Gardens of Abundance

The range of strategies and interventions is extensive: species selection, breeding, controlled burning, creation and maintenance of fertile land, strategic pruning, creation of terraces and plant research and adaptation centers, design and implementation of irrigation and water seeding systems, coastal gardens for breeding clams, octopuses, and other shellfish, and reservoirs for breeding fish, among others.

However, all these interventions were not only physical or material, but also social and cosmogonic. They were accompanied by laws, systems, and procedures regarding access, temporality, and distribution of these productive environments created collectively by humans and nonhumans.
With conquest, wars of extermination, and the theft of territory, these landscapes were also transformed, without fully understanding the key role that humans and nonhumans played in these webs of life. Places where life was abundant quickly became devastated.

Through Historical Agroecology and a transdisciplinary approach, we learn together with collectives and organizations about these technologies, knowledge, and skills. We want to make these gardens green again. Some examples of these landscape changes are:

 

• Mayan Jungle Garden

• Metepantle

• Chinampas

• Moray: Pre-Inca Living Laboratory
• Ancestral Marine Gardens