The Work of the Sexto Sol Center

In general we promote the ethic of "community action" whereby community members work together to solve common problems or the reach common goals. We organize cooperatives as the best way for farmers to pool limited resources to create the infrastructure to allow them to market their goods in volume for the best possible returns. The cooperative model provides a pathway out of poverty and isolation. It has great potential as a way to create economic opportunities, the mutual support of a healthy community, and eventually true democracy.

Our long-range vision is to create a more vigorous and diverse economy in the Sierra Madre. As has been done brilliantly in Columbia by small-scale coffee producers and the celebrated Mondragon cooperatives in Spain, a fund from the sale of a cooperative’s product can be used as start-up capital to create new enterprises. In this way families will be empowered to create opportunities in their own homeland rather than having to send their men on the dangerous journey to find work as undocumented workers in the U.S. as is the case in the majority of families now.

To set the process in motion toward that goal, we use an approach that follows specific steps – identify the obstacles to better production, work with the people to identify solutions, organize cooperatives, and market the products where prices are best. Each of our current projects aims to address one of these steps for the communities involved.

All of the work has the additional environmental goals of restoring the damaged eco-system, finding solutions to activities which pollute, helping people to use production practices which are ecologically harmonious, and fostering an attitude of stewardship. In the developing world, poverty and environmental degradation each exacerbate the other. We believe that one can not be addressed without work to address the other. For this reason, all of our environmental work also aims to create economic opportunity and vice versa as we explain below.

Status of the environment and its impact on the people of the region

From a NASA photograph, the impact of the commercial logging of this region of Southern Mexico is shockingly visible as the border with the lushly forested Guatemala is clearly defined by the contrast with the denuded mountains in Chiapas. Rivers are now dry except in the rainy season when they flood, carrying precious topsoil from the steep mountainsides. Animal populations have been seriously reduced. Immense areas of important habitat for migratory birds have been lost.

The natural balance has been so severely altered that dramatic shifts in climate patterns have had a devastating impact. The thousands of small-scale coffee farming families throughout the Sierra watched in dismay as drought and the widespread fires of the spring of 1998, sparked by the practice of burning of corn after harvest caused the delicate, white coffee flowers to turn yellow, wither and fall. Eighty percent of the normal harvest was lost. Coffee is all that these families have for earning a meager subsistence (See Coffee)

Then in September of 1998, Chiapas reaped the sad harvest of the deforestation of the Sierra Madre when fragile soils on steep mountainsides for hundreds of square miles could not withstand the three hurricanes (Xavier, Georges and Mitch) that for a second year have caused so much suffering and damage. Forty-six rivers that flow out of the Sierra literally buried coastal communities. In the Sierra, massive flooding, crushing rockslides and thousands of landslides destroyed many communities and left the landscape unrecognizable in many places. The result of this devastation is the real threat of widespread hunger throughout the Sierra Madre, the most impoverished region of the state of Chiapas. (See photos of the flood of 98 )

The loss of resources means that the campesinos (rural farmers) can no longer use the land for low-impact subsistence. Instead of attending school, children collect wood for cooking fuel, continuing the deforestation of remaining stands of trees. Though now illegal to cut trees, poachers can easily convince poor families to "sell" them old growth trees for as little as $5.00.

The use of agrochemicals to make up for the deficient soils contaminates the water, soil, and the food produced and is a health hazard for the farmers and their families. Clearly there is an urgent need to help people earn a sustainable and dignified livelihood in ways that do no damage to the Earth.

Helping to repair the relationship between people and the Earth, a pragmatic approach

Philosophically, we do not see people as separate from the natural world, rather we seek ways to help the entire system, people included, to reach a balance within the carrying capacity of the land. In a damaged region like the Sierra Madre, this is a daunting task. But just as the voyage of a 1000 miles begins with the first step, reforestation takes place tree by tree, and establishing an ethic of right stewardship, person by person.