Martha Armenta, the president and driving force behind Conrehabit, has initiated an unprecedented and incredibly bold outreach program to fundamentally transform certain cultural aspects of daily life in some of the more remote villages in the mountains of Sinaloa. Working proactively to educate the villagers, both young and old, to the virtues of living with nature as opposed to seeing the natural world as something that needs to be dominated, feared and exploited; she is making surprisingly quick progress.
The concept of resource utilization doesn’t have to mean resource extraction or depletion, a symbiotic approach to living on the land can also generate revenue for some of the rural communities. Eco-tourism is a rapidly growing industry as many folks seek out distinctive and exceptional encounters with the natural world, which are abundant in the areas surrounding Tacuitapa. With an overall vision of how to improve the lives of 130 villagers, Martha’s last several trips to the village of Tacuitapa have been both very productive and very promising.
One of the primary steps that will eventually lead to tourism revenue is to have a clean and attractive base of operations for the small groups of adventurous tourists that will explore the contiguous areas. As with most of the smaller villages, Tacuitapa’s accumulation of random rubbish is, litterly everywhere. Several weeks ago while hiking to the summit of Cerro Del Perico, a sacred Toltec site, Martha watched as one of the village kids mindlessly discarded the wrapper of his junk food snack on the pristine forest floor. Needless to say Martha’s ensuing lecture, which was immediately delivered to all 6 kids on the hike, had them very consciously stowing any self generated trash in their own pockets from that point forward. High quality Eco-tours do not come about where trash, the signature of civilization, is lurking around the next bend in the trail. It was during this trip to the top of the hill that a plan began form that is transforming lives in this remote part of Sinaloa; the personal pride of the villagers had suddenly become an asset to utilize and expand upon.
At this point I would like to interject that this village was not, by any means, a filthy place with a century’s worth of accumulated, trashy overburden. A number of homes are festooned with plantings in a wide variety of sizes and types and the majority of the habitations are well kempt and show the pride of long tenure. All the general yard areas of the village are cleaned and swept daily; it was only the “no man’s land” that seemed to accrue the universally ignored trash; apparently undetectable to the passing inhabitants. The first obvious step to cleaning up the village was to create an awareness that any and all trash, no matter how old or unclaimed, produced a blight that is shared by all, reguardless of yard boundries. Step two was to execute the collection and disposal process of the shared refuse. Since there is not a government provided land fill or any form of collection system in place, it was time to locate a geologically secure, common site for all the non recyclable crap, mostly plastic, generated by the locals.
Martha instructed the elders of Tacuitapa to contact the government in San Ignacio and have them dig a proper land fill area, somewhere away from the creek and of course preferably downwind; you never know what will end up there. Once we got word that the hole had been dug, we were back in the village to initiate phase two of the “take pride in your place” project. We brought with us 30 plus empty feed scaks (read recycled) for the trash collection process Martha had invisioned several weeks before. Since she has always recognized the true key to cultural change is to teach your children well………..she started with the kids. If she could entice them to pick up the litter while making it a rewarding experience, the possibility would exist to initiate cultural change.
We assembled at the home of Don German, the Bramador, while Martha addressed the 12 kids and 9 adults that had commited to this uncertain process of community beautification. A community beautifaction project in any American city would be floundering in the pralisis of anylsis for years prior to any decisive civic action; not so here, these folks were ready to go. Martha is rather long winded, and since my Spanish is only slightly better than my Latvian, I could only catch the general drift of her spirited pep talk. However, these folks were visibly delighted by the strength of Martha’s convictions, her respect for their rural culture, as well as buoyed by their hope for a cleaner and more self reliant future. A plan was formulated, a route was established, bags were distributed and the troupe of kids and adults started in the center of the village’s only road and headed for the first creek crossing south of the main community.
I drove my truck down to our first collection point and parked it the shade of two giant cedar trees, each over four feet in diameter and 80 feet tall; towering canopies for this part of the world. Don Panchito, the sheriff, and I squatted under the spreading boughs of these ancient sentinels of time and contemplated the anticipated changes in the life of the village. Eco-tourism can mean anything from bus loads of octogenarians, to competent explorers capable of extreme mountaineering. The general plan would not allow for masses of brightly dressed gringos to stumble out of dusty busses and invade the personal world of these proud and private people. All the locally guided tours would be very small groups of 6 to 8 people, pre determined to be physically capable of completing the desired adventure. The 14,000 plus acres owned by the community of Tacuitapa backs up to 10’s of thousands of acres of government land, much of which has been very lightly, if ever, touched by the hand of man; a truly unique region. I have been on two excursions into the mountains with the villagers, into areas where I was told that no gringo has ever been before now; we have just barely scratched a very large surface. With several Mesoamerican sites nestled it virgin forests with clear water creeks and all within well documented jaguar habit; we believe this combo will make for a tour experience not found in any of the widely disseminated travel brochures for Mazatlan.
As Don Ponchito and I watched the dusty herd of kids lugging their bulging sacks to the back of the truck, I commented to my friend the sheriff that this just might work. He immediately smiled and agreed, even though I am sure he understood little of what I was saying I also knew he completely comprehended all that I was communicating.
With the truck a third filled with trash stuffed grain sacks, we distributed more bags and made our way to the second collection point. While I spent my time capturing as many pictures as possible of this historic process, the sense of both resolve and accomplishment showed on the face of each person scrutinizing the landscape and filling a bag. The volume collected thus far by this stalwart group, which was impressive given the short distance, seemed to bolster their determination and soon the bags were full again. At the third and last collection point, with the truck filled and the entire crew gathered around Martha, her once white Conrehabit shirt displaying the day’s efforts in many places, she again took the opportunity to commend the efforts of all involved in the first step in the transformation of Tacuitapa. Since we were parked right beneath the traditional piñata tree, she made several references to cake, ice cream and a piñata for the village kids that had so willingly participated. Something tells me the next foray into the mountains will involve dry ice and large coolers filled with frozen delights.
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