Slow Food

Helda attended Terra Madre, the Slow Food conference in Turin, Italy the week before last, along with 6,000 farmers, chefs and academics from all over the world. She met us in Guatemala with a bad cold, a suitcase full of goodies from the "Salone del Gusto," and her head buzzing with ideas and inspiration. She gave a talk about traditional agroecological knowledge in the Guatemalan and Chiapanecan highlands and she might be in the Slow Food movie. She also got to hear talks by some of our agroecological heroes, like Vandana Shiva (photo) and Michael Pollan.

Day of the Dead

Went to a conference last week in Antigua, Guatemala. The highlight of the event was the talk by Eric Holt-Gimenez, director of Food First, about the farmer to farmer agroecology movement. Eric's talk manged to be simultaneously , inspiring sophisticated and pragmatic. He made a very convincing argument that small farmers are playing a key role in conservation in Mesoamerica and deserve broad support, rather than neglect and abuse.

We skipped out of the conference on November 1 to check out the Día de los Muertos celebration in the cemetary at Santiago, Saquatepequez...absolutely amazing! The display kites, like these, are about 10 meters in diameter, with intricate designs, some religious, some political, several about indigenous pride. The kites for flying, like the one being assembled in the foreground in the second photo, were about 3 meters wide and were flown by crews of several people. Most years there isn´t enough wind to get them aloft but this year the weather was perfect. It was beautiful to see people remembering their dead with so much joy and color.

Marcos found that a fallen piece of kite fringe makes a perfect beard.