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Tag: Conservation

This Land is Your Land

Por Vanessa Herrera

There was an ICE raid half a mile from my house the morning we left for our trip. To call it a raid is a misnomer. A group of masked men in uniforms handcuffed and threw a Latino man walking down the street into an unmarked car. I watched this happen live on Instagram, took a deep breath, and put my kids in the car to drive to the Klamath River.

For me, being a third-generation nature-loving Chicana means straddling the space between city streets and the backcountry. I have the privilege to leave the realities of my city behind and get lost floating downstream. I felt conflicted about leaving, but I had been planning this trip for months. 

It took two days to drive from Los Angeles to the Klamath. I was there with my two children, river friends, and friends of friends. The eleven of us traveled in three rafts, roughly 50 river miles. We prepared our rafts to launch at Indian Creek. My boys played in the creek while I rigged my raft, loading it with everything we needed for the next 5 days: drinking water, tents, a stove, sleeping bags, a first aid kit, a cooler, and food. The familiar act of loading dry bags and tying in all our gear set my mind at ease. I was already more relaxed than I had been in months. 

I spent my 20s guiding rafts all across the West, chasing whitewater and honing my skills. I worked hard to excel in a sport that was not made for me. At every company I worked for, I was always the only person of color and one of only a handful of women. It was the early 2000s. There was very little diversity in professional outdoor spaces. I learned to code-switch and carved out a place for myself in this community. I made good friends and formed a deep connection to rivers and water. Rivers were the place I felt the most like myself, but racially and culturally the most out of place.  

But this trip was not about whitewater. This was a kids’ trip; meant to get my boys (ages 4 and 6) comfortable with long multi-day river trips. I want them to know wild places and to feel connected to nature, to take up space and know they belong. 

Just downstream from the put-in, we dropped into the first rapid, a wave train, a series of standing waves. I teed up my boat and pushed on my oars into the waves with my boys and friend sitting in the front of my boat. Waves after wave crashed over them. Silence. “Is this too much for them?” I ask myself. Then squeals of delight, “¡Mamá, otra! ¡Más olas! ¡Somos balseros!” I am relieved. They loved it. My wild boys have grown up in rafts and have already logged more river days than most. They named the rapid olas grandes. Somos balseros. 

We made camp a few miles downstream. Everything came out of our boats. We set up tents and the kitchen. My friends made dinner while my children swam in an eddy, a calm spot in the river. By the time dinner was ready, my boys were covered in sand. I bathed them in the river and put on dry clothes. We ate in a circle, sitting in camp chairs, taking in the canyon walls, debriefing the day.  

As the sun set, a thunderstorm moved in. My boys are scared of thunder. We ran to hide in our tent. My boys asked me for a story. I told them a story my abuela would tell me when I was little. The one where she sends each child one at a time to pick ceresas, but instead of returning with the fruit, the kids climb the tree to laugh and eat. She sends more and more children to bring back what she needs, and soon there is a party in the tree of children eating and singing “Come. Come. Come.”  My boys giggle as I add their names to the story and describe how they climbed the tree, the taste of the fruit, and the sticky juice of the fruit running down their faces. Eventually, they fell asleep. 

The days continued with more rapids between meandering stretches of flat water. We camped on a beach each night. The boys caught tadpoles. The adults took turns cooking. The boys collected sticks and skipped rocks. They learned to identify osprey, Canadian geese, and umbrella plants. They took turns rowing the raft through flat water. With no cell phone reception, the outside world faded. 

We rounded a bend and spotted a bald eagle perched on a rock. “Aguila calva,” my boys whisper. My oldest learned the Pledge of Allegiance in Kindergarten this year and knows it’s our national bird. He asks me to sing an American song, a patriotic song. We float by, and I sing the closest thing to a patriotic song I can stomach, “This Land is Your Land”, to the eagle and my children as I row.  I don’t know if I made the right decision leaving the city while my community is under attack, but these are the experiences I want for my children. This is the type of patriotism I want my boys to know. To know that this land belongs to the birds and them. It is their legacy to protect, steward, and enjoy. 

Lessons Learned From My Beloved Father

por Marisol Morales

As we celebrate Latino Conservation Week (July 18-26), I have been reflecting on my own experiences as a Chicana and of people who helped shape my views of the conservation movement. For me, conservation means stewarding our lands to preserve and respect all living things. The history of the conservation movement as we know it, is rooted in the destruction of the environment and cultural groups. The indigenous people who preserved and respected the land and the environment, were attacked. Their experiences and voices were ignored and silenced.

My father recently passed away, but he left me the most valuable lessons about people and nature. He believed that people, like plants, need to be cared for and respected.

“At an early age, I learned about the impacts of environmental injustice on our essential agricultural workers. I also learned how to hold a plant in my hand and admire its value and beauty”.

My father, Daniel Morales, was a farmworker and a dedicated environmental justice advocate. In the late 1940s, my father immigrated to California from Durango, Mexico with his parents and siblings in pursuit of the American dream. Growing up as a migrant child, he faced many hardships and his family struggled to make ends meet. At the age of eight, he worked picking prunes, tomatoes, topping garlic among other crops. Back in the ’50s, my father, and many farmworkers like him, experienced discrimination while working in the fields; there were no age restrictions to protect children, no breaks, no clean drinking water, no bathrooms. Today, farmworkers continue to be amongst the most vulnerable in our country; living in substandard housing, subjected to hazardous and inhumane working conditions, experiencing greater health disparities – including high rates of COVID-19, and are denied some of the most basic workplace protections.

Marisol and Dolores Huerta

My father’s rough life made him strong and resilient in the face of adversity. He transcended challenging times by becoming a life-long advocate for social justice. He devoted over four decades of service to the Center for Employment Training (CET) collaborating with the United Farm Workers (UFW). The farmworkers’ movement of the 1960s was a collective effort of diverse voices committed to social and environmental justice. They fought against discriminatory labor laws and advocated for workers’ rights, improved housing conditions for agricultural workers, and better wages for farmworkers. My family was honored in 2019, when California State Assemblyman Ash Kalra awarded my father the Latino Legacy Award for being, “ A staunch civil rights and social justice advocate.” In addition, he acknowledged his contributions to the farmworkers’ struggle for basic human rights.

Ten years ago, my father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was invited to participate in a Stanford research study on farmworkers. Researchers were looking at the long-term effects of early pesticide exposure and the correlation to high rates of cancer in adults. After several tests, the results showed that he had DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) deposits in his body – the insecticide that was sprayed while he was working in the fields as a child. Similar studies have also shown that migrant children with high exposure to pesticides have significantly higher cancer rates. With more urgency than previous years, he fought for farmworkers’ rights.

I am forever grateful for my father’s compassionate leadership in the community that helped shape my understanding of conservation, advocating for justice for people and our natural resources. He understood the intersectionality between environmental justice, economic justice, and health on our relationship with nature. The memory of my father’s advocacy guides me in my pursuit of justice for communities of color within the conservation movement. Throughout his life, he embodied and shared the view, “Sí Se Puede!” (Yes You Can!). He believed all people can and should live with dignity. He worked with others to help create a better life for themselves, their families, and their communities. Conservation begins with self-respect and preservation of people. Conservation of the whole environment is fighting for justice for people and the protection of our land.