The way to Nueva Vida: in the Yucatan, where jaguars lurk and pyramids poke out of the forests, human are learning to live peaceably with nature

Sierra, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Barbara Kingsolver

But having a land grant means staying in one place and learning to call it home, no small departure for the refugee populations of Nueva Vida and the other ejidos, who previously spent their lives using up land and moving on. The concept of composting may seem obvious enough to the sedentary, but for those with no cultural memory of standing still for more than three years, seeing soil improve and fruit trees grow is a kind of miracle.

The transition has happened gradually, in daily lessons that come through patience and careful scrutiny. Don Domingo Hernandez, an elder statesman in the neighbouring collective of Valentin Gomez Fariaz, had a lot to tell us about that. He walked us out to his cornfield, where he was experimenting with soil-boosting cover crops, and gave us a lively lecture on the benefits of chemical-free agriculture: healthy soil microbes, nitrogen fixation, humus, conservation of moisture. Don Domingo tipped back his weathered cowboy hat, bent to scoop up a handful of black dirt, and held it out to me as reverently as any true believer might handle a relic of his faith. "Three years in this patch," he said, "and this is the best corn crop I've ever had. Next year will be even better."

The prime mover behind these new ways of thinking was not government but Pronatura, a Mexican conservation group, in concert with the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy and other private organizations. Just north of the town of X'pujil, working from a thatch-roofed office, a handful of agronomists and engineers offer ideas and technical advice; they are enormously respected by the region's farmers. Carmen was animated about this point. "Dona Norma came out from the office and said to us, 'What are you wasting time for? Plant trees!' So we planted trees." This and dozens of other projects have given families like Carmen's a sense of belonging to their land, and a reason to stay. They have dug cisterns to catch rainwater from their roofs, following the instructions of a Pronatura engineer; they have also begun new beekeeping enterprises. A course in medicinal plants teaches women bow to collect, process, and label all the remedies their families will need for infections and minor ailments. (The medicines are stored in plastic film canisters donated by conservation groups.) After Hurricane Roxana devastated the southern Yucatan, when fevers and infections were scathing the peninsula, Carmen's collective had kilos of medicine on hand to donate to the relief effort.

"It's a much better life we have now," Carmen insists. 'We were skeptical at first, and some still hold to the old ways. But really, the old way was that we ate rice and beans and drank coffee. The rice and coffee, we had to buy with cash. We have a healthier diet now with all the things we grow, and it's nicer, more interesting. Our kids like it better--that's how you know a change is going to stick." She gave my belly a glance, smiling at my incipient pregnancy. "For the kids, there is no going back; this is the life they will choose."