Mountain women rebuilding life

The first action we took after the earthquake was to give priority to identifying the damage caused to homes, public buildings such as schools and health centers, as well as services such as drinking water, electricity, communications, to manage with the government the restoration of these services and through solidarity among countrymen to be able to support those families whose homes were most affected.
We also took on the task of meeting with municipal and agrarian authorities, as well as elderly people and with the support of Promotora de Servicios para el Desarrollo S.C. (PRODER) we have been working on identifying a map of risks in the community's territory, a historical account of natural phenomena that have affected community and family life, a calendar of the seasons in which they occur and we train ourselves to identify those natural phenomena that most seriously affect life such as landslides and hurricanes, as well as those human activities that contribute to aggravate the impacts of these phenomena, among which the cultivation of nomadic milpa with the slashing method stands out. , grave and burning and solidarity among countrymen as the main tool to face the effects caused by earthquakes and hurricanes.
In a community assembly and with information from the Disaster Prevention Fund and the Disaster Assistance Fund, the decision was made to create the Municipal Civil Protection Directorate where we elected a female partner with whom we had the opportunity to develop the Municipal Protection Plan Civil. All of the above with a first support from GlobalGiving and PRODER.
With a second support from GlobalGiving and the advisory and training actions of PRODER, we are now working on the economic and food recovery of our community, for this we have been trained in the management and conservation of soil and water to have permanent plots for the cultivation of milpa intercropping perennial crops such as blackberry, in the preparation of compost, in the management of nurseries, in the intercropping of cocoa in coffee plantations and the control of pests and diseases of the crops.
The milpa is the combined cultivation of corn plants, beans, squash, chepiles, quelites and other edible and medicinal plants in the same plot and is the main basis of the diet of our families, the preparation of the plots for the cultivation of milpa It is carried out by the slash-and-burn method.
In a traditional way, a plot is enabled by cutting the trees and weeds, letting them dry and then burning so that the land is clean for cultivation for about 2 to 3 years and later opening a new plot, which contributes to deforestation, with what we see that soils are eroding and degrading due to the effect of the wind and rain, being also exposed to effects by natural phenomena such as earthquakes and hurricanes, among others.
Now in the plots we are building ditches in level curves to infiltrate the rainwater, trenches of harvest waste and branches to conserve humidity and individual terrace for the sowing of blackberry seedlings and fruit trees, in these plots we propose intercrop the cornfield crop.
Another activity that we carry out here in Zacatepec, MIxe is the cultivation of coffee to obtain economic income, however the prolonged droughts and the lack of good practices have affected the cultivation with pests such as rust or they are old plantations and if we add the conditions to this of the conventional coffee market, as it hardly works anymore.
For this reason, we are now working on the renewal of coffee plantations and in an intercropped way we are planting cocoa seedlings that were bought in nurseries and that in 3 years will be starting the production of pods to process them and make chocolate.
A nursery was also built to plant cocoa and expand the plantations interspersed with coffee, we have been learning all this and working with the technical support of Promotora de Servicios para el Desarrollo, as well as in the cornfield cultivation plots with plants of blackberry, fruit trees and cocoa interspersed and with soil and water management and conservation methods.
Finally, two houses were enabled to later serve in the processing of cocoa into chocolate and blackberries into jams to try to give them added value.
We believe that the actions carried out strengthen our capacities for food sovereignty and improve our economy, especially in the context of the COVID 19 pandemic, where we have to strengthen actions for local consumption and generation of family income.

Finally, we would like to thank the support of GlobalGiving and PRODER in order to advance in strengthening our resilience capacities and community solidarity as a means to face future phenomena that affect community and family life.