Biodiversity Keepers’ Mutual Aid Response

We’ve worked with incredible farmers, gardeners, cooks, and activists for many years in Tzucacab, Yucatan, in southeast Mexico. The COVID-19 epidemic came first to urban centers, but rural places like Tzucacab have their own structural vulnerabilities: insufficient medical infrastructure, poverty, the structural racism that excludes indigenous people from social safety nets, and a location far from the attention of governments and media. When we were doing field work and community organizing around biodiversity and food in Tzucacab, we regularly felt the cruel irony that people who grow our food and keep the seeds and knowledge on which global food systems depend are structurally excluded from many of the social mechanisms that allow many of us to keep getting enough to eat even when times are hard.

We knew we had to do something to show up for the people we know through years of collaborative work in Tzucacab. We’ve been talking with people there, and here is what we have learned so far. The state of Yucatan is being hit hard with COVID-19 cases. The requirements of social distancing and disruptions in supply chains are threatening people’s ability to buy enough food.  Seed exchange fairs are canceled, and many people are having trouble sourcing seeds to plant this season. In Tzucacab, like many places, rural livelihoods centered around diverse farms and gardens often rely on income from family members working in the tourist industry on the coast, and nearly all of those workers are now furlowed without pay and sheltering in place with their families in Tzucacab. One family we know, that used to house and feed seven people living in their home with some income from hotel jobs in Playa del Carmen, is now struggling to house and feed fourteen. We know that in times like these, people lean on their gardens and their communities to feed their families, and we also know that there are times when these are not enough to avoid going hungry. We’re worried about our friends and collaborators there, and the many, many biodiversity keepers in similar situations everywhere. 

As part of their broader community of biodiversity keepers and activists, we knew we had to respond. We’ve hired two former research collaborators, currently out of work, to organize an advisory committee of elders and biodiversity activists in Tzucacab, people with a long-standing commitment to making sure their community has enough to eat. That committee is now identifying the most urgent needs and forming a strategy for getting the most effective kind of aid to people, whether that’s cash, food, seeds, or something we haven’t anticipated. We also are currently out of work, but we’ve committed half of our stimulus money some money we had saved since our wedding for a trip. We invite you to contribute to this small community-directed mutual aid fund.  

The relationships and trust we’ve built over more than a decade of work allow us to fill a need that governments and aid organizations are unlikely to fill. We can be nimble in response to changing needs, we can rely on existing relationships, and we can lean on the wisdom and experience of community organizers and biodiversity activists in Tzucacab. This is not charity. This as showing up for people who have showed up for for us many times, and who defend biodiversity and global food security with their everyday practices of planting, cooking, community organizing, agitating, and saving seeds. In the tradition of solidarity and mutual aid, we’re sending resources to support people we know in taking care of people they know. We’re working closely with people we trust towards our common goals of everyone having enough to eat and continuing the work of defending biodiversity and saving seeds. 

This is how we’ve always worked in Tzucacab, and this is how we will respond now:

  • Rely on the wisdom of elders and community organizers. We’re assembling an advisory committee to decide how best to meet people’s needs.  We recognize that we don’t know the answers. 

  • Organize at the speed of trust. We rely on trust we’ve built over more than 12 years of community work in Tzucacab, and on the trust and relationship between people in the community. We know that these solidarity principals are more important than the amount of money we can mobilize.

  • Build movements, not institutions. We’re not starting an organization, and we’re keeping overhead very low. All the paid labor in this endeavor is in Tzucacab, we use a low-cost platform for sending money. Everything you contribute will be put to work in Tzucacab.  

  • Collaborate, don’t help. We resist the paternalism of “helping” as we work closely with people across unfair and unequal differences in power and privilege. 

  • There are no strings attached. We trust people to use the resources we mobilize in the best way for them. They don’t have to be grateful or act a certain way to deserve mutual aid. 

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