Esperanza Project spotlights Latin America’s eco-warriors

Tracy L. Barnett is an independent writer and photographer specializing in the Southwestern U.S., Latin America and sustainable travel. She has served as Travel Editor of the San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle; recently she launched a new independent publication dedicated to environmentalism throughout the Americas. This is her story.

Tracy L. Barnett
Photo ©2010. All rights reserved.

I arrived in Mexico three weeks ago as the first leg of my yearlong journey through Latin America documenting the environmental movement across the continent, from the perspective of its protagonists. I’ll be traveling through Latin America for this entire year, interviewing green architects and guerilla gardeners, indigenous farmers and bicycle activists, journalists and academics, even public officials engaged in the transition to a more sustainable lifestyle. I’ll be reporting on what I find – in Spanish and in English – on the Esperanza project, a new media initiative.

Inside the theater at Huehuecoyotl, an ecovillage in the mountains of Morelos, Mexico.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

Here’s how it all began. About 10 months ago I was working as the travel editor at the Houston Chronicle, when a round of cutbacks slashed a third of the staff, including me. It was a shock, but it ended up freeing me up to launch a project that feels meaningful and exciting to me in a way that working for a daily newspaper never could.

The roots of this project really began long ago in Columbia, Missouri, long before I became a travel writer. Back in 2000, I started the bilingual newspaper Adelante, and my student reporters and of course our readers came from all over Latin America. I accepted every invitation I could to visit friends and their families in the South. Before that, I was an environmental writer at the Columbia Daily Tribune. The Esperanza Project tries to pull all of those themes together—travel, Latin America, and the environment—using the multimedia tools I learned as a travel writer and the Spanish I learned as an immigrant affairs reporter in Missouri, California and Texas.

Community members at Teopantli Kalpulli, an intentional community near Guadalajara.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

Some people have asked me, why Latin America? I can give several reasons for that: First, I wanted to do it. All my life I’ve wanted to take that trip where I just keep on going. Now I’ll be headed south for a whole year, and I’m really excited about that.

But more importantly, I think we in the States get a little self-important thinking we have all the answers. But there’s a lot we can learn from other cultures, ones that aren’t quite as caught up in the consumerist, carbon-dependent model we’ve adopted in the States.

Latin Americans, in particular, bring a different perspective and a level of creativity and passion to their activism really inspires me. My hope is that it will inspire my North American compatriots, as well.

Right now a completely unexpected green revolution is going on in Mexico City. Rooftops of homes and factories are being planted in gardens to provide an alternate food supply and offset carbon emissions.

A young activist in Coyoacán.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

In Guadalajara, bicycle activists are taking to the streets by the thousands, demanding green spaces, bike lanes and a more people-oriented approach to transportation and city planning. In the mountains not far from here, the Huichol people are fighting a groundbreaking legal battle to take back their ancestral lands and manage them in their own integral way.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere you look in Latin America, local groups have formed to raise consciousness about the urgent need to shift to a more sustainable lifestyle. They don’t have a lot of resources, but what they do have is creativity, passion and spirit.

One of my first articles, though, has to do with a more personal dilemma: Whether to buy carbon offsets to help compensate for the pollution my travel will inevitably cause. Carbon offsets have become pretty controversial of late, but after a lot of thought, I decided to donate $10 a month to the Marda Permaculture Project to plant olive trees and build greenhouses in the town of Marda, Palestine.

Composting at the ecobarrios in Mexico City.
©2010 Tracy L. Barnett. All rights reserved.

I don’t claim that this is the answer to corporate pollution on a broader scale, but on a personal level, it felt like the right thing to do. It’s a wonderful project that builds community resilience using tried-and-true permaculture techniques, and you can read all about it here.

This year I’m going to be using video and photography and my best reporting skills to bring these people to life for The Esperanza Project readers. I’ll also be seeking collaborators, people to write stories from their eco-experiences in Latin America, and people to help with translations. I hope some of you will join us at theesperanzaproject.org.