Manos a la Tierra! I had to commemorate my time with this group with this.
“The soil has life,” Alier motioned. “Well, of course, we know about the microorganisms and things living in the soil, but it also has the components of our lives. This is how we eat. How we grow sustenance.”
Manos a la Tierra is a more experienced group that @plantwpurpose works with in the mountains of Nuxiño.
I spent a whole afternoon with Alier, Esperanza, and Sra. Perez watching them demonstrate their process of growing saplings in a nursery from a small seed bed, to planting trees across a whole hillside, to seeing the flourishing crop diversity that comes further down the line. This group was dedicated- they worked knowing that those lines drawn by Alier between the quality of their soil and the quality of their life was all too real.
I arrived in Oaxaca on a rainy night and it rained pretty much every day since. The region is hopefully coming off of a five year drought which only increases the urgency around this current planting season.
The way they still took the time to invite me into their process throughout all that was extremely generous. Their soil tells the story of their lives.