sustainability Archive

Eco-retreat heals body, spirit and land

Tracy Barnett

Published: May 27, 2010Posted in: Ecotourism, Featured, Guatemala, Sustainable travel, WhyTags: ecolodge, Ecotourism, green travel, Guatemala, sauna, spa, sustainability, sustainable travel, zunil

ZUNIL, Quetzaltenango department, Guatemala – I’m looking out my window at a place where volcanic vapor rises in plumes to meet the descending clouds, a place where the lush green hillsides are a patchwork of small, carefully tended vegetable farms, watered by these mists and fed by the century-old ash of Santa Maria.

In the distance, tucked in the folds of those green hillsides, lies Zunil, a picturesque colonial town that glistens white in the misty morning sun. It’s that mist, escaping in moist clouds from vents in the ground, that makes Las Cumbres the ideal site for an eco-sauna.

Colorful Maya textiles woven in the nearby villages dress the bed, the pillows and the table – a ladies’ huipil, complete with lushly embroidered flowers around the neckline, makes up the tablecloth. A rustic chic permeates the place, from the polished pine vigas or beams overhead to the volcanic stone used to pave the floors and walkways. A museum-like collection of antiques, clay pots and indigenous sculptures compliment the patios and form the heart of the lush gardens.

Everything about the place says “Guatemala,” from the bright marimba music playing in the restaurant to the delectable chocolate-coffee blend I’m drinking, glistening from the oil of the fresh organic beans grown nearby.

Just below me is the Sibal Ulew (Earth Vapor in Quiche) sauna-spa, emanating a tantalizing aroma of not-quite-definable herbs. Last night before dinner I surrendered to the skillful hands of Mirna, the masseuse-in-chief, who treated me to an unforgettable herbal massage. The herbs are grown organically in the onsite garden and collected from the surrounding forests, some of them native herbs used by the Maya for centuries.

(Delfina del Castillo photo)

All the aches and pains of my recent volcanic trek, all the work-related stress of the past months, all the noise and smoke from the city blended away into a dreamy herb-scented mist. This weekend’s adventure was the ideal counterpoint to last weekend’s – exactly what my mind and body needed.

Delfina Castillo de Pérez is hospitality incarnate, exuding a warm friendliness and a down-to-earth charm. She never set out to be the owner of a hotel, however. It was her husband, Florentín Pérez, an agronomist, who decided to buy the land here in order to cultivate mushrooms. He went to France in search of the best seeds, set up his operation here in the mountain mists. But soon Delfina realized the land was being underutilized.

That’s when Delfina got the idea to use part of the land to channel the vapors and use them to create a sauna. “Go ahead – just don’t expect me to be a part of it,” said her husband. “I’m a producer, not a server. My mission is to feed people.”

Delfina started with the largest cleaning job in her life, as the valley was deforested and filled with trash. It’s hard to imagine now, looking around at the immaculate grounds.

The sauna was a hit with people from the local community, and soon word began to spread and people came from Xela and from the language schools. Soon people wanted to eat, and then the restaurant was born – but not just any restaurant. A renowned French chef, Daniel Rafanel, came and helped her design the restaurant and the menu.

“You’re not going to serve hamburgers and pizza and carbonated beverages here,” he instructed. “People come here to detoxify, so let’s give them something healthy and pure.”

Following his lead, the restaurant offers vegetarian, low-fat, integral and inasmuch as possible, organic options. Instead of Coca-Cola and Fanta, guests can choose from a variety of fresh fruit drinks and herbal teas.

After the restaurant was staffed, the guests wanted rooms to stay in, and the hotel was born, each room with spectacular views and its own sauna, or a steam-heated Jacuzzi, or both. And soon the guests wanted to exercise, so the gym and squash court and billiards room were installed. Now there’s a conference room for gatherings, as well.

From the beginning, Delfina wanted the operation to contribute to healing – not just of her clients, but of the land. She and her staff took advantage of the geothermal energy to heat the water for the tubs, and constructed a gravity-powered drinking water system from the surrounding hills. They’ve implemented a waste separation program and had her staff drive the recyclables into town.

They’ve outfitted the place with energy-efficient lighting and water-efficient appliances and use only biodegradable cleaning agents. They’ve begun a reforestation project on the adjacent hillside, planting 5,000 trees and building a terraced staircase using discarded tires. And the entire staff, including Delfina, goes out on a roadside cleaning binge each month, collecting the trash thrown along the highway by passersby.

(Delfina del Castillo photo)

They planted a huge organic garden, which produces an estimated 40 percent of the restaurant’s vegetables, plus the herbs for the spa.This is no small accomplishment in a region known for its abundant vegetable production, but far from organic, with sprays and powders being applied everywhere.

Now the staff is in the final phase of certification for Guatemala’s new Great Green Deal program. It’s been five months of intensive staff training before opening time, from 6 to 8 in the morning; consultation with experts of all kinds; reviewing and improving all the procedures.

“It’s been our Everest,” says Delfina with a laugh.

Las Cumbres is ideally situated for an immersion in the best the highlands has to offer, and Delfina works with local outfitters Adrenalina Tours, a Xela-based company also working toward Great Green Deal certification. Tour options run the gamut from volcano-climbing to culture tours, but one of the best is right down the road from Las Cumbres.

The picturesque Zunil is a charmer, with its colorfully dressed women and busy produce market and the stunning white colonial-era church at its heart. Surrounded by lush green slopes of the surrounding volcanoes, the village is a feast for the eyes, especially on Sunday mornings when the locals overflow the church and gather all around the front to hear the bilingual Mass delivered in Spanish and Quiche.

Further on up into the hills, the road takes you through the clouds and past agricultural workers harvesting onions and carrots, cabbage and beets. Soon the fields give way to sheer rock faces, dripping with people-sized ferns and other prehistoric-looking plants.

The mists are rising now, filling the valleys, as we make our way to Fuentes Georginas, a series of hot springs set amongst those ferns and cliffs where you can bathe with the locals or rent a rustic spa house with your own hot tub and beds and spend the night.

That is, if you haven’t already reserved one of the elegantly appointed rooms at Las Cumbres, which I have. My sauna awaits.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From Guatemala to Missouri: Swallowing the sadness

Tracy Barnett

Published: April 5, 2010Posted in: Featured, Forest protection, Guatemala, WhyTags: environment, Guatemala, sustainability

From Guatemala to Missouri: Swallowing the sadness

Goodbye, Livingston

GUATEMALA CITY – I greeted the sunrise at the Livingston boat dock with a heavy heart, clambered aboard the lightweight skiff that passes as a ferry and braced myself for the sea-spray-slamming commute to Puerto Barrios, where I would catch the bus to the capital, spend the night in a hostel and grab the first flight home to Missouri.

There in the harsh and sterile environment of a hospital lies my grandfather, the farmer, a man who can’t stand to lie still or be indoors for too long. Weakened to the point of surrender by a string of virulent infections, he asked the doctor yesterday to give him a pill to end it all. Hardy as an old oak tree, he’s weathered many a storm, and this isn’t like him. He’s going home with my parents tonight on hospice care. Two days might be too long, but there’s no help for it. I’m praying to be able to see him once again, but more importantly, for the pain to end.

My first week in Guatemala, seen from the lively Caribbean port town of Livingston, was upbeat, filled with noise and movement from the Holy Week celebrations, meetings with bright and engaged community leaders and time well spent in the jungle and on the beach. I took a Garifuna cultural ecotour with Mega and Amanda at Rasta Mesa, a community center in the heart of the local Garifuna community that strives to reinforce cultural pride and ecological sensibilities among local youth while providing hands-on classes and adventures for tourists and volunteers.

I also met with leaders of Ak Tenamit, an autonomous Maya school that is changing the lives of villagers and creating a dynamic new leadership for the years ahead. I made plans to visit the school this week.

I knew the sadness would come – I’ve read too much of the history and politics of Guatemala to expect that it will be easy, riven as the country was by nearly four decades of brutal civil war, and ravaged as it has been by the exploitation of multinational corporations.

Yesterday I read in La Cuerda, an ecofeminist publication produced here in the capital, that more than two thirds of Guatemala’s richly biodiverse forests have already been lost in the last half-century. Every year, more than 70,000 hectares of forest is lost – at the rate of 200 football fields a day.

My first glimpse into the dark side came early in the week as I prepared to meet with the regional coordinators of FUNDA-ECO, the country’s largest environmental group. As I reviewed their website, I saw to my surprise that one of their forest rangers had recently been assassinated, and that others, including the director, had received death threats.

Cleopatra and Justo, who work with communities throughout the Izabal province in the east, reassured me that they were being careful and they didn’t anticipate any further problems. I sensed an uneasiness and resolved to delve further in the week ahead.

Today, in fact, I was scheduled to head to the preserve at San Gil, where Don Samuel had worked protecting the forest for decades before he was shot to death as he worked in his office in January. His job was to report timber poachers, illicit ranching operations and other threats to the area, and his colleagues believe he angered the wrong person.

Until today, however, I managed to hold the sadness at bay. My self-appointed task is to focus on the success stories – to show where personal and collective commitment and initiative are making a difference. There would be no wallowing in negativity. I couldn’t afford it.

Nonetheless, there it was. I felt it spread as I stared out the window at the misty purple mountains heading inland from the coast. I’d longed to see those verdant hills for years, reading about the resplendent quetzal and the toucan and the macaw and heroic efforts to preserve their rare habitat, and the heroic struggles of the native peoples to protect their lands and their way of life.

Now, however, as we approached those misty mountains, I was dismayed to see them brown and barren. A few were hacked by machetes and burned to make way for milpas in the traditional way of slash-and-burn agriculture. More of them were denuded to provide pasture for cattle. On still others, reason eluded me – like an impossibly steep hillside where I watched as a man braced himself and his chainsaw to cut the last remaining tree in a terrace of stumps. At the foot of the hill, as if in silent resistance, a limbless, disembodied trunk sprouted stubborn leaves from what remained of a cleft.

I rode along in silence. Surely it would end, and we’d come to the lush forest soon, I thought. Ah, there was a skein of mist hanging over some purple mountains in the distance. But as we approached, more brown, stripped hillsides. Fields striped with plastic, awaiting planting – strawberries? – whole faces of hillsides slumped to the ground below where no trees remained to shield them from the fierce tropical rains.

The good Guatemalan grandmother seated next to me, with her rhinestone-studded sandals and her matching bag, eyes me curiously as I lift my camera to shoot the environmental disaster unfolding around me. I can’t explain. I can’t help it that I see the things I see. I’ve always been this way.

We crossed over a river, cloudy with runoff and an unwholesome greenish growth. Downstream, the women were scrubbing their laundry on the rocks.

Did these men with their chainsaws not see what I saw? Those rains had begun yesterday as I still lay in my bed, hammering the roof with a violent intensity, hour after hour.

We passed a dusty, barren pasture, crisscrossed with bleached patches of grey grass. What were those cattle eating – dirt?

I thought again of my grandfather, a hardscrabble dirt farmer in the early years, nourishing the earth with his own sweat. Year after year he labored to restore the soils of the degraded and eroded farm he had worked long years in a factory to purchase, the same farm his father had ruined and lost in the Great Depression.
I thought of the care he took to preserve the trees on his land, where I can still see in my mind’s eye his small herd of cattle grazing sustainably in the shade. I thought of his love for the land, of his deep knowledge of every plant, every animal, every season and its vagaries, knowledge that would leave this earth with him. I thought of the time he put his gun away to hunt no more.

“I looked at that squirrel, and I saw him looking at me. And I just didn’t have the heart to do it.” He laughed at himself. Growing up the son of a trapper, supplementing his family’s diet with the occasional rabbit, squirrel or deer, there was a time it was needed. This was not that time.

I knew he would be saddened, too, by what I saw.

We’re at the end of the dry season, I reminded myself. Next time I come this way, the plants will have grown up and everything will be green again.

That was when the limestone mine loomed ahead of me. The whole side of a mountain had been removed to grind into gravel for cement. Then another, and another. The white powder covered everything.

“Cementos San Antonio” was proudly painted in white on the barren hillside.

“Sal si puede,” read a sign – the name of a river? A town? Literally, “Leave if you can.”

It was no use. Some days you just have to swallow the sadness and move on. Guatemala City, the long flight home and my grandfather await.

It’s not enough to be biodegradeable…

Tracy Barnett

Published: January 31, 2010Posted in: Featured, Guadalajara, Mexico, WhyTags: Biodegradeable, environment, Latin America, Mexico, plastic bags, reuseable bags, sustainability, waste reduction

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.

Coffee with the Subcoyote

Tracy Barnett

Published: January 14, 2010Posted in: Alberto Ruz, Ecovillages, Featured, Mexico, Mexico City, Permaculture, WhyTags: Alberto Ruz Buenfil, Ecovillages, Huehuecoyotl, Latin America, Rainbow Peace Caravan, sustainability

By Tracy L. Barnett
Yesterday I had the rare pleasure of meeting and visiting with a true original – a man who, together with a core group of compatriots, has done more for the environmental movement in Latin America than perhaps anyone else, and has done it in his own inimitable way.

Alberto Ruz Buenfil, otherwise known as Subcoyote Alberto, would be the first to say he didn’t do it alone – there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of collaborators along the way, and I hope to meet many of them in my coming travels. But there is no doubt that in a lifetime dedicated to social change, and in the 13 years he dedicated to the Rainbow Caravan for Peace, he inspired a generation of writers, artists, gardeners and activists dedicated to a more sustainable future – including yours truly.

Find more videos like this on World Viewz

Alberto grew up surrounded by the Mayan mysteries of Palenque, where his father, the internationally known archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, discovered the most important ceremonial structure in the ancient city, the subterreanean tomb of Pakal the Great. The younger Alberto went on to study everything from chemical engineering to economics, political science and finally theater, first at the Autonomous University of Mexico and then in Cuba.

The Vietnam War shifted his life into a different focus when he joined the anti-war movement and traveled to the United States, spending time with Chicano leaders and the Black Panthers, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopians and all manner of social change currents erupting at the time. He settled into the life of a nomad, traveling in Africa, India and the Far East, studying intentional communities from Sweden’s Bauhaus to Israel’s kibbutzim to the ashrams of India. It was in India that he launched his first nomadic theater tribe, the Hathi Babas, and later The Illuminated Elephants, which traveled throughout the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala performing, entertaining and spreading seeds of a different way of life, one based on peace, sustainability and mutual respect.

In 1982 he finally decided to take a break from the nomadic life and plant his roots, returning to Mexico with members of his tribe to form Huehuecoyotl. The community was built on sustainable design principles, making it the country’s first Ecovillage. It was here that he took the name Coyote, based on the name of his new community. Huehuecoyotl means “old, old coyote,” and he began a series of communiques with the name “Viejo Coyote.”

The call of the road never left him, however, and in 1996, he formed the Rainbow Peace Caravan, taking the lessons of the ecovillage with him. One of the group’s first stops was in Chiapas, where they participated in a council with the Zapatistas.

“I had always identified with the Mayans,” Alberto explained. From his conversations with Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos, his new moniker evolved: Subcoyote Alberto Ruz. “I was leaving the community and it was time for someone else to take charge,” he pointed out. “So I became Sub-Coyote.”

The title is a fitting one for a person whose lifelong commitment is expressed with a touch of whimsey; the seriousness of the lessons taught by the nomadic tribe was always leavened and livened with theater and the arts, storytelling and dance, and a sense of good fun.

(Galeria Tarso Sarraf/Flickr)

Hundreds of people from all walks of life joined the caravan at different points along the way, particularly at the international gathering in Cuzco, Peru, “The Call of the Condor” in 2003. That was when I became aware of this traveling phenomenon, because my sister Tami joined them for awhile. Her story of the experience left an indelible impression that was to tug at me for seven years until I finally succumbed. Now, in a strange way, I’m following the Coyote’s trail, and my sister will join me along the way.

The caravan continued all the way to Tierra del Fuego, and at this point the Subcoyote had planned to end it – “unless there was a miracle,” as he recalls it.

Indeed, there was a miracle. Brazil’s then-Minister of Culture, the famed musician Gilberto Gil, invited the caravan to come and travel through the country giving workshops on sustainable living. The caravan rolled northward and through the deepest Amazon, spending four years in some of the poorest regions of the country.

Finally, in August of 2009, Alberto has returned home to Huehuecoyotl. But not to rest on his laurels. At the age of 65, when most people might assume they’ve earned a peaceful retirement, he’s begun a new project, at the behest of Mexican bestselling author Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate): he’s joined the staff at the Casa de Cultura Jesús Reyes Heroles in Coyoacán, Mexico City’s beautiful historic neighborhood, to look for ways to share the lessons of the Rainbow Peace Caravan with the at-risk youth of the district.

I caught up with the Subcoyote just as he was beginning to settle into his new job, and we shared coffee and stories. There’s much more to share than I have room to tell in a blog entry, but watch this spot for selected cuts from the two hours of video I shot with him.

Next month, we’ll pick up the conversation where we left off when I visit him at his weekend home in Huehuecoyotl and meet his extended family.

The Organi-K whirlwind

Tracy Barnett

Published: January 13, 2010Posted in: Climate Change, Featured, Mexico City, Organi-K, Permaculture, Reforestation, Transportation, Urban green space, WhyTags: climate change, COP16, Ecobarrios, environment, green roofs, Latin America, Mexico, Mexico City, sustainability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Southward bound

Tracy Barnett

Published: January 7, 2010Posted in: Featured, The Esperanza Project, WhyTags: environment, Latin America, sustainability, The Esperanza Project, travel

By Tracy L. Barnett
ST. LOUIS, MO. – Today’s the day.

I’ve made my list and checked it a million times; selected and reselected my gear; said my goodbyes and received good wishes and safe travel blessings from near and far. I’ve left my car keys, my smart phone and my GPS behind. I’ll be making my way by foot now and by mass transit; everything I’ll need is either in my pack or shoulder bag, or it’s something I’ll have to find along the way, or live without.

I’ve been on multiple deadlines for weeks, with barely a moment to linger over a cup of tea with a loved one. Now the last loved one has pulled away from the curb, I’ve checked my backpack and I’ve made my way through security with an hour to spare, and there’ll be lingering aplenty.

Today, the only thing on my list is Mexico City.

There in the Mexican megalopolis, people are still rushing to make appointments – and I will too, tomorrow. But this afternoon I’ll greet a climate 40 degrees warmer and a mindset to match. I’ll slow down and take time to think; to read a book; to chat with the people I meet along the way. I’ll take time to breathe and look around.

“Are you excited?” my daughter texted me last night as I checked my list for the millionth time.

“Not yet,” I responded. “Just a little panicky: Have I forgotten something? Will I miss my flight? Do I have everything I need?”

Now, however, as the coffee does its work and boarding time approaches, I have a moment to reflect on the year ahead. Yes, I’m excited. Also apprehensive – and curious – and a little bit sleepy. But mostly I’m grateful.

In the year ahead, my plan is to travel the length of Latin America, from Mexico to Patagonia, documenting the Latin American environmental movement all along the way for The Esperanza Project and other publications. I hope you will follow my journey on both sites. The Esperanza Project will be focused on telling the stories of protagonists in the sustainability movement in the Americas; Roads Less Traveled will be about my personal experience, part travel narrative, part advice for a new generation of digital nomads. At the end, I’ll have a book to write and perhaps a documentary to put together, as I will be shooting video as well.

Not many people have the opportunity to take a year to follow their dream. I am hoping that I can do something bigger with this trip – to do what all dreamers hope to do, to make a difference, for myself, for others and for the planet. But even if I don’t, it’s the adventure of a lifetime, and with that, I’m satisfied.

For those of you who have offered your support, your prayers and your ideas and suggestions, I thank you. Thanks most of all for reading, and check this spot soon, and also The Esperanza Project. You can subscribe by e-mail or RSS feed from both of the sites, and/or you can follow me on Facebook (both as a fan of The Esperanza Project and as a friend of ME – And also on Twitter, @esperanzaprojec and @thirstyboots07.

I don’t know how this story will end any more than you do. But won’t it be fun to find out?

A special appeal

Tracy Barnett

Published: December 31, 2009Posted in: Featured, The Esperanza Project, WhyTags: environment, Latin America, sustainability, The Esperanza Project

Somewhere to the south of us, an indigenous farmer is raising his voice against the eradication of ancient seed stocks by corporate interests. An army of volunteer gardeners is sowing a food security system on rooftops, patios and abandoned lots. A tribe in the Amazon is using Google Earth to give virtual tours of its ancestral forests in a bid to build global support for their preservation. A troupe of young bicyclists is plotting colorful new ways to capture the public’s attention and steer its city policy toward the path of sustainability.

As forests burn, icecaps melt and sea levels rise, people at the grassroots aren’t waiting for the government to fix things for them. Nowhere is this more evident than in Latin America.

We in the United States hear little of this, as our news sources dedicate very little ink to the work of world changers at the local level, and even less to those of the Global South. The Esperanza Project seeks to shift this balance with a focused look at the eco-heroes who are dedicating their imaginations, their passions and in some cases their very lives to the cause of a sustainable future.

Next week, I’ll begin a yearlong journey aimed at bringing the work of some of these unsung heroes to light. By sharing their stories, I hope to inspire a greater sense of the global nature of our struggle. My goal is to help shift the media imbalance that favors the North over the South, the powerful over the powerless, the sensational and catastrophic over the constructive and gradual, and the large over the small.

This will be accomplished on many levels, from The Esperanza Project website itself, to the ripple effect created by training a network of volunteer contributors and giving them a platform on which to publish. Meanwhile my own writing will target US audiences in a variety of media.

None of this, of course, occurs without dinero. The Esperanza Project has incorporated as a nonprofit organization and we are seeking funding and sponsors. This process takes time, however, and the expenses have already begun to mount.

I am writing to you as 2009 draws to a close to ask you to consider making a tax-deductible contribution to our cause. The Esperanza Project is a low-budget operation run on volunteer energy and passion, so you can be sure that your money will be used with extreme care and frugality.

Now’s the time that nonprofit media can step in to fill the growing void formed by dying newspapers, and it can do so in a creative and meaningful way, but it will require support from its readers. Be a part of The Esperanza Project – we promise we will make you proud.

Sincerely,

Tracy L. Barnett and The Esperanza Project volunteers

P.S. Whether or not you contribute financially, there is much you can do to support The Esperanza Project. Learn more at www.TheEsperanzaProject.org/about and www.TheEsperanzaProject.org/get-involved.

Thanks for reading!

Contribute by clicking on the PayPal button below to enter your credit card or bank account number, or send a check or money order to Tracy L. Barnett, 161 Lovera Ave., San Antonio, Texas, 78212, with “Esperanza Project” in the memo field. Thank you!

Greening the barrios in Mexico City

Tracy Barnett

Published: October 28, 2009Posted in: Mexico City, Organi-K, Permaculture, Urban green space, What, WhyTags: Arnold Ricalde, Ecobarrios, Latin America, Mexico, Mexico City, Noelle Romero, Organi-K, permaculture, sustainability, urban farming

<!--:en-->Greening the barrios in Mexico City<!--:-->

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dulce and Noelle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See the slide show here.

Mexico City Ecological Park: A wilderness restored

Tracy Barnett

Published: October 27, 2009Posted in: Featured, Pronatura, ReforestationTags: Ajusco, aquifer, Latin America, Mexico City, Pronatura, Reforestation, sustainability, water conservation

<!--:en-->Mexico City Ecological Park: A wilderness restored<!--:-->

Dahlias were first cultivated here by the Aztecs.

This could be any other forest on the outskirts of any other city, I think to myself as the path curves through a grassy field, past a burst of orange sunflowers and into the shade of a mossy oak grove. Then Guadalupe stops and gestures for us to take a seat on the cool boulders in the clearing.

“Close your eyes,” she says. “Breathe deeply. Feel the peace that is in this place.”

Far in the distance, the murmur of traffic dissolves into the timeless rustle of the wind in the trees.

I do feel the peace; but my mind is straying back to what Guadalupe has just told me about this place, and it defies imagining.

Nature is a classroom for Guadalupe Nuñez.

Just two decades ago, this ferny hillside was virtually indistinguishable from the city below. And had it not been for Ajusco’s position as one of the most important aquifer recharge zones in Central Mexico, and a political drama that is still playing out to this day, it would have remained that way.

Este podría ser cualquier bosque en las faldas de cualquier ciudad en el mundo, me pensé caminando por un campo de pasto, pasando unas flores naranjas y entrando la sombra de un bosquecillo de encinos. De repente Guadalupe para y nos indica al sentarnos sobre las piedras frescas.

“Cierrense los ojos,” dice. “Respiren. Sienten la paz que llene este lugar.”

Lejos, en la distancia, el murmullo del tráfico disuelve bajo el susurro del viento en los árboles.

Siento la paz, pero sigo pensando en lo que Guadalupe me acaba de contar sobre estes terrenos, y casi no lo puedo creer.