be successful in preserving this spectacular corner of the Kingdom of God.

Meanwhile, for more information about the project, to book a trek, to contribute to the project or to volunteer, contact Nate Howard at natedavehow@yahoo.com.


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Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine: “Development for death”

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: June 24, 2010Posted in: Featured, Guatemala, Indigenous rights, Mining, WhyTags: , , , , , , , ,
Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine: “Development for death”

Author’s note (June 24, 2010): Today’s Prensa Libre carried the news that the Guatemalan government has agreed to abide by the requests of the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, the Catholic Church, the International Labor Organization and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights and has ordered the temporary suspension of operations at the Marlin Mine. Goldcorp, the Canadian owner, has announced it will continue operations. “We welcome this opportunity to demonstrate once again Goldcorp’s record of respectful, environmental sound operations at Marlin,” Goldcorp CEO Chuck Jeannes was quoted in Mineweb, a publication covering the mining industry.
This is the second in a series about Anaya’s recent visit to Guatemala and the issues surrounding that visit.

SAN MIGUEL IXTAHUACAN – The road up into this mountain town seems to wind forever upward, and I’m frustrated because we’re late. The meeting with the U.N Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People, James Anaya, is scheduled to begin his meeting with the people at 8. I don’t understand why Joshue is stopping for breakfast.

I needn’t have worried. I’m with Josue Navarro and Bart Van Besien, two members of the dedicated staff of COPAE, the Pastoral Commission for Peace and Ecology, and their peaceful trajectory is in keeping with local traditions.
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We arrive at the parish hall to find it filled with animated people in their colorful native dress, milling excitedly around a spectacular mandala created from colored sawdust and flowers in the center of the floor – but no James Anaya. Feeling lucky to find a seat, I settle in and wait; listen to a few speeches and a few marimba tunes, shoot a few photos and wait some more.
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This is a big day in San Miguel Ixtahuacan. This small town has drawn big headlines in the past few months, and has been the subject of several documentaries. That’s because the transnational Goldcorp has a tremendously profitable mine here, the Marlin Mine, which many in this Mam Maya community say they never agreed to.
Residents complain of strange rashes on their children’s skins and other symptoms, of cracks in the walls of houses near the mine, and of repression from local authorities when they dare to speak out against the mine. A recent study by University of Michigan physicians showed elevated levels of heavy metals in the blood of residents living near the mine, but said they were uncertain whether those levels constituted a risk.

Goldcorp officials – here in Guatemala the subsidiary is called Montana Exploradora – say there is no evidence of contamination, and the government so far has agreed.

The wait stretches into an hour, and suddenly everyone gets up to leave. Everyone seems to know what’s going on except Bart and me. “We’re going to the field,” someone explains to me. The field? “Yes, that’s where the helicopter is coming.”

Sure enough, everyone was gathering around a big field, holding up signs that expressed their rejection of the mine.

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The helicopter landed to great fanfare and paparazzi, and James Anaya emerged from the helicopter: a tall, photogenic man with Native American features and a gentle smile. He and his entourage were greeted by local leaders and led back to the parish for the proceedings.
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The first order of business was a ceremony. A group of beautiful young Mam Maya women and men gather around the mandala and perform a graceful dance in honor of the sacred elements, the water, represented by the earthen pots they carry, and the earth, represented by the green tree seedlings they “plant” at the center of the mandala.

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Now it was Anaya’s turn. Hundreds of traditionally dressed Mam Maya highlanders looked on with bated breath as Anaya, perhaps the world’s highest-ranking authority on indigenous issues, knelt before the altar to light the red candle.

“Red signifies abundance, energy and life, and whoever lights the red candle has the responsibility of looking out for the well-being of our community,” Sister Maudilia had said, handing the matches to Anaya.
The task was not as easy as it seemed. The wick was short, and the flame wavered and threatened to fail. Anaya, however, was up to the task. He persisted, working with the candle and nurturing the flame until it grew steady.
The onlookers erupted into applause.

Carmen Mejia, a leader of the San Miguel Association for Integral Development, took the mike and began with a short history of the mining company’s entrance into the community.

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“They entered under deceit and lies; they were offering productive jobs for people here. They didn’t say they were a mining company; they never said they were here to extract gold and silver. They said it was a project for development, and they began acquiring lands. Once they had some land they began to coerce the neighbors to sell their land. ‘If you don’t sell to us, you’ll be surrounded and buried,’ they were told if they resisted.”

The company continued, she said, manipulating and gathering signatures under false pretenses.

“The company is operating illegally, because it lacks the social license to be here,” she said. “The people of San Miguel were never consulted.”

Exploration of the mine began, and that’s when the damage began occurring, she said. Neighbors began speaking out.

“The answer was criminalization, persecution, the threatening of campesinos and campesinas. In 2007, we had seven comrades processed; five were liberated, but two were condemned to three years of prison and liberated, under the condition that they stop speaking out against the mine. In 2008, eight women campesina leaders, indigenous Mam Maya women, were under an order of capture, just for speaking out for their rights. In 2009, five campesinos were arrested and charged, and in 2010 five more. And why? Because the people of San Miguel have demanded their rights.

“They’ve spoken out for their right to life, for their right to water; for their right to safe homes. In San Miguel, more than 120 houses have been cracked and broken, their lives are in danger…. They’ve spoken out for the environment, for the rivers and the flora and the fauna that are being contaminated.

“This is what we’re living here in San Miguel; we’re seeing more illnesses, in the people and in the animals, including animals that have died after drinking contaminated water.

“Seeing all of this, seeing all of the manipulation and the criminalization and the conflict that has occurred at the community level, we have come to the conclusion that an extractive industry like a mine is not compatible with a Mam community.”

Anaya heard from a labor leader who said there were miners who had been injured and who knew about the contamination but weren’t free to talk; a women’s rights leader who said the company claims to be giving women opportunities but that they are being manipulated and exploited; and from a number of others.
“Next you’ll go and speak to the government officials and the mining officials, and they’ll tell you we’re just a little grupito of troublemakers,” said a man introduced as Don Ricardo. “But we are not a grupito. We are thousands. We represent our communities, and we represent many more who are afraid to speak up because of the reprisals.”
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Sister Maudilia López, of FREDEMI (Front in Resistance of San Miguel), a Catholic sister and a Mam Maya leader of the resistance against the mining, presented the officials with handmade earthen pots used for carrying water.

“These are humble works, but they are made by our own hands, and we make them not to do damage but to give life – to share the sacred good that is water,” Maudilia said earnestly. “I ask myself, why are we doing damage to our Mother Earth, and to all of the mothers who make these pots from our Mother Earth? This is not a development for life, it’s a development for death.”
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The next stop was with Alcalde Joel Domingo Obidio Bamaca, mayor of San Miguel Ixtahuacan. “There’s a group that says yes, and a group that says no – and I can’t take sides, because I’m the mayor of all the people,” Obidio told the dignitaries. “I’m not a scientist and I’m not an environmentalist; I can’t say one way or another. It’s complicated.”

After a few minutes, the public was asked to leave and the officials held a private meeting.

The next stop on the tour was a trip to the tiny settlement of Ajel, home of Crisanta Hernandez, where the light of day shines through huge cracks in the walls and ceilings. Like about 120 other families whose homes have opened large cracks since the beginning of mining operations, she believes it’s the constant grinding of heavy equipments, trucks and blasting in the area – once a quiet neighborhood on a mountainside – that has destroyed the houses.
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“We’re afraid to be living inside this house now, but it’s all we have,” Hernandez said. “It’s a great damage they’ve done to us. We worked for years in the fincas, suffering in the rain and in the sun, for years we ate cold tortillas with salt, to save the money to buy this house. We wanted to have a dignified home to leave for our children…it’s not fair.”

The company denies any responsibility.

Crisanta Perez, however, is the first to speak, and she tells of her arrest in 2008 and again in 2009 for speaking out against the mine. She tells the officials that she was in hiding but returned home to give birth and a few days later was apprehended by officers and very nearly taken to jail but that local citizens intervened and demanded her release. Ever since, she has been afraid to leave her home.
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Grahame Russel of the Canandian group Rights Action tells Crisanta’s story here, with video and background information. http://www.rightsaction.org/articles/Goldcorp_&_Mam_woman_020410.html

Dozens of journalists and supporters crowded into the tiny home to listen. When a villager began to speak about the skin rashes and prepared to undress her baby to expose the condition, Anaya asked us to leave so they could talk alone.

As we waited, neighbors prepared us a delicious ginger atol – a drink made from corn – and chicken soup.

The next stop was the Marlin Mine, where the reception was decidedly colder; the public and media waited out in the rain while Anaya’s team went inside and met with company officials.

After that, we bid our farewells and headed up to Huehuetenango, the site of Thursday’s gathering. I was left with an image of the Marlin Mine, a vast extension of brown amid the rolling green mountains and a bluish green tailings lake that stretched for what seemed like a mile.

I was reminded of the statistic that perhaps holds the greatest impact for the people of these regions: In an hour, this mine uses the same amount a Mayan family uses in 22 years.

Videos:
An excellent short documentary, “La Mina,” by Paul Plett and Esther Epp-Tiessen for the Mennonite Central Committee: http://mcc.org/stories/videos/la-mina

And a four-part investigative series by the Canadian broadcasting network CTV, “Paradise Lost”:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100415/w5_paradise_lost_100415/20100417

Images from San Miguel Ixtahuacan and Ajel on the day of Anaya’s visit:


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Archaeologist shifts focus to modern-day Mayans

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: June 16, 2010Posted in: Featured, Food Security, Forest protection, Guatemala, ProPeten, WhyTags: , , , , , , , ,
Archaeologist shifts focus to modern-day Mayans

POPTUN, Guatemala – It’s been a long day, and Rosa Maria Chan is still not finished. She’s traveled for hours on twisty, rocky country roads, held community meetings in three villages, toured a cacao farm, met with the liaison for funding from the World Bank and a tilapia farmer, answered questions all day long from a visiting journalist, checked in with the Guatemalan Vice-Minister of the Environment and a score of others via cell phone, and ate a hasty dinner while checking her e-mail.

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It’s 9 p.m., and by most people’s standards, it would be a good time to turn in. She has a two-day workshop on watershed protection beginning tomorrow, and she needs to prepare.

But now the mayor of Poptun is here, visiting with a Guatemalan legislator who is head of the committee on environment, and she has some networking to do.

There’s no such thing as down time for Rosa Maria Chan, director of ProPeten, archaeologist turned administrator of one of the country’s most respected environmental organizations. The tireless drive she once applied in six-day jungle expeditions, like the one where she discovered an ancient Mayan village she named Zapote Corozal, she now channels into marathon searches for funding.

This time, however, she’s motivated not by the call of an ancient people but the spirit of their descendents, migrants who have been pushed off their land by poverty and war. These are the people she sees as key to a stable, sustainable future for a seriously troubled region.

The Peten, home of Tikal and a host of other magnificent Mayan cities, takes up a third of Guatemala; it is the largest of the country’s states, or departments. Until relatively recently, it was an untamed jungle wilderness. In the 1960s, that began to change, with the construction of a new highway, followed by wealthy landowners coming in and clearing the jungle to make way for enormous cattle ranches. These landowners, called latifundistas, were seeking a calmer place to live, away from the conflicts in the highlands resulting from an attempt at agrarian reform, and Kek’chi and Mopan Mayas moved there to work the plantations.

The ‘70s and ‘80s brought a different sort of migrant, those fleeing violence in their homelands in the highlands. In three decades, the population of the area increased 10 percent each year; in 1990, the former wilderness was home to 300,000. But the bulk of the newcomers didn’t find the good farmland they were hoping for, as most of that had already been snatched up by the latifundistas. Instead they settled on parcels on the hillsides and planted their milpas as they had for centuries. The forest was decimated.
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In 1990 the government responded to international pressure to preserve what was left of the forest – mainly a huge swath of jungle and wetlands in the north, where the Maya Biosphere Reserve was created, forming the largest natural preserve in Central America. In 1995 it followed suit with four smaller preserves in the south of Peten.

In theory, it sounded good. The problem was that the people living there had nowhere to go. A long-range plan to resettle them was not carried out, and continued population growth led more and more people to invade the preserves, causing escalating conflicts, especially in the region of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, where ProPeten – at that time a project of Conservation International – had a field station to do research and work with local communities to protect the preserve.

Unfortunately, people in the local communities saw the environmental community as a threat to their survival. The tensions culminated in the burning of the field station and a highly publicized incident in which members of the ProPeten staff were held hostage.

This was all before Rosa Maria’s time, but she relates the history as if it were her own – as it was soon to be, as Carlos Sosa, her longtime friend and mentor and the founder and director of ProPeten, asked her to become the head of its board of directors. “I know you, and I know you will never sell out ProPeten,” he told her.

The hostage crisis, Rosa Maria says, just brought to a head the differences in philosophy between the staff of Conservation International and the local staff of ProPeten. As she sees it, Conservation International, like most of the mainline conservation organizations at the time, took a strictly conservation-oriented approach, whereas the local staff recognized the need to integrate social policies into the organization, a need that CI failed to respond to.

“That’s why I refer to myself – and to ProPeten – as an environmentalist, not a conservationist,” Rosa Maria told me on the day we met. “I see people as part of the environment, and if you don’t include them in your plan, it will fail.”

Sosa gave up trying to convince the Conservation International leadership to change their strategy and decided it was time to separate. What ensued was a painful power struggle that Rosa Maria euphemistically calls “a divorce.” As chair of the board of directors, she was drawn into the struggle. It was a nightmarish time that she doesn’t like to recall, especially the most painful part. During that year, Sosa was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and soon after, he died.

The board of directors called an emergency meeting and immediately asked Rosa Maria to take over as director. It was a difficult decision, as she was currently involved in a high-profile archaeological project at Piedras Negras, listed as one of the world’s most endangered historical sites by UNESCO. The organization was left nearly bankrupt and without even an office or supplies after the rift with CI. Most people would have run in the opposite direction.

But Rosa Maria felt called to the task. She finished her two-month commitment at Piedras Negras and set to work rebuilding the organization. Seven years later, by all accounts, her work has paid off; ProPeten is seen locally, nationally and internationally as one of Guatemala’s most successful environmental organizations.

One key to Rosa Maria’s success has been her longtime experience working with government and nonprofit agencies. She started by working her way through college in a job with the Guatemalan Secretary of Planning. Here she learned how to do budgets and negotiate the system, and she began to build allies at the national level. She later held jobs with several other nonprofits, including the German nonprofit GTZ, and learned how to write fundraising proposals.

On a normal day, she juggles telephones and e-mail accounts and meetings with the agility of an acrobat. But today, she’s left all that behind to enjoy the fresh air of the countryside and meet with some of the communities she’ll be raising funds for. I’ve been invited to ride along, because this is really the only time she has to meet with me. So she and two ProPeten staffers, Elder Hernandez and Hector Choc, explain to me some of the many programs ProPeten is sponsoring in the countryside as we bump along a country road past scorched hillsides and grazing cattle.
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On this particular day, she’s meeting with some of the five communities that have expressed an interest in starting cacao farms. Rosa Maria is approaching international foundations to find the funding for this project, and she wants to be sure the communities are prepared to invest the time necessary for a successful project.
“Cacao is a good thing to promote here because it’s native to the area, and it’s part of their indigenous tradition,” she explained. “It requires shade, so it’s a form of agroforestry, which protects the soils and the watersheds.”
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Ultimately, however, perhaps the most important result is to give these families a way to earn a living on their own land without slashing, burning and using it up, as so many families have done. It will also give them the incentive to resist the land speculators coming through to buy up tracts for the oil palm companies, which ProPeten and other environmental groups see as an increasing threat to the region.

Other programs that ProPeten is sponsoring now throughout the countryside include tilapia ponds, ecotourism projects, a educational program with a soap opera and xate cultivation – xate is a native plant used by the floral industry which has been severely depleted in Guatemalan forests by foraging campesinos who sell it to make a living.

In fact, the illegal harvesting of xate has grown to the point that, as Guatemalan forests have been depleted, people have been crossing over the border to Belize to harvest their xate. The plant is now in danger of extinction and the government has passed a law requiring xate dealers to verify that their harvests come from legitimate sources. Guatemalan incursions into Belize for xate harvesting is on the decline in the past year, Rosa Maria’s Belizian contacts have told her, in part due to the new law and in part because of the xate cultivation promoted by ProPeten.

After two days in the communities come two days of meetings of an entirely different sort: local and regional leaders gather to map out a strategy for watershed protection. Then, on Saturday, a meeting with a local women’s cooperative.

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While Rosa Maria’s work may be tiring, it is not without its rewards. Southern Peten has embraced her with open arms, and everyone from the mayor to the local agriculture administrator and the head of the regional planning department shows up to spend two days mapping out a watershed management plan under her direction.

“I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with Rosa Maria since the beginning of my administration and I’ve seen the success she’s had administering this organization and working with the local groups and the municipality,” said Poptun Mayor Angel Kilkán Ochoa. “She’s a woman of enormous vision, and I wish we had 10 or more people like her, and that all the municipalities would work with her and her team to lift up our communities together.”

Donald Perez, coordinator of the regional organization of community leaders, agreed. “I would say that today, ProPeten is the NGO with the weight and experience to represent the initiatives of conservation and human development in Peten – and given that Peten represents a third of Guatemala, we could say that we’re really good ambassadors for conservation at an international level for our country, thanks to the live experiences of ProPeten that are excellent examples.”

Here are some images from the four days I spent with Rosa Maria, Hector and Elder. The videotaped interview with Rosa Maria (above) is available only in Spanish at this time – sorry!). For more information about ProPeten, visit their website, www.ProPeten.org.


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Masa Critica takes to the streets in Guatemala City

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 3, 2010Posted in: Biking, Featured, Guatemala, WhyTags: , , , , ,
Masa Critica takes to the streets in Guatemala City

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By Tracy L. Barnett

GUATEMALA CITY – Between the black smoke-belching chicken buses and the honking mass of cars that congest the streets of Central America’s largest capital, it’s hard to imagine a bicycle, much less a mass of them. With one of the highest crime rates in Latin America, it’s not a place I was planning to explore on two wheels.

But there’s safety in numbers, and that’s the idea behind Critical Mass, a bicycling movement launched in 1992 in San Francisco that has now spread to more than 300 countries.

“We don’t block traffic; we are traffic!” is the group’s motto, and as an urban bicyclist confronted with rude, honking or just heedless motorists I’ve enjoyed expressing that sentiment, alone and in mass rides in San Antonio (MS 150), Houston, Texas (Bohemeo’s Bicycle Club) and Guadalajara, Mexico (Al Teatro en Bici and GDL en Bici).

So when I saw on Twitter that Masa Critica Guatemala was planning a ride my first weekend here, I decided to drop them a line to see if they might have a bike to spare.

Masa Critica logo designed by biker artist Lancerio Lopez

“It will be an honor,” said Masa Critica founder Manuel Gómez, and assured me he’d be there at Jocotenango Park with a bike for me. “You’ll know me by my beard,” he said.

And indeed, it would have been hard to miss him. Gómez cut a robust figure with a bright yellow vest over his green tie-dye Masa Critica T-shirt and a beard that reached halfway down his chest.

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“Bienvenidos a Masa Critica!” he shouted, rolling in with a shiny blue mountain bike just my size.

Gómez, a local chiropractor and acupuncturist, gathered the assembled masses and went over the route and the rules of the road. “Remember to stay together – that’s the most important thing!” he said. “Stay to the left. And stay alert!”

It was a far cry from some of the Critical Mass rides I’d seen in Houston, where the riders’ objective seemed to be asserting their rights of the road. Here the emphasis was on staying alive. These riders observed traffic laws, were courteous to honking drivers and tried to spread good cheer along the way.

“Some drivers are rude, but I just smile at them,” one rider told me. “That way we can show them we are humans, too!”
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Few women joined the ride – unfortunately, not many women have taken up bicycling in the capital city. Teresa was one of two besides me.

“I used to love biking, but I lost my enthusiasm when a friend had her bicycle stolen from her while she was waiting for a red light at an intersection,” she said. “So when I heard about Critical Mass, I said, I’ll be there!” This was her fourth ride.
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The two-hour ride wound through all the zones in the central part of the capital: From quiet, residential Zona 2 to Historical Zona 1, past the Parque Central and the unusual green limestone Palacio Nacional (I’m told the locals call it the Guacamole); down into Zona 4 where we passed the Gaudi-style National Theater, where street vendors hawked everything from pirated CDs to socks and shoes; on down to the bustling commercial district of Avenida Bolivar. All in all, an exhilarating ride, and I must say the drivers were at least as respectful as those in Houston.
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After the ride, Manuel joined me for lunch at the Spanish-style La Mezquita Restaurant where we dined on Spanish torillas and paella, and he told me his thoughts on life, health and bicycling.

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Here are a few excerpts from our interview:

“Our society in general has a prejudice against people who ride bicycles; they see that development and success are demonstrated by having a nice car. But maybe because of increased media attention on pollution and the health problems caused by sedentarism, we’re seeing more people being willing to get out on their bikes, but they’re hesitant because of security problems. But we’re not really that bad in that respect; there are countries in Europe where hundreds of bicycles are stolen every year. We don’t have that many bicycles stolen in Guatemala.

What really is a challenge, on the other hand, is breaking that vicious cycle of sedentarism, and addiction to comfort and passive recreation – they just look and look at electronic devices. Going out on a bicycle is one of the best form of exercise – not just because it doesn’t pollute but also because it helps people avoid a whole variety of illnesses. In my practice I’ve noticed that bikers suffer fewer illnesses.

If we can get our young people biking, not just the athletes but all the young people, we’ll see less drug use, and greater enjoyment of the outdoors. On a bike you feel yourself to be part of everything; you’re in communication with the wind, with the plants… you have all of this contact with nature, whereas in a car, you don’t.

Eight years ago I began an annual bike ride to Coban, 255 km to the north. It was an incredible experience because I was able to hear all the birds and then I was able to see them close up, and I’d never had the opportunity to do that in a car.”


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Surfing couches in Guatemala City

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: May 1, 2010Posted in: Featured, Forest protection, Guatemala, Indigenous rights, WhyTags: , , , ,
Surfing couches in Guatemala City

Top, Cristina Diaz; above, José David Diaz.

GUATEMALA CITY – The city sparkled below me like a carpet of diamonds, flung carelessly over the valley and clinging to the surrounding mountains. This is probably as beautiful as Guatemala’s capital city gets, I thought, then scolded myself for the unwelcome thought. I only know the city from reading about it, and from a single pass through to the airport. Hardly enough to judge. I should know by now that you can’t judge a city by the media coverage – look at Mexico City, for example, which I’ve come to love.

And indeed my first night in the Guatemala City has put the lie to the widespread condemnation of Central America’s largest megalopolis. Thanks to Couchsurfing.com, I had friends waiting for me with dinner and directions, maps and guides and ideas for my project. I took a taxi to their beautiful home next to a park in a leafy neighborhood in Zona 2 and received a family welcome.

Couchsurfing, for the uninitiated, is an international web-based community of people who like to travel and learn about other cultures, but don’t necessarily want to spend a fortune on hotels. Members offer to share their couch or bed with travelers for a night or two or three. There is no charge, only an unspoken agreement that someday you’ll offer a space for another traveler. Besides saving money, the system gives immediate entry and insight into the local culture.

I’d heard rave reviews about couchsurfing and decided one day to give it a try. Just a day ago, I sat in a café in St. Louis, Mo., and entered my profile, then scanned a list of about 70 members from Guatemala City. Jose David Diaz, a Guatemalan restoration ecologist who works with the Ministry of the Environment, was my top choice, and I dropped him a line. A few minutes later, I received a warm welcome.

The next night, here I was, eating dinner with him and his parents – Cristina, his mother, had made chili con carne Texas-style especially for me, and a wonderful watercress fritter, Swiss chard with red sweet peppers, corn on the cob and fresh corn tortillas. She’d outdone herself.

Jose David, for his part, shared with me information about several groups he knows about who are working on interesting projects – a watershed protection project in the eastern province of Baja Verapaz, near the city of Coban, where I have been planning to go already; and a collaborative project of indigenous communities in the Central Highlands who are working together to protect the forests from timber poaching and other destructive incursions. He also showed me an excellent website with topographic maps of the entire country, and gave me his brief overview of the country’s environmental status.

He worries about the petroleum exploration going on in the Lago del Tigre wetlands preserve to the south.

“It’s a very fragile, very special habitat and I just can’t bear to think of what would happen if there were an accident,” he said, and we both shuddered, thinking of the environmental disaster currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Just today, the news emerged that the mile-deep oil well leak is spewing not 1,000 barrels a day, but 5,000, and scientists fear it will wipe out fragile ecosystems along the Gulf Coast.

Jose David has given me his bedroom while he sleeps on a mattress in the living room. What amazing hospitality! It’s a beautiful room, spacious with a huge window looking out onto a tiny back garden. Pictures and mementos from his world travels are everywhere: Santiago Compostela and Madrid, Amsterdam and Africa, Honduras and El Salvador.

Yesterday’s trip was a good one – I sat next to a Guatemalan technology engineer with a renewable energy company who travels to China and Hong Kong regularly for his work.

He told me the Chinese are investing heavily in wind and solar, something I’ve been hearing in other quarters. He told me of driving through miles and miles of windmill farms on the outskirts of Shanghai – “This is not Don Quixote,” he exclaimed. “This is real!”

Meanwhile, we shared a moment of sadness about the massive oil slick approaches the Gulf Coast. Great Britain, he said, is pulling back from offshore drilling. So far, no word on this from the Obama administration.

At the same time, he was troubled by the harsh new Arizona law requiring immigrants to carry ID with them at all times – not surprising, as the law’s passage has dominated newspapers throughout Latin America and drawn criticism from regional leaders.

“Apparently Americans don’t realize that it’s the immigrants who keep the economy going,” he said. “After all, everybody in America comes from Europe. So they are immigrants too!”

It’s not enough to be biodegradeable…

By
Tracy Barnett
Published: January 31, 2010Posted in: Featured, Guadalajara, Mexico, WhyTags: , , , , , , ,
It’s not enough to be biodegradeable…

Life in Guadalajara is not so different from life in Houston. Sometimes, only the language is different.

My friend Alicia, like me, struggles to remember to bring the cloth shopping bags when she goes to the supermarket. This day, she remembered. Here’s a little reminder she likes to keep handy:

“It’s not enough to be biodegradeable; it’s necessary to be bioAGREEABLE.”

I liked the way this clever slogan captured one of the most important principles of sustainability: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” In that order.

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