Agroecology
In communal engagements with the land, a collective of people interlace their memories, voices, stories, and dreams. While tending to the land, a collective rhythm of sowing, seeding, and planting emerges. The shared vegetable gardens forge connections that transcend the divisions exacerbated by extractive capitalism.
Women’s laughter and children’s playing blend with the fragile hope of an alternative future that they seed together. Gathered around them are community men who want different life conditions to the ones offered by mining. Unified, as if all were “sheltered by the shade of the same tree,” life-making practices strengthen proximity to the threatened land and waters.
The flowers that unexpectedly burst in small lemon trees symbolize futures charged with promise, renewal, and possibility. Flourishing happens in the reciprocal and deep relation between women-land-waters: The women’s nourishment and care entanglement is in constant reciprocity with the vitality of the Andean soil. Amid the fragmentation that mining corporations purposely create and maintain, lemon trees remake a world.
The wisdom of Andean women is the undisputed life force that orients the agroecology decision-making and practices in Nabon. Through their leadership, the community decides to plant fruit trees. Some do it to diversify food for their families, others to increase their livelihood; yet for others is a way of reconnecting with the memories of the land and reclaiming their relationship with their territory.
Avocados, peaches, anonas, tree tomatoes, walnuts, lemons, and oranges are spread throughout the land. Each tree becomes an echo of the past and their ancestral practices– a reminder of the wisdom this community has accumulated over time and continues to hold.
Working with the land brings a collective sense of hope and makes it possible to imagine futures free of extraction.
Resistance also involves walking in the urban streets demanding clean water and reminding the public that there is no life without water.
The community again and again shouts “A future without mining”.
