In Mexico, when nature suffers, women suffer. Despite the many systems of oppression Mexican women struggle against, with their deep connection with the environment, they know how to defend and protect the natural world better than anyone else. As mothers, daughters, and sisters, they have the ability to read the signs that nature sends them: they hear the cries of the forests, of the sea, and understand the pain of living beings. The environment becomes an extension of themselves, as close as a loved one or a friend.
This struggle can take many forms: from compassion to resistance, from the individual to the collective. Here, to mark Earth Day 2025, we meet four women—or communities of women—across Mexico who are doing their part to help save the natural environments that surround them.
Sinaloa
In the coastal state of Sinaloa, the women of three indigenous Yoreme-Mayo communities have been fighting against a petrochemical mega-project for over 10 years. Around Ohuira Bay, they formed the Aquí No collective, made up of some 600 people from the towns of Lázaro Cárdenas, Ohuira, and Paredones. In each of these communities, women have taken the lead in the struggle, despite constant intimidation and threats in a region marked by organized crime.
GPO, the subsidiary of a global fertilizer giant, has chosen this bay connected to the Sea of Cortez to install an ammonia plant, a chemical compound used in industrial agriculture. The plant plans to extract large quantities of water from the shallow bay, then return it to the warmer, saltier area.
The effects have been monumental, irreversibly altering the fragile local ecosystem, which is home to endangered marine species. The company has also cut down two hectares of mangroves in a site sacred to the Yoreme-Mayo people to build its offices. “You should need permission even to cut a twig, because everything has life,” says Lolo, a figure from the Ohuira community. Throughout their decade of resistance, the women have managed to organize and train themselves to defend their rights through science. Their goal is to save both the bay and its people, as in the universe—called anya, in the Yoreme language—everything is interconnected.
Xochimilco
Imitating a habit of her grandfather’s, Gabriela Alejandra Morales Valdelamar keeps jars of seeds in her home—among them, a variety of corn specifically adapted to the salinity of the waters of Xochimilco. Those canals, together with the ingenious system of chinampas, or floating plots of farming land, are located southeast of Mexico City, and serve as the legacy of a pre-Hispanic agriculture. The zone is recognized by UNESCO as a cultural heritage site, yet despite its importance, use of the chinampas is in decline due to drought. It has lost 90% of its agricultural capacity as a result of the growth of the capital.
Gabriela’s grandparents and parents abandoned the family chinampa many years ago—but after training as a biologist, she decided to return. “That’s how I realized that two hands working the land do more than texts at university,” says Gabriela. With the help of her neighbors there, she recovered her ancestral knowledge, such as the chinampa technique, rescuing native seeds in the markets and learning to row in the canals aboard the cayucos, or traditional boats. Her return to her roots reflects the resistance of the people of Xochimilco, threatened by the expansion of Mexico City.
Gabriela named her project Tlazolteotl, after a goddess who symbolizes the transmutation between life and death. “It is also a way of seeing the chinampa as a kind of compost, where dead matter serves to sow and sustain life,” she explains. “For me, to sow is to sustain the cultural life of Xochimilco.” In addition, Gabriela offers workshops on planting to women and teaches them how to row. And inside her home, she has begun to cultivate another seed: “Now, I am sowing ideas. I know that this will also bear fruit, and it will be a kind of care that my daughter, at some point, can also offer to the territory.”
Michoacán
Under the footsteps of María Teresa Bravo Perucho, black sand crunches on the arid bed of Angahuan’s main spring. The earth has been razed bare as a result of deforestation, which has also weakened the soil layers that were washed away during the rainy season. Today, the local population faces a severe shortage of water for daily consumption. Set at the foot of the Paricutín volcano, the territory of Angahuan is in the heart of Michoacán’s avocado belt, which produces three-quarters of the national harvest.
Avocado crops are destroying the forests and upsetting the balance of this autonomous Purepecha community, which manages its territory communally. Yet the 6,000 inhabitants also depend, for the most part, on the avocado, either directly or indirectly—a link further complicated by the presence of organized crime in the region.
María Teresa Bravo Perucho was elected president of Angahuan’s indigenous council, becoming the first woman to assume this position. Her mission begins with the task of bringing the community together—making it strong and united enough to resist the onslaught of deforestation. “It’s a matter of dialogue and reflection with the community,” she explains.
María Teresa took an important first step to rectifying the situation by interrupting her career—she had been studying towards a career in orchard management—and returning to Angahuan. She acknowledges that this decision was influenced by the women in her family, with whom she used to go out to plant trees for reforestation. Her mother, in particular—whose dream it was to take care of a piece of forest—represents for her the example of “how a woman develops in the countryside; the connection and vitality it gives her when she has her own land and starts planting.”
Oaxaca
Cirila Martinez moves nimbly among the aerial roots of the mangroves in Laguna de Chacahua. For years, the fisherwoman has lived in the heart of this national park, located on the Pacific coast of the state of Oaxaca. This lagoon system, declared a Ramsar site in 2008, is home to three species of sea turtles and a refuge for numerous migratory birds. However, according to Cirila, the lagoon has been undergoing a serious crisis for the past 17 years. In the early 2000s, authorities began building infrastructure in the lagoon, including a breakwater at the mouth of Cerro Hermoso, where the town of El Zapotalito is located.
The result was devastating: the mouth of the lagoon was closed, and the saltwater stopped mixing with the freshwater. The fish began to die, and the tichinda, a type of mussel that sustained the community, disappeared. The fishermen stopped going out, and the four species of mangroves began to dry up. Cirila, who learned to fish in her youth “out of necessity, because we did not have the resources to send our children to school,” has since taken up the lagoon’s cause. Seeing that nature, “which is like my family,” is suffering, she has committed herself to fight, together with non-governmental organizations and authorities, to save it. “I hold on,” she says firmly, referring to her work with the group Mujeres de Restauración del Manglar (Women of Mangrove Restoration).
For the past year and a half, Cirila has maintained a nursery with young mangroves ready to be planted. However, the main obstacle continues to be bureaucracy, as the local government has not yet granted the necessary authorizations to continue with the restoration. “We are not doing anything wrong in the lagoon—we want to conserve our mangroves, which provide us with protection,” she says.
Last season’s heavy rains have renewed hope in Chacahua. For the past four months, the mouth of Cerro Hermoso has reopened, allowing the lagoon to reconnect with the sea and begin to regain its vitality. Some fishermen are once again going out in boats to catch shrimp, and beach restaurants are beginning to attract tourists again. Already, the mangroves are showing signs of recovery.
