"Fighting the good fight is hard and it takes courage to imagine a better world while resisting..."
México is experiencing an intense crisis. Corruption and impunity are key characteristics of the pundits in power. More than 27,000 civilians are missing, with a death toll of over 150,000, including the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, whose images have circled the world over. Hundreds of human rights activist and journalists are murdered as a form of silencing. Poverty and inequality continue to be on the rise, as frustration, pessimism, and apathy afflict the daily lives of the general population.
Without a doubt, the strongest forms of resistances are emanating from the indigenous and peasant communities. Women and youth find themselves facing the challenge of having to regenerate the social fiber that politics has destroyed and continues to destroy to date. The plight for autonomy takes different shapes and is specific to each space. As communities united and organize, they find the strength and inspiration needed to combat and survive against a violent system of oppression that looks to rob them of their way of life.
Organic forums, from cornfields to the dinner table, help flourish conversations around alternatives and resistance. "If this is not what we want, then what do we want?" Connected to the earth and each other, communities organize around language that goes beyond cultivating ideas. It germinates the imagination with blueprints for a different México to unfold~ a new México where everyone can live a life with dignity, including the communities and pueblos that have been historically negated this right. This awareness plants the seeds dedicated to the struggle, play, healing, hope and dialogue around knowledges that matter to sprout forth.
​Of course, fighting the good fight is hard and it takes courage to imagine a better world while resisting. Nevertheless, these projects fill themselves with hope amidst a sea of hopelessness. Volunteer teachers continue to give countless years of their talents without a salary. Sadly, there are students who cannot continue their studies, because their families cannot financially sustain them. There are those who have to work two or three jobs just to barely get by. And then, there are those projects, such as the construction of classrooms and schools that are never initiated, dreams that are momentarily blocked, and ideas that rarely reach maturity because of the lack of funding available. It is to say~ the impulse of the community is alive and well, but they need money.
This is why Raíces Colectivas invites patrons, individuals, organizations and groups to financially aid these projects, dreams, ideas- in essence the beating heart of the pueblos- come to fruition.