By Tracy L. Barnett
Magis Magazine
October 2011

“Fierce winds ripped huge branches off the thousand-year-old redwood, sending them crashing to the ground two hundred feet below. The upper platform, where I lived, rested in branches about 180 feet in the air … As the tree branches whipped around, they shredded the tarp that served as my shelter. Sleet and hail sliced through the tattered pieces of what used to be my roof and walls. Every new gust flipped the platform up into the air, threatening to hurl me over the edge.”
— Julia “Butterfly” Hill, The Legacy of Luna

It’s hard to say what was the most dramatic moment in that 738 days that Julia “Butterfly” Hill spent atop that platform in a redwood tree named Luna. Perhaps it was the day of that bitter storm and many others that ensued. Perhaps it was the day that a massive helicopter buzzed her tree and nearly blew her to her death with the 300 mph winds created by its updrafts. Perhaps it was the day that a fellow tree sitter had the rope he was standing on cut out from under him by “Climber Dan,” a logger hired by the timber companies to antagonize and remove intransigent activists from the trees they were trying to save from the loggers’ blades.

The full text of this article is currently only available in Spanish. I am currently seeking a publisher for the English version; please contact me at tracy@tracybarnettonline.com if you are interested.

To read the rest of the article click here:

JuliaButterflyHill-in-Magis(oct-nov2011

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – Thanksgiving day – I awoke this morning far from home and family but filled with a profound sense of gratitude.

Grateful for the sun that was just beginning to brighten the sky outside my window; grateful for the dear friends who have given me a home in this city of cities. Grateful for the health and the support of my family, who continue to love me faithfully despite my wandering ways.

Most of all on this day, I’m grateful for the path I’ve been given this year, a path that has led me from inspiration to inspiration as I traveled from Mexico to Argentina, seeking to learn from those who are each changing our world in their own way.

I began the year with grave doubts about the future of humanity, indeed, the future of all life on this planet. Peak oil, climate change, food insecurity, financial crises, water crises – ominous reports were being released from leading scientists around the world, saying we have passed the point of no return. We have not managed our inheritance well, and turbulent times loom – of this we can be sure.

I also harbored fears and doubts about my own future as a professional journalist who dedicated most of my professional life to an industry that is now shedding journalists like a maple tree in an autumn windstorm.

So I set off for the South on a search for inspiration in this troubled world, among the people who have always given me hope – Latin Americans, an astoundingly diverse collection of peoples who have for centuries cultivated the flame of joy amid the crises, a civilization born from crisis. I founded The Esperanza Project to document the stories of some of these people, and I began working on a book, “Looking for Esperanza.”

I found that inspiration, at countless kitchen tables and gardens and streets from Mexico City to Iguazú, from Guatemala’s Mayan highlands to El Salvador’s tropical forests, from Paraguay’s campesino movement to the artists and permaculturists of Colombia. Everywhere I went, I found people embracing the coming transition of our world with hope and joy.

I began my journey in January, and came full circle last week, with a powerful network of dreamers and doers who form the Vision Council – Guardians of the Earth. I will share more about this amazing network in my next piece. Among this network were representatives of the Huichol people, an indigenous group that is struggling to save its sacred lands from countless invasions large and small and now from a transnational mining corporation, and I will be writing a great deal about this, as well.

Somewhere along the thousands of dusty, sweaty miles I traveled, watching the landscape unfold through the windows of buses and semi-trucks and airplanes and from the backs of pickup trucks and oxcarts and motorcycles, a wider vision of me began to emerge, as well. Every departure became more difficult; I wept as Colombia’s lush green mountains receded into the distance, feeling the bonds I had made tightening around my heart. What was this force that kept pushing me forward? When would it be my time and place to plant my own roots, my own seeds? Where would be the soil that I would cultivate? Where would be the family whose future I would share?

Always the answer came back the same. You are a child of the cosmos. Your home is this planet. The seeds you plant are in the human consciousness, and they will bear fruit for all. Your family is everywhere… just look around you.

Yes, yes, I answered impatiently. But I want those seeds to make a difference. Like those whose stories I tell, I want my own work to matter. I want to be a midwife of hope in these transition times, a light along the way to that transcendent new world we are all dreaming of.

In those green mountains of Colombia, in an ancient ceremony conducted by Amazonian shamans, I surrendered my consciousness to the Pachamama, to the earthly manifestation of God himself. Allow me to be an instrument of thy will, I pleaded. Show me my path. Thy will, not mine, O Lord.

There in the darkness, surrounded by the chants and drums of the shamans, I saw my path. It was green and lined with trees. A soft breeze was blowing. Not a car, not a building, not a person to be seen.

Solitude. Silence. Spirit-filled reflection in the inherent wisdom of the Mother.

Three things that had eluded me in the constant movement of my journey. Three things that I will be seeking now.

During the three-day ceremony I visited at length with the tribal leaders of the Cofan people, learning of their struggles in the Amazon to reclaim and protect their lands from the invasions of cattle ranchers, oil companies, developers and all manner of threats. Struggles that echoed those of the Huicholes of the Mexican Sierra Occidental, who had left their magical mark on me at the beginning of my journey. Struggles that called to mind those of the Mayan peoples of Guatemala, risking and sometimes losing their lives in confrontations with the mining companies.

I have watched over the year as these struggles have continued to emerge and intensify: the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil, mountain-removal mining projects in Peru, massive agroindustrial plantations in Paraguay. As the free trade agreements signed over the past decade break down the barriers to transnational exploitation in the remotest corners, the native peoples who have guarded their lands for millennia are being called to sacrifice their lives in a last stand for their peoples and the Mother Earth.

All of these struggles unfolded before my eyes, the beautiful soulful faces of their protagonists burning their way into my consciousness. It was then that I knew that the next part of my journey would somehow, some way, be at their sides.

“The Madre is furious with us,” Maracame Julio Parra, a Huichol shaman, shared with me on our last night together. “We are not practicing the rituals of protection in the sacred sites as she has guided us for thousands of years. We must go back and make our peace with her.”

Peace with the Mother. Peace for the guardians of the earth. Peace for us all.

My time in Colombia was so full of amazing people and organizations that it didn’t leave me time to write as much as I would have liked. This roundup gives a little information about each of them, with hopes to come back to each of them with more information later.

Perhaps more than any country in Latin America, Colombia has suffered the pains born of a savagely unequal distribution of wealth and the gross distortions of humanity that can evolve such a system. Colombia is a land of extremes: beginning, as the entire story of Latin America does, with the Spanish conquest – but more recently, with La Violencia, the decade-long wave of violence unleashed by attempts at land reform in the 1940s and ’50s. This brutal backlash laid the groundwork for guerilla, military and paramilitary violence that wracked the country for four decades, laying the groundwork in turn for the narcotrafficking that accelerated the violence, until recently, to the point of paroxysm.

Thankfully, those days are in the past, and Colombia is working hard to show the world another side: an industrious, modern, spectacularly beautiful country that’s ready to charm the world. But there’s another side to this land of magical realism, as well, and this is the side I witnessed in my recent monthlong stay – a side that is fervently dedicated to nonviolent solutions, and to a shift to a more sustainable, more equitable way of life. That month was only long enough to get a sense of the depth and the breadth of these movements for social change, and for the passionate and creative approach of Colombian world-changers and their commitment to the task – just long enough to fall in love with this country, which moved me so much that I wept on the flight north as I watched its green mountains recede into the clouds.

My initial purpose for visiting Colombia, and the reason I began in Cali, was because I was invited by ProExport, a government agency promoting tourism, to do an article on the salsa scene in what has arguably become the World Salsa Capital. My first week was lost in a whirl of salsa lessons, interviews with teachers and experts and performers, visits to salsatecas old and new, and the world-class salsa circus extravaganza, Delirio.

Here I want to mention the work of Mauricio Novoa of Rioja Travel, who is working to bring more visibility to those who deserve it – and need it – the most. His tour shows the rugged underside of the salsa world: the salsatecas in the Barrio Obrero where street vendors and mechanics dance their hearts out along with businesses owners and schoolteachers, and nobody worries whether they’re stylish or proper; to the teachers from the working-class barrios who are working with at-risk youth to keep them off the streets and steered toward a life where they will have a chance at a better future; and the youngsters themselves, many of them grade-schoolers, whose enormous discipline and steadily channeled passion shows in their masterful moves on the dance floor. These schools included Diego Rojas’ Pioneros del Ritmo, Carlos Sánchez’ Sabor Latino and Vivian and Ricardo’s Estilo y Sabor, who participated in the Delirio extravaganza with standout performances. Here are some images from Cali’s salsa scene.

After my salsa week, I met with a number of inspiring people who are approaching environmental preservation and justice from a variety of perspectives.

There was chef Catalina Velez, owner of top-rated restaurants Kiva and Luna Lounge and a star chef featured on the Gourmet Channel throughout Latin America. Catalina is a leader in the organics and local foods movement, working hard to preserve heritage foods and to find markets for local organic and “clean production” farmers. It was Catalina, a loyal volunteer with VallenPaz, who told me about this organization, which was born of the violence when a mass kidnapping in a popular dining spot outside of Cali led its founder to seek the social roots of that violence. VallenPaz works with nearly 9,000 producers in conflict areas in three departments to help them professionalize their operations and to work directly with supermarkets, restaurants and consumers instead of costly middlemen.

I spent a couple of days with VallenPaz staff, interviewing Executive Director Luis Alberto Villegas, who has helped turn the organization into an economic powerhouse, bringing to market some $19.5 million in products grown and produced by small farmers. What’s more, the organization is promoting sustainable farming or “clean production” techniques, encouraging farmers to make the transition to organic, or at least dramatically reduce chemical inputs through the use of sustainable farming techniques.

I also visited with Isabel Cristina Romero, who told me of working in guerilla-controlled zones to help farmers negotiate with the rebels instead of fleeing their land; Laura Mejilla, who has worked with producers to help them create value-added products like organic preserves and “moneditas” or crunchy plantain snacks. And I took a trip out to the farm of Norberto Mina, a former farmworker who is now a proud empresario of his own farm, thanks to the efforts of VallenPaz and other organizations. He was negotiating with a couple of businessman about investing in a tilapia pond on his land when we left.

Here are some images from my visit to Norberto’s farm in Guachene, department of Cauca.

One of my Cali highlights was birdwatching with Mapalina, an unusual ecotourism group founded by biologist Carlos Mario Wagner and a group of underprivileged youth. Wagner was surveying birds in the highlands near Cali when he met several young people from the poor communities around the area who were intrigued by what he was doing. Jose Luna Solarte was one of them; like most of the kids in these remote areas, he never had access to a good education, and his job prospects didn’t look good. Wagner’s passion for the birds captured Solarte’s attention and he began studying the birds. Now he forms part of a team of highly skilled birding specialists who conduct ecotours and lead international researchers through the cloud forests above Cali.

The Mapalina team took me up to Kilometer 18 and to the San Antonio Cloud Forest, designated an IBA (Important Birding Area) by BirdLife International. The highlight of the visit was a trip to Finca Zingara, home to literally hundreds of hummingbirds, all whom have been hand-fed by Asdrubal Corrales for the past seven years. Here I sat on the balcony and watched as the fairy-like creatures buzzed and zipped from feeder to feeder, one of them finally coming to rest on my finger as I sat very still and held a feeding dish. It was an unforgettable thrill.

Jenny Farranda Jordan, one of the Mapalina team, explained what motivated her to spend all her free time learning to identify birds and guide tours.

“When someone begins to relate with nature, they begin to develop all their senses; they become more human, in a way,” she said. “Birds are a great vehicle to sensitize people to the wonders of the world around them.”

Here are some images from my morning with Mapalina.

Sculptor Carlos Andrés Gómez, whose medium is nature itself, was another remarkable Caleño who is making his mark on the city with “El Lamento del Pachamama,” an astounding work of art he is carving into a hillside across from a discoteque that was the site of a massacre during the height of the city’s drug violence. Gómez is striving to bring the abandoned area back to life by creating a tourist attraction that depicts the beauty and pain of the Mother Earth and her relationship with her conflictive and often destructive human children.

Here’s a video interview I did with Carlos that shows the work in progress and explains the story of what happened here.

Perhaps the most fascinating Caleño and the one who made the greatest impact for me was William Salazar, a Colombian shaman and the founder of Verdeverdad Social and Environmental Network and a new healing center, Agua Viva, dedicated to raising awareness through indigenous ceremonies with the use of the sacred medicinal herb known as yagé, or ayahuasca. Salazar, a former seminarian, philosophy professor and political activist, spent 17 years studying indigenous wisdom from the elders of Putumayo in the Colombian Amazon. His studies brought him to the conclusion that only a major shift in human consciousness could save the planet, and that yage can be an important vehicle in that shift.

During my time in Cali, Salazar invited me to a ceremony with two taitas or shamans from the Ecuadorean Amazon, and I accepted. The journey was indeed consciousness-altering, a profound departure from the mundane world and a glimpse into other realms. I will be publishing more information, an interview with Salazar and an account of my experience soon. Meanwhile, here are some images from an unforgettable three days at Agua Viva Healing Center, taken by me and artist/photographer Carlos Ruiz.

No account of my time in Cali would be complete without mentioning El Hatico, the agricultural reserve gaining international recognition for its innovative use of silviculture in cattle ranching. The full story is here.

Medellin was filled with another series of colorful characters and consciousness-raising experiences, but that’s a story for another day. Meanwhile, Cali is calling to me, and it seems to me I left a part of me there. Something tells me I’ll be back there one day soon.

It began at 6:30 am with a mobile loudspeaker blasting an upbeat blessing from the streets, mañanitas-style. That was followed by fireworks, and all day I continued to receive kisses and hugs and very sincere blessings just for the fact that I have a beautiful daughter – which is already blessing enough.

But then, when I arrived home and checked my e-mail, I found the best Mother’s Day greeting of all. I just had to share it with you all.

This greeting came from the Mapaches, or Racoons, a lively group based in Guatemala City that has been using creativity and community-building to raise awareness about the need for a more liveable city.

Their greeting card is a gentle reminder:

“Thank you, Mom, for teaching me to love the Mother Earth.”

Sunset, coming into Quetzaltenango/Xela

QUETZALTENANGO, Guatemala – I awoke this sparkling Mother’s Day to the sight of the Santa Maria volcano from my rooftop, rising green and conical over the mountains that surround this charming city in the highlands. Quetzaltenango, known to Guatemalans by its indigenous name, Xela, is quite literally a breath of fresh air.

The slap-slap-slap of the ladies in the kitchen next door “tortillando,” making tortillas, is punctuated by laughter and chitchat.

My beautiful mother and daughter are well – I’m grateful to them for all they’ve given to me, and I’m grateful to Skype, which allows me to stay connected from so far away. I’m grateful, too, for the capable and loving hands of all the mothers around me, who will be honored today with family dinners, special events and the spectacular bouquets being sold in the streets and markets.

But most of all, I am grateful to the Mother that sustains us all, the Madre Tierra whose fertile soil, abundant rivers, fruitful forests and vast oceans feed and shelter us, century upon century, and I am grateful to all of those who work to protect and nourish her. Since I have arrived in Guatemala, I have met so many.

My conversations with them have revealed the daily destruction of the environment on so many levels; people from taxi drivers to street vendors comment daily on the the increasingly intense heat, the rising floods, the contamination of rivers and lakes and air. The bad news is everywhere, and it can be overwhelming at times. But so is the good news: the fact that so many are dedicating their energy and talent to turning the tide.

To name just a few of those who have inspired me in their labors for Mother Earth in two short, interrupted weeks in Guatemala, and I wish them all a Happy Mother’s Day:

Magalí and Alejandra

Magalí Rey Rosa, the beautiful and eloquent voice for the wildlands whose work over the past three decades has awakened so many, and her daughter, Alejandra Marroquín, who is carrying the torch;

Bayron Medina

Bayron Medina, a descendant of Maya farmers in Alta Verapaz who now works for the Ministry of the Environment and the United Nations, empowering farmers in the countryside to protect their watershed and understand the value of the natural resources that are entrusted to their care;

Maria Jose España

Maria Jose España, Mario Rodrigo Gonzalez and Karla Maldonado of the Mapaches, a vibrant group in the capital who started out to save a forested canyon and evolved to a much broader mission;

Masa Critica Guatemala

Manuel Gomez and the rest of Masa Critica Guatemala, a group of dedicated cyclists determined to establish a right-of-way on the capital’s busy streets;

Steve Dudenhofer

Steve Dudenhofer and the rest of the crew at Ak Tenamit Maya School, where protecting the earth is an integral part of the curriculum, and graduates are making waves around the country in sustainable development, community health, women’s literacy and ecotourism projects;

Maite Rodriguez Blandon

Maite Rodriguez Blandón of Fundación Guatemala, whose work to empower Guatemalan women at the grassroots has taken many forms; lifting women out of poverty and giving them control of their land, she says, is one of the best ways to protect the environment;

Mega and Amanda from Rasta Mesa

Amanda and Mega at Rasta Mesa, working in Livingston to preserve the Garifuna culture and the land;

Eduardo Gularte y Gaby Diaz

Eduardo Gularte, Gaby Diaz and others from the Center for Communication and Development (CECODE), a group of dedicated communicators working to empower people at the local level to use communications tools for social change;

Edith Panameño

Edith Panameño, a schoolteacher working to establish a network of eco-clubs in the Lake Izabal region;

Silvia, Maria Isabel y Luis Rey

The Reyes family of Hotel Ajau, and all the other Guatemalan businesses striving to make their businesses sustainable under the Green Deal and Great Green Deal programs;

Rodolfo Trinidad of Campus Sustentable, Universidad Rafael Landivar, and Rai Aguirre of EcoCinergia, Universidad San Carlos, two groups working in a variety of imaginative ways to raise awareness on campus;

Community Radio activists at a CECODE workshop in Xela

Sandra, Tino, Maribel and many others in a network of community radio activists, who have labored in the face of government repression to bring relevant news and analysis to the indigenous and campesino communities of Guatemala, in their native languages;

Movimiento Agua y Juventud workshop in Xela

Alejandra Tiguila and a host of others with the Guatemala chapter of Movimiento Agua y Juventud (Water and Youth Movement), a dynamic group whose combined energy and commitment lit up the night – and my heart – at a Quetzaltenango retreat center recently.

The list could go on, and soon it will: my contact list has mushroomed, and I won’t be able to visit with a tenth of the worthy groups working on conservation issues around the country. Still, what I’ve seen in these two weeks gives many reasons for hope. Keep reading in the days and weeks ahead to meet these and many other world changers along the path of The Esperanza Project.

Mealtime is a special occasion with Cristina Diaz, here in the beautiful and eclectic home she helped to design.

GUATEMALA CITY – The city sparkled below me like a carpet of diamonds, flung carelessly over the valley and clinging to the surrounding mountains. This is probably as beautiful as Guatemala’s capital city gets, I thought, then scolded myself for the unwelcome thought. I only know the city from reading about it, and from a single pass through to the airport. Hardly enough to judge. I should know by now that you can’t judge a city by the media coverage – look at Mexico City, for example, which I’ve come to love.

And indeed my first night in the Guatemala City has put the lie to the widespread condemnation of Central America’s largest megalopolis. Thanks to Couchsurfing.com, I had friends waiting for me with dinner and directions, maps and guides and ideas for my project. I took a taxi to their beautiful home next to a park in a leafy neighborhood in Zona 2 and received a family welcome.

Couchsurfing, for the uninitiated, is an international web-based community of people who like to travel and learn about other cultures, but don’t necessarily want to spend a fortune on hotels. Members offer to share their couch or bed with travelers for a night or two or three. There is no charge, only an unspoken agreement that someday you’ll offer a space for another traveler. Besides saving money, the system gives immediate entry and insight into the local culture.

I’d heard rave reviews about couchsurfing and decided one day to give it a try. Just a day ago, I sat in a café in St. Louis, Mo., and entered my profile, then scanned a list of about 70 members from Guatemala City. Jose David Diaz, a Guatemalan restoration ecologist who works with the Ministry of the Environment, was my top choice, and I dropped him a line. A few minutes later, I received a warm welcome.

The next night, here I was, eating dinner with him and his parents – Cristina, his mother, had made chili con carne Texas-style especially for me, and a wonderful watercress fritter, Swiss chard with red sweet peppers, corn on the cob and fresh corn tortillas. She’d outdone herself.

Jose David is a restoration ecologist and a world traveler who introduced his family to couchsurfing, and me to his family.

Jose David, for his part, shared with me information about several groups he knows about who are working on interesting projects – a watershed protection project in the eastern province of Baja Verapaz, near the city of Coban, where I have been planning to go already; and a collaborative project of indigenous communities in the Central Highlands who are working together to protect the forests from timber poaching and other destructive incursions. He also showed me an excellent website with topographic maps of the entire country, and gave me his brief overview of the country’s environmental status.

He worries about the petroleum exploration going on in the Lago del Tigre wetlands preserve to the south.

“It’s a very fragile, very special habitat and I just can’t bear to think of what would happen if there were an accident,” he said, and we both shuddered, thinking of the environmental disaster currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. Just today, the news emerged that the mile-deep oil well leak is spewing not 1,000 barrels a day, but 5,000, and scientists fear it will wipe out fragile ecosystems along the Gulf Coast.

Jose David has given me his bedroom while he sleeps on a mattress in the living room. What amazing hospitality! It’s a beautiful room, spacious with a huge window looking out onto a tiny back garden. Pictures and mementos from his world travels are everywhere: Santiago Compostela and Madrid, Amsterdam and Africa, Honduras and El Salvador.

Yesterday’s trip was a good one – I sat next to a Guatemalan technology engineer with a renewable energy company who travels to China and Hong Kong regularly for his work.

He told me the Chinese are investing heavily in wind and solar, something I’ve been hearing in other quarters. He told me of driving through miles and miles of windmill farms on the outskirts of Shanghai – “This is not Don Quixote,” he exclaimed. “This is real!”

Meanwhile, we shared a moment of sadness about the massive oil slick approaches the Gulf Coast. Great Britain, he said, is pulling back from offshore drilling. So far, no word on this from the Obama administration.

At the same time, he was troubled by the harsh new Arizona law requiring immigrants to carry ID with them at all times – not surprising, as the law’s passage has dominated newspapers throughout Latin America and drawn criticism from regional leaders.

“Apparently Americans don’t realize that it’s the immigrants who keep the economy going,” he said. “After all, everybody in America comes from Europe. So they are immigrants too!”

To read about them, please visit Guerreros de Guadalajara, a bilingual entry in my Flickr account.

La Minerva, warrior woman of old and symbol of modern-day Guadalajara, photo courtesy of TheLittleTx, Flickr Creative Commons.

My friend Alicia, like me, struggles to remember to bring the cloth shopping bags when she goes to the supermarket. This day, she remembered. Here’s a little reminder she likes to keep handy:

“It’s not enough to be biodegradeable; it’s necessary to be bioAGREEABLE.”

I liked the way this clever slogan captured one of the most important principles of sustainability: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” In that order.

I’ve made my list and checked it a million times; selected and reselected my gear; said my goodbyes and received good wishes and safe travel blessings from near and far. I’ve left my car keys, my smart phone and my GPS behind. I’ll be making my way by foot now and by mass transit; everything I’ll need is either in my pack or shoulder bag, or it’s something I’ll have to find along the way, or live without.

I’ve been on multiple deadlines for weeks, with barely a moment to linger over a cup of tea with a loved one. Now the last loved one has pulled away from the curb, I’ve checked my backpack and I’ve made my way through security with an hour to spare, and there’ll be lingering aplenty.

Today, the only thing on my list is Mexico City.

There in the Mexican megalopolis, people are still rushing to make appointments – and I will too, tomorrow. But this afternoon I’ll greet a climate 40 degrees warmer and a mindset to match. I’ll slow down and take time to think; to read a book; to chat with the people I meet along the way. I’ll take time to breathe and look around.

“Are you excited?” my daughter texted me last night as I checked my list for the millionth time.

“Not yet,” I responded. “Just a little panicky: Have I forgotten something? Will I miss my flight? Do I have everything I need?”

Now, however, as the coffee does its work and boarding time approaches, I have a moment to reflect on the year ahead. Yes, I’m excited. Also apprehensive – and curious – and a little bit sleepy. But mostly I’m grateful.

In the year ahead, my plan is to travel the length of Latin America, from Mexico to Patagonia, documenting the Latin American environmental movement all along the way for The Esperanza Project and other publications. I hope you will follow my journey on both sites. The Esperanza Project will be focused on telling the stories of protagonists in the sustainability movement in the Americas; Roads Less Traveled will be about my personal experience, part travel narrative, part advice for a new generation of digital nomads. At the end, I’ll have a book to write and perhaps a documentary to put together, as I will be shooting video as well.

Not many people have the opportunity to take a year to follow their dream. I am hoping that I can do something bigger with this trip – to do what all dreamers hope to do, to make a difference, for myself, for others and for the planet. But even if I don’t, it’s the adventure of a lifetime, and with that, I’m satisfied.

For those of you who have offered your support, your prayers and your ideas and suggestions, I thank you. Thanks most of all for reading, and check this spot soon, and also The Esperanza Project. You can subscribe by e-mail or RSS feed from both of the sites, and/or you can follow me on Facebook (both as a fan of The Esperanza Project and as a friend of ME – And also on Twitter, @esperanzaprojec and @thirstyboots07.

I don’t know how this story will end any more than you do. But won’t it be fun to find out?

(Deejay Pilot-istockphoto)

Somewhere to the south of us, an indigenous farmer is raising his voice against the eradication of ancient seed stocks by corporate interests. An army of volunteer gardeners is sowing a food security system on rooftops, patios and abandoned lots. A tribe in the Amazon is using Google Earth to give virtual tours of its ancestral forests in a bid to build global support for their preservation. A troupe of young bicyclists is plotting colorful new ways to capture the public’s attention and steer its city policy toward the path of sustainability.

As forests burn, icecaps melt and sea levels rise, people at the grassroots aren’t waiting for the government to fix things for them. Nowhere is this more evident than in Latin America.

We in the United States hear little of this, as our news sources dedicate very little ink to the work of world changers at the local level, and even less to those of the Global South. The Esperanza Project seeks to shift this balance with a focused look at the eco-heroes who are dedicating their imaginations, their passions and in some cases their very lives to the cause of a sustainable future.

Next week, I’ll begin a yearlong journey aimed at bringing the work of some of these unsung heroes to light. By sharing their stories, I hope to inspire a greater sense of the global nature of our struggle. My goal is to help shift the media imbalance that favors the North over the South, the powerful over the powerless, the sensational and catastrophic over the constructive and gradual, and the large over the small.

This will be accomplished on many levels, from The Esperanza Project website itself, to the ripple effect created by training a network of volunteer contributors and giving them a platform on which to publish. Meanwhile my own writing will target US audiences in a variety of media.

None of this, of course, occurs without dinero. The Esperanza Project has incorporated as a nonprofit organization and we are seeking funding and sponsors. This process takes time, however, and the expenses have already begun to mount.

I am writing to you as 2009 draws to a close to ask you to consider making a tax-deductible contribution to our cause. The Esperanza Project is a low-budget operation run on volunteer energy and passion, so you can be sure that your money will be used with extreme care and frugality.

Now’s the time that nonprofit media can step in to fill the growing void formed by dying newspapers, and it can do so in a creative and meaningful way, but it will require support from its readers. Be a part of The Esperanza Project – we promise we will make you proud.

Sincerely,

Tracy L. Barnett and The Esperanza Project volunteers

P.S. Whether or not you contribute financially, there is much you can do to support The Esperanza Project. Learn more at www.TheEsperanzaProject.org/about and www.TheEsperanzaProject.org/get-involved.

Thanks for reading!

Contribute by clicking on the PayPal button below to enter your credit card or bank account number, or send a check or money order to Tracy L. Barnett, 161 Lovera Ave., San Antonio, Texas, 78212, with “Esperanza Project” in the memo field. Thank you!