YIMOM is a network of Maya Tsotsil healer women who live in the community of Nuevo Corral Chꞌen el Ángel, Chiapas, Mexico, and work towards ensuring food security and food sovereignty for their communities by taking care of their soil. In 2021, YIMOM received a Keepers of the Earth Fund grant from Cultural Survival to develop a community project to benefit their community agricultural practices and ensure food security for their families.
YIMOM works to achieve food sovereignty through techniques such as backyard farming, shade cloth nurseries, rainwater collection, and drip irrigation. They have also had to adapt agroecological practices to deal with the abrupt climate change of recent years.
The community decided to focus their project on year-round harvesting and pest control. One of the main challenges for women is access to land, specifically space to build greenhouses. For context, the women in the community cannot access land if they are not married. If they are married, they may get half of what their brothers receive, or they may not get anything. Many women cannot inherit land because they are not recognized as independent persons; it is always assumed that they have to be tied to a male.
Another challenge was the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic with the Delta variant. Most of the group got sick and two were even hospitalized. Their finances were severely affected, which delayed construction until late August, but they were still able to complete the greenhouses in time before the Fall frosts.
In addition to greenhouses, the community also established and improved permanent orchards with agroecological practices. They consider it an improvement of backyard systems by incorporating practices that allow them to diversify species and be free of pesticides. By diversifying their backyards, they are also diversifying their diet, allowing them to do local product exchange. Some of the plants they have grown are native, such as the pink potato and pigeon peas. They also grow three types of lettuce, two species of pumpkin, three species of chard, and four species of chili peppers.
Incorporating these other seeds was possible because of the exchange of knowledge and seeds with other campesinos at an event that was held in San Cristobal of Las Casas. The women are currently adopting other seeds to improve diversity in the orchards and are seeking contacts with other communities or groups that have seeds free of pesticides. They have reflected on the importance of seeds and want to learn about others’ experiences to encourage them in their fight for their food sovereignty and autonomy as Indigenous women.
In 2021, YIMOM received a grant from the Keepers of the Earth Fund, an Indigenous-led fund at Cultural Survival designed to support Indigenous Peoples’ advocacy and community development projects globally. Since 2017, we have supported 238 projects in 38 countries through small grants and technical assistance, totaling $1,070,602. The funds go directly to Indigenous communities, collectives, organizations, and traditional governments to support projects designed by the communities and in accordance with their Indigenous values. Based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we at Cultural Survival use a rights-based approach in our grantmaking strategies to support grassroots Indigenous solutions through the equitable distribution of resources to Indigenous communities. Six Maya Tsotsil families directly benefited from the project.
