María José Iturralde
Iturralde is flipping that script. In 2019, Fundación Pachaysana launched its Humans for Abundance program, a radical intervention that involves paying locals to become stewards and restorers of their ancestral lands. Today, 12 families receive monthly paychecks to collectively revitalize 370 acres of what was once farmland and protect another 740 acres of pristine forest.
For Iturralde, the mission is personal. Her grandfather, the former president of Ecuador, signed a resolution while he was in power that absolved Texaco, a U.S. oil company, from responsibility for dumping billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the rainforest, contaminating an estimated two million acres. Iturralde says. 'I feel like my own grandfather is righting the wrongs through me.'
Through the foundation, Iturralde, a former teacher, also operates the Forest School, which teaches local children Indigenous knowledge and promotes the ecological value of the Amazon, cultivating the next generation of restorers.
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San Francisco Chronicle
06-08-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
Burnt offerings, whispering to mountains: Inside Bolivians' rituals for Mother Earth
LA CUMBRE, Bolivia (AP) — Neyza Hurtado was 3 years old when she was struck by lightning. Forty years later, sitting next to a bonfire on a 13,700-foot (4,175-meter) mountain, her scarred forehead makes her proud. 'I am the lightning,' she said. 'When it hit me, I became wise and a seer. That's what we masters are.' Hundreds of people in Bolivia hire Andean spiritual guides like Hurtado to perform rituals every August, the month of 'Pachamama,' or Mother Earth, according to the worldview of the Aymara, an Indigenous people of the region. Pachamama's devotees believe that she awakens hungry and thirsty after the dry season. To honor her and express gratitude for her blessings, they make offerings at home, in their crop fields and on the peaks of Bolivian mountains. 'We come here every August to follow in the footsteps of our elders,' said Santos Monasterios, who hired Hurtado for a Pachamama ritual on a site called La Cumbre, about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the capital city of La Paz. 'We ask for good health and work.' Honoring Mother Earth Offerings made to Pachamama are known as 'mesitas' (or 'little tables'). Depending on each family's wishes, masters like Hurtado prepare one mesita per family or per person. Mesitas are made of wooden logs. On top of them, each master places sweets, grains, coca leaves and small objects representing wealth, protection and good health. Occasionally, llama or piglet fetuses are also offered. Once the mesita is ready, the spiritual guide sets it on fire and devotees douse their offerings with wine or beer, to quench Pachamama's thirst. 'When you make this ritual, you feel relieved,' Monasterios said. 'I believe in this, so I will keep sharing a drink with Pachamama.' It can take up to three hours for a mesita to burn. Once the offerings have turned to ash, the devotees gather and solemnly bury the remains to become one with Mother Earth. Why Bolivians make offerings to Pachamama Carla Chumacero, who travelled to La Cumbre last week with her parents and a sister, requested four mesitas from her longtime spiritual guide. 'Mother Earth demands this from us, so we provide,' the 28-year-old said. According to Chumacero, how they become aware of Pachamama's needs is hard to explain. 'We just know it; it's a feeling,' she said. 'Many people go through a lot — accidents, trouble within families — and that's when we realize that we need to present her with something, because she has given us so much and she can take it back.' María Ceballos, 34, did not inherit her devotion from her family, but from co-workers at the gold mine where she earns a living. 'We make offerings because our work is risky,' Ceballos said. 'We use heavy machinery and we travel often, so we entrust ourselves to Pachamama.' A ritual rooted in time and climate The exact origin of the Pachamama rituals is difficult to determine, but according to Bolivian anthropologist Milton Eyzaguirre, they are an ancestral tradition dating back to 6,000 B.C. As the first South American settlers came into the region, they faced soil and climate conditions that differed from those in the northernmost parts of the planet, where winter begins in December. In Bolivia, as in other Southern Hemisphere countries, winter runs from June to September. 'Here, the cold weather is rather dry,' Eyzaguirre said. 'Based on that, there is a particular behavior in relation to Pachamama.' Mother Earth is believed to be asleep throughout August. Her devotees wish for her to regain her strength and bolster their sowing, which usually begins in October and November. A few months later, when the crops are harvested in February, further rituals are performed. 'These dates are key because it's when the relationship between humans and Pachamama is reactivated,' Eyzaguirre said. 'Elsewhere it might be believed that the land is a consumer good,' he added. 'But here there's an equilibrium: You have to treat Pachamama because she will provide for you.' Bolivians' connection to their land August rituals honor not only Pachamama, but also the mountains or 'apus,' considered protective spirits for the Aymara and Quechua people. 'Under the Andean perspective, all elements of nature have a soul,' Eyzaguirre said. 'We call that 'Ajayu,' which means they have a spiritual component.' For many Bolivians, wind, fire, and water are considered spirits, and the apus are perceived as ancestors. This is why many cemeteries are located in the highlands and why Pachamama rituals are performed at sites like La Cumbre. 'The apus protect us and keep an eye on us,' said Rosendo Choque, who has been a spiritual guide or 'yatiri' for 40 years. He, like Hurtado, said that only a few select people can do they job. Before becoming masters, it is essential that they acquire special skills and ask Pachamama's permission to perform rituals in her honor. 'I acquired my knowledge little by little,' Choque said. 'But I now have the permission to do this job and coca leaves speak to me.' Hurtado said she mostly inherited her knowledge from her grandmother, who was also a yatiri and witnessed how she survived the lightning strike. 'For me, she is the holiest person, the one who made me what I am,' Hurtado said. She said she finds comfort in helping her clients secure a good future, but her close relationship with Pachamama brings her the deepest joy. 'We respect her because she is Mother Earth,' Hurtado said. 'We live in her.'
03-08-2025
Mexico City marks 700 years since its founding by Indigenous people
MEXICO CITY -- Mexico City is marking the 700th anniversary of its founding with a series of public events on Saturday, including artistic performances honoring the city's Indigenous origins. Artists in Indigenous clothing reenacted the founding of the Aztec capital in front of the country's top officials in Mexico City's main square. Later, hundreds of dancers dressed in traditional clothing, feather headdresses, drums, and ankle rattles made of seeds performed sacred dances meant to connect with nature. The anniversary commemorates the establishment of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica, a group also known as the Aztecs, who settled in the Valley of Mexico in 1325. As recorded by early Spanish chroniclers, Mexica elders told of a divine sign from their patron god Huitzilopochtli: an eagle on a cactus, signaling where to settle. That place became Tenochtitlan, the center of Aztec civilization and the site of today's Mexico City. That symbol was later recorded in the Codex Mendoza, which contained historical accounts of the Aztec empire. It became central to Mexican identity and appears today on the national flag. 'Mexico was not born with the arrival of the Spanish; Mexico was born much earlier with the great civilizations,' said President Claudia Sheinbaum in a speech in which she urged the eradication of the racism that still persists in the country. Tenochtitlan began as a village on an island in a lake ringed by volcanic peaks. But historians say many other details that have come down in history are based heavily on legend, and that the exact founding date is unknown. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, they were awed by a city filled with palaces, bridges, canals and bustling trade, according to Spanish chronicler and conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Historian Miguel Pastrana of the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Historic Investigations Institute, an expert on Tenochtitlan, said the weekend's festivities are 'political and civic" and do not reflect the latest historical research. The historical record describes the Mexica as a people who migrated from a place called Aztlan, supposedly an island whose exact location remains unknown. They knew how to fish, gather aquatic plants and hunt birds, as well as build dams, and they tried to settle in several places before arriving in the Valley of Mexico. The main island in the lake was already populated by the Tepaneca people, but they allowed the Mexica to settle there in exchange for tribute payments and other services, Pastrana said. Little by little, the Mexica's power grew. They were strong warriors and commercially prosperous, and they were effective at making alliances with other peoples. Tenochtitlan became a great city at the center of an empire until the Spanish conquered it in 1521.
New York Times
02-08-2025
- New York Times
A Bid to Undo a Colonial-Era Wrong Touches a People's Old Wounds
First it was the British. Then the Christian missionaries. Then the Indian state they had never asked to be a part of. For centuries, the Indigenous Naga people of the Indian subcontinent have struggled to preserve their culture against external forces. Now, Nagas are trying to reclaim a part of that lost history, but the process has been anything but straightforward. Their efforts to repatriate ancestral remains, which have been in a British museum for more than a century, have been 'a trigger for the Nagas,' said Dolly Kikon, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is Naga herself. Naga society has changed immensely since those remains were taken. To contemplate their return means reckoning with those changes, and with how many of them are the result of external forces and violence. ARUNACHAL PRADESH NEPAL Longleng ASSAM NAGALAND Dimapur INDIA MANIPUR MYANMAR CHINA New Delhi INDIA Mumbai Bay of Bengal 200 mileS By The New York Times Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
