Commentary by: Coyote Alberto Ruz
Community PIONEER, rights of nature spokesman
Tepoztlán, Mexico

¡HASTA LA VICTORIA, SIEMPRE!

I grew up in the Mayan southern territories of Yucatán, Mexico. Both my parents taught me from my early childhood and then later, in adolescence, the responsibility we had towards the people who were the most marginalized by the system model in which we all lived or survived. 

As soon as we moved to Mexico City and I entered high school and different faculties of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, I began frequenting the social & political movements that “fished” among the rank of students for those who would be loyal supporters and members of the coming administrations and economic monopolies that rule and run our country. Instead of approaching those elitist groups, I participated in actions to support the Cuban and other third world independence or revolutionary processes. We also supported the Civil Rights movements of Afro-Americans in the US and the peacenik mobilizations against the Vietnam war.

Change the World

We joined efforts to “change the world” with students, artists, farmers and industrial workers’ organizations that opposed governmental policies, corruption, repression, co-option from more than 60 years of “Perfect Dictatorship,” instituted by a monolithic party that emerged from the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1924.

My early formation included passionate Study Circles with legendary authors such as Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, among others; participation in growing protest marches; meetings with leaders from other organizations to decide & plan common actions such as a General Strike at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Included in this was our presence at the doors of factories fighting for better working conditions; visits to rural communities to better know and understand their living situations and ways to improve them, and at the University Campus, our occupation of buildings for specific demands, projection of films and documentaries illustrating what was going on in the rest of the world, and presenting theater plays from recognized social fighters from different times and origins.

In 1968, like many hundreds of thousands of young mutants from my generation, I was inspired by the Beat poets, travelers, and visionary philosophers. With a small “Affinity Group” of students from Mexico and the US, we decided to drop out and join “The Movement” in the United States first, and, some of us later, all over Europe. 

We collaborated in the origin of a real international organic network that was thus woven and led by charismatic activists from many different fronts and continents. European situationists and anarchists; Brown beret Chicanos and Black Panthers in the US; Zengakuren in Japan and Tropicalistas in Brazil; Yippies and radical students everywhere; leaders of poor people´s campaigns and Resurrection cities in Washington DC. All of us, in our early twenties, who took part in these historical moments, were naively convinced that before the turn of the century and the new millennium, a new model of society would emerge. 

We then began moving to remote rural areas, or to occupy abandoned spaces in the cities, to create intentional communities or “free” crash pads in which we could experiment with the changes we needed to invent and improve in order to have a real impact on the rest of society.

globalized humanity

Since that time, I have decided to live communally, and dedicate my life to back up the social causes that I feel are worthy of that support. I also began understanding that there was another reality beyond our human reality. When we joined the movement against nuclear energy, we realized that we, as a globalized humanity, had created an instrument both for war, energy sources, and for medical purposes that has already caused and can continue to cause the annihilation of a larger part of our species and millions of other species that are part of the chain of life that we depend upon. 

Environmental organizations began to emerge in the 1970’s and to proliferate in the Eighties, and many of us saw in this process the sign of a more inclusive vision and mission for our lives. We could no longer continue thinking that only our social involvement for many centuries would be enough to create a harmonious, just, and sustainable society. We also began recognizing that even if in some places, all humans, all people and nations had achieved the same rights irrespective of ethnic origins, age and gender, social class, color of skin, or degree of education, this was not enough to continuously “advance, progress, develop and grow” without taking into consideration the natural limits of the Earth.

Slowly certain concepts began to be part of our daily dialogue, objectives, and activities. Concepts such as bioregionalism, permaculture, ecovillages, eco-neighborhoods, green cities, transition towns and projects, celebration of Earth Day and All Species Day; launching of an Earth Charter and Agenda 21; use of tools such as consensus to take democratic inclusive decisions in groups, and eco-friendly technologies appropriated for each relevant situation, territory or idiosyncrasy; multicultural actions and campaigns to promote our common ventures and to defend territories and local, generally indigenous communities, threatened by voracious mining companies, irrational deforestation of the last forests of the world, privatization and lethal contamination of natural vital elements such as water; brutal treatment of animals in industrial factories of growth and the death of millions of cattle, poultry, fisheries, sacrificed only to increase the profits and benefits of a small sector of society to satisfy the diets of increasing numbers of meat eaters, and to contribute significantly to our increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

We no longer could separate social from environmental or ecological activism. We began focusing more on proposals, plans and real projects instead of using all our efforts, means, time, resources and energy in protesting, accusing, and confronting the perpetrators, or violators, of the Laws of Nature.  And suddenly, in 2008 and 2010, while traveling with our Rainbow Peace Caravan through all Central and South American countries, we began listening to the news of two until then mostly little known Andean nations, Ecuador and Bolivia, announcing to the world that they had adopted in their Federal Constitutions new laws inspired by the cosmogony from the living indigenous communities in the Andes. 

hidden wisdom

The keepers or guardians of this hidden wisdom, based on the full respect for all forms of life, recognizing humans just as a late link in the chain of life on Earth or in Pachamama, as they call it, were clear in their advice to us, their “little brothers and sisters:” “When the snow and the glaciers from la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in Colombia, will begin to melt, it will be too late to reverse this process….”            

In the midst of the jungles of Chiapas, old Chan Kin, the last of the Lacandon Mayan nation prophets, also shared his wisdom, while doing a ceremony with him in their small Mayan village of Naja, saying: “When you cut a tree, a star dies in the sky. A forest without trees is just as a night without stars…”   

And when Martin Luther King left us as an epitaph when he said, “If I knew that the world would end tomorrow, today I would plant a tree…” it was clear that we could not continue ignoring the importance of the messages of those who came before us, and that even if I, personally, had spent most of my adult life defending social issues, it was time to dedicate the coming years of my life to promote the adoption at all levels, of laws recognizing the Earth as a living being, with inalienable and intrinsic rights of her own, and of all her elements & components, and that not only we human beings, but minerals, waters, forests, animals, underground life and the biosphere have rights as well.   

When I began riding the Rainbow Peace Caravan in 1996, I adopted the surname Subcoyote Alberto, because our tribe in Mexico, is called Huehuecoyotl, which means the place of the very Old Coyotes. After 13 years and 17 countries visited by our legendary nomadic “Living and learning school”, I returned to work for three years for the Government of Mexico City, as a director for the formation of Eco Neighborhood promoters. And later, I served for a year as Director of Environmental Culture in the State of Morelos. But after these experiences, I understood that I no longer wanted to do those projects “inside of the System.”  

Since then, I have recovered my tribal status, and, as Coyote Alberto, and with my companion Veronica Sacta from Ecuador, I have been organizing all sorts of events, campaigns, conferences and national and International Forums to promote “Rights of Mother Earth/Mother Nature”, and to create, articulate and fortify the emerging and existing networks that are creating a new Global Movement for an Earth Jurisdiction, and the adoption of a Universal Declaration for the Rights of Mother Earth at the United Nations.

When a few voices started to rise long ago against slavery in the heart of the Roman empire, those first cultural heroes probably had to confront a social system that took for granted the legal right to own slaves. It took decades or centuries for free nations which had been conquered by armies of colonialists, pirates, mercenaries and all sorts of outlaws with the support of kings, merchants, usurers and the mighty Catholic Church, to declare their independence and recover their original dignity and freedom. The resistance against those efforts decimated generations of freedom fighters, just as in the case of the abolition of slavery in the United States and of apartheid in South Africa. And everywhere women continue struggling for their rights to an “equality of possibilities” for all men and women.      

To change a Roman-inspired legislation that has lasted a millennium won´t be an easy task. But within the emerging movement for the Rights of Mother Earth, there is a network of Latin American New Constitutionalists who are part of an avant-garde for this inspiring peaceful legislative re-evolution. Pope Francis has since been elected, shaking the basements of the Catholic Church with his surprisingly critical radical eco-Evangel “Laudato Se.” The organization of three International Forums for the Rights of Mother Earth, in Mexico City, (2016); São Paulo, Brazil (2018) and Bogotá, Colombia (2019), are other small victories for our autonomous movements. Other examples are the institution of a direction of Harmony with Nature at the United Nations, leading a dialogue at the General Assembly each year with experts and recognized activists worldwide, and promoting a biocentric Earth jurisprudence at an international level. 

Finally, to end this brief introduction, we want to share the news that in several countries and territories, in the last few years, local organizations and concerned courts have finally adopted legal rights for some of their rivers, lakes, glaciers, seeds, and forests.

These are all clear signs that, whatever it takes, one day we will have to look forward to a time when our children or grandchildren will ask us surprised and shocked: