Environment

At the entrance, the Tierra Brava farm looks like any other family farm in the rural municipality of Los Palacios, in the westernmost province of Cuba. But as you drive in, you see that the traditional furrows are not there, and that freshly cut grass covers the soil. “For more than five years we’ve been practicing conservation agriculture (CA),” said Onay Martínez, who works 22 hectares of state-owned land. He was referring to a specific kind of agroecology which, besides not using chemicals, diversifies species on farms and preserves the soil using plant coverage and no plowing.

There are two distinct futures of food and farming. One leads to a dead end. A dead planet: poisons and chemical monocultures spreading. The second leads to the rejuvenation of the planet through rejuvenation of biodiversity, soil, water, rejuvenation of small farms diverse, healthy, fresh, ecological food for all.

The Trump administration is increasing the militarization of Central America while expanding mining, destructive mega-dams, and corporate dispossession of indigenous land. Yet local resistance is growing. "We do not wish to be the experiment of the United States," Guatemalan indigenous leader Miguel de Leon Ceto explained. "We are not animals.”

Guatemala is rapidly expanding its energy generation infrastructure with support from Washington and international banks. The construction of mega-dams has been met with a wave of resistance from communities set to be displaced by the projects. Indigenous activists are continuing their struggle in the face of the wider extractivist projects facing the region.

Small measures are no longer enough, as the consequences of an increasingly unstable climate wreak havoc on communities around the world.