El Paxil, a forest like an island
And in this way they were filled with joy, because they had discovered a beautiful land, full of delights, abundant in yellow and white ears of corn and also abundant in pataxte and cocoa, and in countless sapotes, custard apples, jocotes, hogberries, matasanos and honey. There was an abundance of tasty food in that town called Paxil and Cayalá.
Popol Vuh. Sacred book of the Maya.
To write this text we visited several plots. It is complicated, because after reading in reports, notes and columns that this program has failed, that it is useless, that it is the same as all the previous ones, one becomes convinced. Furthermore, it is not easy, going from one place to another in the Chiapas territory involves certain precautions. “Don’t go there, there passing Comitán is where people are disappearing”; “Are you going to Ocosingo? Be careful, there were clashes yesterday”; “Wow, those roads in Los Altos are complicated, last week they attacked [insert name of NGO] and stole their truck”; “I know a community that is in Sowing Life, it is just about 12 hours away and since there is no cell phone signal it is not safe for us to find them.”
My father told me that Hermilo was in Sowing Life. He is an old acquaintance of the family, an administrative worker at the Autonomous University of Chiapas (UNACH), a poet and cultural promoter.
The ejido is called José María Morelos, it is part of the municipality of La Libertad, northeast of the state of Chiapas, between Palenque and Tabasco, right between the president’s ranch and that of the president’s children. After several attempts we managed to communicate and agree on the trip.
My intention was to go all the way around, go from San Cristóbal to Tuxtla and from there cross to Tabasco until reaching Palenque, but he insisted on traveling the Ocosingo route: “it’s less of a return trip.” He had to cross the conflict zone between the ORCAO and the EZLN, in addition to several stretches known for their assaults on passenger buses.
We made the route without any major setbacks. As we approached La Libertad, the pastures appeared, as well as the African palm and rubber plantations that were promoted during the government of Juan Sabines. We took a dirt road and entered the ejido lands. One pasture followed another, cows here, cows there, without trees and without other types of crops.
We found Hermilio and he told us his version:
‘’When I received the land my idea was not small livestock farming, like everyone else, but agriculture. I saw that it was proper land for cocoa. Cocoa is not produced there in La Libertad, I would be the first cocoa producer. So I said why not turn the situation around? Instead of tearing down the vegetation to plant grass, it is better to remove the grass so that the vegetation grows.’’
His collaborators did not believe what they were seeing when he told them to let the saplings of native trees grow that had to be cut again and again so that the grass would grow to feed the cows.
—Listen, Don Hermilo, but what use is that going to serve you?
—You leave it, it’s not going to help me much, but the parakeets are going to thank me, the squirrels are going to thank me.
These trees would serve to provide shade for future cocoa plants. In other areas where there were no trees, he planted banana and cocoite, which is a tree that grows very quickly. He was removing the grass despite the complaints of his collaborators “Everyone wants grass! “How are you going to remove it?” they asked him. This is how his forest grew in the middle of the pastures. He pruned the sections of the trees to balance the shade, little by little, so that it was neither too little nor too much.
—Why cocoa?
—It is a sacred plant for the Maya, I am Maya and it is part of my culture. I was passionate about the idea of cocoa because it is part of agroforestry.
He planted his first cocoa plants a couple of years before the Sowing Life program arrived. But many did not survive because the sun hit them too hard.
—Then someone told me “why don’t you plant corn?” And so I did that, I planted cocoa and planted corn around it, which grows quickly and gives them shade. Those have already stuck and are starting to bear fruit. When the Sowing Life technicians arrived, they were pleasantly surprised by this idea. So I taught them a new technique.
Some of the trees I planted at the beginning are already starting to bear fruit. Those who benefit there are the birds. There are some birds that were almost absent in the region, the orioles, in the region they call them zacua. The oriole makes very large nests, like nets, that hang from the highest trees, and they make their nests there so that no one will disturb them. Reggae, or reggaeton, or what the hell, worse, hahaha! There they let themselves be swayed by the wind.
Several times he talked about his idea of his plot being like a school, an example, that school children and people from other places come to visit him.
—This space is already mythological in the region. The same collaborators already tell about the different way of working. Everyone already wants to know Paxil.
—Why is it called Paxil?
—Because in the Popol Vuh there comes a time when man did not yet exist, of course, so at the suggestion of some animals they said that the ears of corn were ready, from which the flesh of man will emerge, which will enter the flesh of man. They ordered the cobs to be brought to that place, which they describe as a very fertile place, where there were all kinds of fruits, and corn and hogberries and I don’t know, cocoa, there was a lot of cocoa. From there they brought the cobs, white and yellow corn for Grandma Ixmucané to cook and grind, to make the dough. The gods, several gods, dialogued, conversed, agreed and conceived four first corn men: Balam Quitzé, Balam-Acab, jaguar of the night, Iqui Balam, jaguar of the moon, Majucutah, disheveled jaguar, and fro the dream of those first men their women were born.
—From the dream?
—It sounds poetic, right? Ha ha ha. And from the dream of those four couples the Maya world was formed. Like Adam and Eve for the Jews. So that’s why this place is called Paxil, because of that mythical place.
Looking for some confirmation that all the producers in this region will sell the harvest to Hugo Chávez as a Connectas report stated in a November 2021, I asked him nervously:
—What are you going to do with the cocoa?
—I want to make chocolate, obviously. Process it and package it. Paxil Chocolates. We are going to compete with Rocío Chocolates, hahaha. The idea is also to buy the produce from my colleagues, or make them partners, so as not to become a middleman, hahaha, or let’s see what, let’s see how we can do it. That we do not sell the seed, but that we learn to produce the chocolate. The good thing about cocoa is that you can be harvesting it permanently, like tomatoes, in all seasons there is fruit, in some seasons more, in some less, but there is production all the time. Right now, I have a little more than a thousand plants. Almost three hectares of cocoa.
Displacing livestock production with the Sowing Life orchards seems complicated. There is a business model called “by parts”, where the ejidatario takes care of the rancher’s cows and in the end, when they are sold to the slaughterhouse, the owner of the land and the pasture keeps a part of the profit. The other option is to rent the plot, where they are paid one hundred pesos per cow per month without having to do anything.
—Do you think that those who are dedicated to livestock will decide to change track when they see what you do?
—Not so much, but they could suddenly allocate a space. They are very large plots, five hectares, and often leave spaces without grass. The real rancher takes everything away, but the farmer leaves certain spaces.
Hermilio told us about his plans for the future, converting his plot, his forest-island in the middle of the livestock devastation, into an ecotourism destination.
—In the municipality of La Libertad, years ago, a very important study was carried out and it was possible to decree a protected natural area for an area called “The wetlands of La Libertad.” It is a region that bathes the Usumacinta River. I was born on the shore of the Saquilá lagoon, which is part of this area and is also known as the iguana sanctuary, which, by the way, is now the icon of the municipal presidency. So it can be a destination for all people who are dedicated to observing birds, iguanas, and howler monkeys. Now I am introducing other types of plants and trees that were no longer in the region due to the same deforestation. I got plants in the Tulijá region, such as ax, known as iximté, the corn tree. I want it to be like a botanical garden, with plants that have been used culturally.
El Paxil is ejido land, where this ejidatario has his own, self-managed project, which seeks to involve the entire community as a kind of school. He is proud of his municipality and wants more people to know it and know about the existence of its wetlands as an attraction for specialized tourism that seeks contact with nature and a restored jungle.
Another nuance is the issue of marketing. There is a very organized chain for the sale of cows: once a week a van passes by and then you have to leave your cow on the side of the road for them to pick it up. In exchange, they give you a ticket that you can exchange at the end of the month for money. But for agricultural products there is no good distribution or marketing mechanism.
—But what about the other producers? I imagine the others are not in the program to promote ecotourism.
—There is a program that is the planting of annatto. They are already harvesting because it grows quickly. They are already connected to a distribution chain, there is a businessman who will buy all the produce. He is going to set up an achiote processing center, a small agribusiness to process achiote. It is highly demanded by the food industry as a colorant, now that they are required to have natural products. There is a lot of planting tradition, in every house, in their backyard, they have their annatto plant that they use for food, a lot of food from the region uses it.
Local markets have also begun to be organized, first as a space for exchange between the program’s own farmers, since production focuses first on self-sustenance, then on exchange, and the surpluses are what will be sought to be marketed in these spaces.
While walking around the plot we came across armies of leaf-leather ants several times. Several of their cocoa plants died from their attacks. They climb the bush and cut its leaves from one day to the next.
—How do they combat pests?
—Within Sowing Life itself there is a project that deals with the production of organic fertilizers, it is good that you mention it, it is important. There are training courses for the same partners for the production of organic products. It is still difficult, because we have to work more, we are used to things that are easy and changing our mind is complicated, but the process has already begun. At first everyone was as if expectant, like what happened, what is this. Little by little they have been integrating, they are already participating, they have been losing their fear and they are now pure hahaha and hihihi. The team itself has been getting stronger to the extent that we have been successful, that puts them in a good mood because we are doing well. Luckily, we have not had major droughts and our plantations have been growing extraordinarily.
With Hermilio we went to see the FLC nursery. It is between a pasture and another Sowing Life plot belonging to a neighbor who was not at home. His plot is less “forested”, much more systematic, like a plantation, with its trees distributed in rows and interspersed with other species on a regular basis. The nursery doesn’t have as many plants as others he had visited, but that’s because it moves constantly. The work space, where the organic fertilizer workshops are taught, has the entire agroecological style, with its different signs decorated with flowers and plants, all very much in line with horizontal and participatory learning. Something that Maestro Freire would be proud of.
—Last June I already planted my own production, trees from our own nursery. We are very proud of what we have built here collectively. We already installed an irrigation system and back there we have a garden of medicinal plants. Here, in this place, we stop being “I” and become “we.”
Who said this was all monoculture?
The variety of trees, plants and bugs on the plot is impressive. It’s hard to believe that a few years ago this was a pasture covered with grass. It is a landscape composed of thousands of pieces of all sizes and many colors, smells, flavors, sounds and textures, like a living embroidery that is reborn as a Phoenix and offers sanctuary to all types of creatures persecuted and stripped of their home and sources of food. It is what some call “a reservoir of biodiversity.”
I make an inventory of species that is neither exhaustive nor specialized, since it is an urban and untrained look, but in less than 24 hours we were able to see frogs, two families of howlers, herons, leaf-hopper ants, squirrels, green iguanas and the gray ones (the so-called garrobos), helmeted basilisk lizards, those other incredible lizards called toloques (Basiliscus vittatus, I suppose) that cross bodies of water running or rather like skiing, wasps, ticks, fleas (one of them accompanied me back and all my family knew of its existence), bees, cicadas, normal black ants and those other ants that when they get together leave nothing in their wake, the shullah.
There are also a multitude of birds that are named to me as they are announced, some at dusk, others with the first light of the morning: woodpecker, pigeon, chachalaca, magpie, pea, pijuy, toucan, mockingbird, kingfisher, owl, tutupana, black-bellied whistling duck, cake bird, lark and the zacua, also called oriole (what a name!).
There are other animals that only appear in the conversation, like that anteater that fought with one of the dogs, the ocelot that was once seen, the raccoons, the rabbits, the spiny fox, the armadillos, the opossum, the mountain cat.
At night, while we smoke and drink some pox, a rapidly moving light appears in the undergrowth. At first I think they are fireflies, but their light does not go out, it remains.
—It’s a cucayo, it’s a type of beetle. Its light turns on as it flies. There weren’t any of those around here anymore, but when the forest grew they came back.
You could talk seriously about the environmental services offered by the plot, the carbon capture measures, the water that returns to its channel, the regulation of biophysical processes or how this habitat is fruitful for the diversity of flora and fauna, fungi and other bugs, but that light bug that flies between the trees lighting up the night should be enough evidence.
There is also the flora, the trees, bushes, plants and cacti that as we walked they were proudly naming me: mango, banana, tamarind, ax (iximté), mandarin orange, orange, papaya, cocoa, ceiba, yucca, basil, parsley, grass lemon grass (the one for lemon tea), licorice weed, maquiya, maculí, popiste, cocoite, chiquiyul, jobo, guazimo, palo mulato, chakab, guarrumbo, huayacán, chapay, tea leaf, tinto (Campeche stick), escobillo, caimitío, annatto, pushcagua and many more that I was not able to write down while they were presented to me.
This set of names, already on the ground, represents an alternative for food, medicine and materials for the construction of homes. A source of goods, services and energy for family subsistence, which will also, eventually, be a tool for the cultural preservation of the region.
It is May 2022. He asked me what will happen when those who are now with the thousands of orchards and plots that built organic production systems and diversified their productive activities leave. Will they tear down all the trees when the next program comes along offering money to plant something else or more cows or soybeans for the pig farms? Or has a process of environmental education been built, strengthened in resistance to the criticism of the urban press that does not care to see them fall in order to win some votes in the Roma neighborhood?
While that day arrives, El Paxil will dawn to the song of the oriole, the light of the cucayo will shine in the nights and the hum of the bees will crown the guava trees, while Hermilo continues cutting the light with his machete in search of a precise half shade.
Aura: here all her life
Aura is a farmer, she also has land in the Morelos ejido and also participates in the program. She is older than Hermilo, her brother, so she must be around 70 years old. She is also a nurse, dressmaker, mother and currently has a position in the municipality.
—I worked for many years as a nurse, with Dr. Francisco Lastra Lacroix. Many people in the community know me from that work.
In the 2021 election for municipal presidents she decided to support her friend Porfirio Correa, who ran as an independent candidate. First they got the signatures for the registry and then they won the elections.
—I’m the oldest of the whole group, but they do recognize me because I’m a native of here.
There are people who believe that in these parts of the Tabasco plain the president’s party always wins with a great advantage, but in La Libertad that party (MORENA) came in sixth place with 2.8 percent of the votes, followed by the great opposition alliance PAN-PRI-PRD, which came in seventh place with 0.8 percent, while the independent candidate won with the support of 32 percent of the voters. This happened after three years of presence of Sowing Life. At least in this municipality the hypothesis that it is a clientelistic program that conditions the vote does not seem to be working.
Because of the amount of things she does and the way she looks, Aura doesn’t look as old as she says she is. She gets up at 4 in the morning and feeds the chickens in her backyard, puts on her work boots, takes her wheelbarrow and goes to work on the plot, then he takes his work shoes out of the wheelbarrow and leaves for the municipal seat to work as an independent public official, at three in the afternoon. She returns and stays the afternoon on the plot, and then before nightfall she returns to her house.
—At first my classmates were surprised to see me there, they told me “that Sowing Life thing is for young people,” but I have shown them that I can do it. Since right now I am earning a salary in the municipality, what they give me I use to pay a man who does the hardest parts of the plot.
Her plot is at the foot of the road, it is much more oriented towards production than feeding the birds, she keeps it very well cared for and with a great variety of crops.
—There I have mostly timber, some cocoa trees, although not many, it’s sandy land there, they don’t grow that well. I also have bananas, cassava, corn, beans and a variety of plants.
Aura brought with her some yuccas from her plot, some pieces of chicken that just the day before were wandering in her backyard, and some other herbs. She shows me how the cassava is cut and prepared while Hermilo lights the stove. While the food boils, she accompanies us to tour the plot. Along the way she tells us stories about the trees we find:
—This tree, the ax, was very used before. When all the products were carried from one place to the other by mule, they say that in the afternoons the boss told them “let’s see, so-and-so, let’s forage”, or I know that foraging meant that they were going to cut the branches to feed it to the mules. This tree is called jun plum, it produces something like plums, very fragrant, very aromatic, many even make jun plum soda. This other tree is called guásimo and is also forage.
—There is a complaint about this program, they say that the farmers know more than the technicians.
—Ah, yes well…
—Has it also happened that they ignore them and impose ways of planting?
—Big mistake by the technicians, a big mistake. Because then they are recent graduates, they have just finished their degree in veterinary medicine, agronomy, and they are barely learning, and as one has been here all one’s life, one knows better.
Original article by Leonardo Toledo at Pie de Página, July 14, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.