Mercy Vera, seed guardian

Samanta Arango Orozco

Colombia

50 x 33  cms [6000 x 4000 px]

Description:

Claudina Loaiza and Mercy Vera are indigenous guardians of native seeds of the Pijao community. They live and protect the indigenous territories of southern Tolima in Colombia, bordering the Tatacoa desert. They are teachers at the Manuel Quintín Lame Agroecological and Territorial School, a popular education process that allowed me to get to know them and recognize them as my friends and masters. In each seed they protect they keep the memory of the ancestors and the relationship with their territories, nourish the communities that inhabit the present and allow the dignified survival of future generations. With their communities and environments, they have developed knowledge and technologies that question the paradigm of linear time and the notion of a single non-future future. With their bodies/territories they sow experiences of Earth care and demonstrate concrete solutions to hunger, healing communities and territories suffering the impacts of global social and climatic crises. They put diversity, affection, social organization and care for the Earth at the center. To save and protect native seeds and the communities and territories that sustain them is to preserve the food sovereignty of peoples and thus the divergent horizons of humanity.

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