Multi-Actor Dialogues:
Biocultural Diversity and Social-Ecological Resilience
Mauricio Cervantes
Artist and intercultural administrator, since 2012 Mauricio Cervantes founded two organizations to promote, train and bring visibility to environmental and communitary topics: Matria Jardín Arterapéutico and the Centro de Divulgación de Abejas Nativas de Oaxaca (CEDIANA for its acronym in spanish). Matria Jardín Arterapéutico works with over 10,000 people in programs to sensibilize and inform about the possibility of urban gardens in environmental, dietary, artistic and social terms. He has involved biologists, environmentalists, beekeepers, peasants, melipona culturists (a specific type of bees´keepers), forestal engineers, construction workers, chefs, bakers, yoga teachers, anthropologists, pedagogues, healers, storytellers, art curator and dozens of artistic producers of virtually every area imaginable.
The wide scope of his strategies go from the creation of artistic works- with a personal or interdisciplinary touch- that address among other topics, topics about biodiversity and the indigenous myths related to fertility, the continuum dictated by the seasonal changes or the treasured words that the languages that still persist have named the flora and fauna that is originary from our country, to the staging of said works in alternative spaces and those especifically meant for art expositions, with which he widens the diversity of the audience.
Francisco Xavier Martínez Esponda, director and operative technician at the Mexican Center for Environmental Rights (CEMDA for its acronym in spanish). He lives in Rancho Viejo, 3 miles from the city of Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. He is a lawyer by the Universidad Iberoamericana (2002-2006) with a Masters in Tropical Ecology on behalf of the Tropical Investigations Center (CITRO for is acronym in spanish) of the Universidad Veracruzana (2014), he is also a advocate of human rights, particularly working on behalf of the right to a healthy environment, interdependent with other fundamental rights such as water, health, information, participation, access to justice and for the specific case of indigenous communities, cultural identity, territory and autonomy. In his free time he likes to be with family and friends, work on his grove, writing and climb mountains.
In the CEMDA he works with communities, providing workshops on environmental defense, legal counseling and strategic litigation. These activities have resulted in his office collaborating in paradigmatic cases in the defense of biocultural territories as are the Acueducto Independencia, Wirikuta, the transgenic soybean in the Yucatan Peninsula and mining in general, all with the goal to develop and encourage the human rights regime, a pluricultural state and participative democracy in Mexico.
Xavier Martínez Esponda
WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS
Researcher and emeritus professor in the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia /Mexico. Member of the Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad A.C. , the National System of Researchers (MExico) since 1987, level III. Eckart holds a Masters in Social Anthropology, ENAH; a Doctorate in Ethnology; he is a member of the Programa de Estudios Avanzados en Desarrollo Sustentable y Medio Ambiente (LEAD-Mexico), El Colegio de Mexico.
Some of his publications are focused on society and environment including: 2016 Boege E. and B. Torres (coordinators). Una coexistencia imposible: Maíces nativos y maíces transgénicos. Número especial de aniversario. El Jarocho Cuántico. La Jornada de Veracruz; 2015 Boege E. Hacia una antropología ambiental para la apropiación social del patrimonio biocultural de los pueblos indígenas en América Latina. En DMeA Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente UFPR Vol 35, dezembro 2015 Sistema electrónico de Revistas SER; 2013 Kato, R. Ortega P. , Boege E., A Wegier y otros, Origen y diversidad del maíz. en : E. Alvarez B. y A. Piñero El maíz en peligro ante los transgénicos- Un análisis integral sobre el caso de México. UNAM, UV; Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad; 2013 Boege E. “Minería: El despojo de los indígenas de sus territorios en el siglo XXI”. en: La Jornada del Campo número 69 (15 de jun de 2013), among others.
Eckart Boege
Pedro Álvarez Icaza
For more than 30 years, he has focused his efforts on helping the environmental politics and the administrative management of natural resources in the country, through different governmental dependencies in Mexico, academic societies and the civil societies. His main goal is to gain strategic alliances that allow us to keep the landscapes preserved and diversified, to provide economic benefits to the communities that inhabit them.
He was the General Director of the SEMARNAP (for its acronym in spanish). He was also General Director of the Natural Resource Commission of the City of Mexico and he is currently working as the General Coordinator of Corridors and Biological Resources in the National Commission for Knowledge and the Proper uses of the Biodiversity (CONABIO for its acronym in spanish)
Son of indigenous Nahua parents, Jesús Alberto Flores Martínez was born September 16th of 1987 in Chicontepec, Veracruz, Mexico. He has a Major in Intercultural Management for Development and has a Masters in Education for Interculturality and Sustainability by the Universidad Veracruzana.
Jesús specializes in the study of indigenous cultures and languages of his country, specifically, masewaltlahtolli (náhuatl). He works on promoting and preserving indigenous languages, intercultural education, medicinal plants, human rights and territory defense, alphabetization, production of digital materials about language, ethnomusicology, preserving biocultural heritage, among others. As a part of this professional experience, he has been full-time professor in the Universidad Veracruzana, he has translated from his native language, has organized workshops and training for native speakers of different indigenous languages (Náhuatl, Mazateco, Cuicateco, Chinanteco, Popoluca, Maya and Portuguese) for the production of multimedia materials. He has collaborated with subtitling in Náhuatl materials for scientific diffusion. He is the producer of “Masewaltlatzotzoontli” (músic of the masewalli), a documentary selected to participate in diverse national and international indigenous film festivals.
Jesús Alberto Flores Martínez
Elena Lazos Chavero
Professor and Researcher at the Institute of Social Investigations (Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales), UNAM since 1992.
Biology Major, UNAM. Masters in Social Anthropology, ENAH. PhD in Anthropology and in Social-economical Development, EHESS, Paris. Awards: “Fray Bernardino de Sahagún,” INAH (1993). “Distinción Jóvenes Académicos Ciencias Sociales-UNAM (1998), CLACSO Senior Scholarship (2001). Lectureship: Latinoamericana-Univ. Zurich (2003 and 2013). Lectureship: Mexico- Montreal Univ. (2009). Lectureship: “Joaquín Meade”- El Colegio de San Luis (2010). Visiting Fellow in the Institute of Development Studies (Univ. Sussex, England, 2015). Research stays: Berlin (Freie Universität,Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 1994), Switzerland (ETH-Z Univ. Zürich, 2001-2003), Germany (Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg, 2004), Guest Professor at Univ. Zürich (2013-2014).
Guillermo Villalobos Moreira
The Southern Bolivian plateau has a combination of an important ecological diversity and a significant cultural presence. The Aymara and Quechua communities that inhabit this region possess an ancient agricultural tradition. In the last three decades, this region has suffered a deep process of environmental and cultural transformation, mainly as a result of the new connections and ties that these communities have created with the regional and global market through the commercialization of local agricultural products, such as quinoa. This has caused an expansion and a predominance of the agricultural frontier, the reduction of livestock, the increase of deforestation and soil erosion. In tandem, the social, political and economic structure of families and communities have changed.
Within this context, I have developed a project to analyze this complex social-ecological system from an ethnobiological perspective. In this way, understanding how the changes in memory, identity, and territoriality have occurred, I intend to analyze how these transformations help to build and rebuild a relationship between nature and society within these communities. My final goal is to understand how the local notion of this relationship can be translated into local models of conservation, sustainability and social and environmental resilience.
Mariana Gullco
Born in 1974 (Buenos Aires), Mariana grew up in Mexico. She studied Visual Arts in the ENAP, UNAM. She attended painting and drawing workshops in the Academie de la Grade Chaumiére in Paris (France), and she has also studied in the Philosophy and Literature Faculty in UNAM and in the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. Her artwork is made up of different installations, sculptures, and images. Her pieces are made from domestic and reusable materials; she has used diverse techniques of traditional weaving and embroidery in her artwork in an organic and ludic way to question our daily lives as individuals and as a society, as well as in our relationship with the environment. She has shown her artwork in more than 40 collective and 12 individual exhibits in Mexico, Argentina, United States, Canada, England, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, China, Belize, and Cuba.
Her artwork has been recognized with an Honorific Mention in the Iberoamerican Design Biennale, 2014; a scholarship from the “Sistema Nacional de Creadores del Arte”, FONCA (Mexico) 2010-2013; in 2006 she won a scholarship in the artistic exchange program “Intercambio de Residencias Artísticas del FONCA” - The “Chambre Blanche” in Quebec (Canada) and the scholarship “Jóvenes Creadores del FONCA “ (2004-2005); she also won a second place in the III Internacional Standard Biennale in Tijuana, and the National Prize “Premio Nacional de Instalación in the National Visual Arts Biennale in Yucatán (Mexico) in 2002, and in 2001 her project “Té”, won the funding of Artes por todas Partes, from the Instituto de Cultura de la Ciudad de México.
Ronny Roma Ardón
I have collaborated for six years in a research process in participatory action and biocultural co-investigation with the Chinanteca communities from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. I previously developed some actions in Guatemala that gave me the basis to contribute to the process in which I currently find myself participating. Afterwards, I collaborated in the development of the participatory methods and adapted biocultural methods in other regions. This allowed me to understand how dynamic and complex biocultural diversity is and how important it is for researchers, politicians and the general public to understand resilience, as a part of a collective process that transcends race, beliefs and social positions, but is necessary in light of the reality we are facing.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Natural Resources Institute from Manitoba University. Ex-director of the Natural Resources Institute. President of the Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) with various national and international projects. Completed his Ph.D. at McGill University and continued to teach at Brock University before joining Manitoba University in 1991. Berkes is one of the world's leaders in the field of social-ecological systems. His research covers social and natural sciences, the social-ecological resilience and the traditional ecological knowledge, among other topics.
Both his books on social-ecological systems “Navigating Social-Ecological Systems” (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and “Linking Social and Ecological Systems” (Cambridge University Press, 1998) have helped to reconceptualize ecosystems. His book “Sacred Ecology” (Routledge, 2018), now in its fourth edition is for many, a fundamental book on indigenous knowledge. Berkes has 250 reviewed publications and more than 50,000 quotes in Google Scholar. He participated in the MIllennium Ecosystem Assessment. His recent awards include that from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), CEESP Inaugural Award for Meritorious Research (2016), IASC Elinor Ostrom Award for Senior Scholar (2015), and Ecological Society of America Sustainability Science Award (2014) for his book “Sacred Ecology”
Fikret Berkes
Ayuuk ja’ay (Mixe) de Oaxaca, México y estudiante de doctorado en Ciencias Sociales en la Universidad de Wageningen, Países Bajos. Mi viaje académico y profesional ha sido también personal porque me ha llevado de ser una tecnóloga a una aprendiz de ciencias sociales para reflexionar sobre las dinámicas sociales en torno a aquello que muchos definimos como “desarrollo rural o agrícola”.
Como investigadora, mi trabajo actual se enfoca en entender los procesos de inclusión y exclusión social en intervenciones tecnológicas en el sector agrícola en México. Uno de mis capítulos de tesis es en torno al maíz nativo para el que empleo un concepto denominado “culturas tecnológicas”, es decir, el maíz nativo es una tecnología que adquiere un significado y connotación especial en la vida y dinámica de nuestros pueblos y que muchas veces es minimizado o ignorado. En mi trabajo el maíz nativo y la dinámica comunitaria se combinan en algo que denominamos “mejoramiento comunitario de la milpa” y que ha sobrevivido a los procesos de migración, globalización y cambio climático.
Como mujer indígena, retomar el tema del maíz nativo es una necesidad. Para nosotros (los pueblos indígenas y campesinos), el maíz nativo y la milpa son una parte primordial de nuestra identidad, cultura, modos de vida, de nuestra relación con la naturaleza y la preservación de la biodiversidad y resiliencia.
Tania Eulalia Martínez Cruz
Biologist with a specialty in managing natural resources and a student in Environmental Engineering, consultant on sustainability thematics, especially on indigenous communities and biodiversity. She has experience in productive projects with rural communities around the country, through the incorporation of local knowledge for the development of plans on managing different species. She is a professor at the Instituto Superior Intercultural Ayuuk, in Jaltepec de Candayoc, Cotzocón Mixe, Universidad Indígena.
Among her accomplishments is to have been recognized with the statewide and national prizes of youth involved with the environment, the prize in “Joven de la Paz Internacional en Ecología.” She is currently of the main representatives in the state of Oaxaca on behalf of “Carta de la Tierra”, representative in the Club UNESCO Ambientare, locally she developes environmental education for biodiversity and has the role of counselor in the Comisión Permanente de Ecología de la LXII Legislatura del Congreso del Estado de Oaxaca (Permanent Ecological Commission in the LXII legislature in the Congress of the State of Oaxaca)
Yesenia Hernández Márquez
Liber Soe Puro
Agrarian Lawyer, representative of production in the Federación de Mujeres Bartolina Sisa Beni, partner in the Agroforestal Producers Vaca Diez Association (APAE VD for its acronym in spanish), of indigenous Tacana origin, and from a family of amazonian peasants. She belongs to the community of Agua Clara, department of Beni, she also works as a legal advisor for territory lawsuits within rural communities. Her areas of expertise are the advisory in the preparation of legal means for the integral administrative management in the preparation of legal tools for the transformation of laws at different government levels. In past years, Liber became an activist for agroecology, focused on the relationship between the struggle for territory, the strengthening of production systems and alimentary sovereignty.
Aymara Llanque Zonta
Psychologist in social intervention, Doctorate student in the UMSS-Agruco and the University of Berna, Switzerland in the project R4D, where she is a researcher of the institutional political factors related to the sustainability of the alimentary systems. She works with the theoretic focus of the new institutionalism, related to the decolonial current in the reflection of productive and agroalimentary systems, to create indicators for the right to a balanced diet, to socioecological resilience and to the relief of poverty. She has 12 years of experience in the participative investigation of psychosocial environmental factors, related to communitary governing in the amazonian forests of Bolivia. The areas in which she has more experience are social conflict, identification of needs, elaboration and administration of projects, monitoring and evaluation of impact and participative action investigation, self regulation mechanisms, autoregulation normativity, processes of change, with priority in the topics related to the problems with women, land and territory.
Social Anthropologist. She majored in History at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, has a Masters in the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores de Antropología Social and has a Doctorate in the Rural Development Sociology Group at the University of Wageningen, Holland.
She is a professor and full time investigator since 2012 at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociológicas at the Universidad Autonoma Benito Juarez in Oaxaca. She works as a professor and forms part of the Academic Group on Gender, Culture and Development. She has undertaken investigations in the mixteca region of Oaxaca on topics such as gender, politics, community, power, rituality, and political recognition relationships. She is currently undertaking the development of a line in alimentary anthropology, addressing within the urban scope, the practices and habits of alimentary production and consumption as spaces in which social construct is created, and through food, the social relationships between people and nature are diversified and densified.
Charlynne Curiel
Doctorate student in Agroecología, Diálogo de Saberes y Nuevos Paradigmas de las Ciencias y el Desarrollo in the Agroecology center in the Universidad Cochabamba (AGRUCO. FCApyF.UMSS for its acronym in spanish).
He is currently undergoing the research: Los sistemas de vida como una propuesta estatal contemporánea, para la gestión sustentable del territorio (The systems of life as a contemporary governmental approach to the sustainable administration of the territory) in which he analyzes the theoretical, methodological and procedural postulates on the grasp on life systems, analyzing two case studies on an autonomous municipal governmental level, with the goal being to contribute for said focus to be able to be strengthened theoretically, procedurally and conceptually. Two municipalities have been selected, which are in the process of debating the identified life systems and with which they have developed their Territorial Planes on an Integral Development (Planes Territoriales de Desarrollo Integral) which is a biweekly tool on municipal administration of elaboration and obligatory enforcement (Law 777).
César Escobar
He is from Santa María Tlahuitoltepec Mixe Oaxaca, from a peasant family and native speaker of ayuujk (mixe), along with other coworkers, his field of study and academic works have been orientated towards agroecological, socio-environmental and educational processes with an intercultural and communitarian focus. His contributions have been related more towards thematics involving “milpa”, ethnoecological study of the pulque maguey, the socio cultural transformations and the landscapes in the ayuujk territory, among others. He is currently fulfilling his community service as an endorsement to the communal life of his home town.
Genaro Vásquez Vásquez
Bia'ni Madsa' Juárez López
Indigenous biologist. As a result of belonging to two cultures, mixe and zapoteco, I grew up in a cultural environment with many contrasts, which have deeply impacted my professional growth. I studied college in the UAM Xochimilco and achieved a Masters in Tropical Ecology in the CITRO-UV. My academic interests are the agroecological system of coffee, community management of territory, interdisciplinary studies, participative investigation and ethnobiology. During my Masters I underwent a research where I analyzed the relation between social organization (communitary and inside family circles) with the diversity of the coffee plantations of the community. This investigation was entitled to the medal of Miguel Ángel Martínez Alfaro to the best thesis of ethnobiology at a Masters level in 2016. I currently work in an independent consulting firm on projects for the strengthening of skills of coffee producers, on the royal crisis.
Fernando Soberanes
Fernando Soberanes Bojórquez, agricultural engineer with a specialty in Rural Sociology by the Escuela Nacional de Agricultura, today known as the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo. He has been working on indigenous education for over 40 years in the state of Oaxaca, where he undertakes administrative, labour union and pedagogical activities, searching for educational alternatives that go beyond the national programs and plans for the basic education directed towards indigenous groups, to contribute to the strengthening of the cultural and linguistic diversity among the indigenous communities based on the communality scope.
In the past years, one of his main goals has been to create new collective strategies for the struggle against the Education Reform and the other reforms that deal with natural resources and territory.
Alfredo Saynes
Of Zapoteco origins, born in Juchitan, Oaxaca, he studied high school in the Istmo of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. He is now a Doctor in Science by the UNAM, with a specialty in ethnobiology, with an academic stay in the Colegio de Postgraduados de Montecillos. His object of study is the zapoteco natives in the Istmo of Tehuantepec. His interests have been the zapotec flora and the social and historical processes that influence the local ecological knowledge understood within the zapotec language codes. He has participated actively in the opposition to the wind energy mega projects in the Istmo, in the indigenous consultation undertaken in Juchitan and has spurred citizen petitions to back up the legal petitions against the illegal installation of wind farms in the Istmo.
Nicéforo Urbieta Morales
Pintor y filósofo zapoteco, nació en 1950, y desde 1977 ha realizado una arqueología del pensamiento mesoamericano, a través de las imágenes prehispánicas de la lengua zapoteca de su comunidad natal, Santa Ana Zegache, Ocotlán, Oaxaca. Las conclusiones filosóficas de esta investigación sirvieron para crear el Centro de Investigación del Pensamiento Visual que desarrolló una pedagogía de recuperación del inconsciente comunitario y demostró la persistencia de los paradigmas civilizatorios olmeca-zapotecas. De formación básicamente autodidacta pinta desde 1967. Hoy su propuesta plástica se fundamenta en el Diálogo con todas las expresiones visuales y la ha llevado a diversos estados de la República Mexicana, Estados Unidos, Sudamérica, Europa y algunos países del sudeste asiático. Con ese pensamiento indígena ha participado en la vida científica, artística y cultural de Oaxaca y diversos foros nacionales e internacionales. En 1997 en el Sexto Congreso Internacional de Estudios Semióticos “La intersección entre la naturaleza y la cultura/Semiótic Bridging, Nature & Culture” realizado en Guadalajara Jalisco, presenta la ponencia “El Hombre en Llamas”, donde realiza un análisis semiológico de los mundos que se encontraron en el siglo XVI, cuando europeos y amerindios confrontaron el sentir y el pensar, como dos maneras diferentes de ejercitar el pensamiento. En el 20l0 es invitado al congreso internacional “The Other, El Otro”, convocado por Malintzin Society en Santa Bárbara, California, USA. Y ahí propone una definición de la otredad humana diferente a la occidental.
Martha Ileana Rosas Hernández
Coordinadora de Vinculación y Cooperación de la Coordinación General de Corredores y Recursos Biológicos
Es experta en política ambiental, desarrollo sostenible, cooperación internacional y participación social. Estudió la licenciatura en Biología en la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa y fue becaria de la tercera cohorte del programa “Leadership on Environment and Development” de El Colegio de México (LEAD-México). Luego obtuvo una Maestría en Política Ambiental y Desarrollo por la Universidad de Sussex (Reino Unido).
Ha laborado en la Comisión de Cooperación Ambiental de América del Norte (Montreal, Canadá); la Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca y el Instituto Nacional de Ecología en México. También ha trabajado como consultora independiente y en organizaciones de la sociedad civil.
Entre 2007 y 2010, trabajó como parte del equipo del Corredor Biológico Mesoamericano en México. Desde 2011, trabaja en la Coordinación General de Corredores y Recursos Biológicos (CGCRB) de la Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (Conabio), a cargo de la Coordinación de Vinculación y Cooperación.
