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Tag: Conservation Cultura

Yo Cuento: Then & Now

por Christian La Mont

Despierta, mi bien, despierta

Mira que ya amaneció

Ya los pajaritos cantan

La luna ya se metió

Excerpt from Las Mañanitas

Growing up, a birthday morning tradition was waiting in my bedroom listening to my family whisper loudly as they rallied Abuelitas, tías, Mamá, Papá, Abuelito, Hermano, and my great grand aunt Tía Mimi and gathered them together, ready to burst through my bedroom door full of love and occasionally off-key passion and sing las Mañanitas to me. The Pedro Infante version.

As a sort of officially unofficial birthday song in Mexico, las Mañanitas has many versions and singers and oftentimes comes with a piñata waiting outside, a cake, candles, and maybe a face in the cake, but always comes with love and affection.
As we end un año outdoors and step boldly into a new year, I’d like to sing a special Mañanitas to Latino Outdoors, or LO as the organization is also known. Believe it or not, LO is celebrating our 10-year anniversary this year! Surrounded by peer organizations and giants of conservation who have recently celebrated 100 years since their founding, it may seem like a small anniversary, but Latino Outdoors is now old enough to be a 4th grader. Incidentally, 4th graders get free access to all federal lands and waters thanks to the Every Kid Outdoors pass.

The theme of our year-long anniversary celebration will be Crecemos Outdoors: 10 Años. Throughout 2023 we will be showing our love and appreciation for all of the people who have been a part of the LO community during these incredibly exciting and challenging years. 

Needless to say, we are excited to showcase what ten years outdoors looks like, and we are working with LO’s regional teams, allies, artists, and storytellers to celebrate this incredible, unique, and vital comunidad throughout 2023.

From left to right: Founding Board Chairperson, Richard Rojas, Sr., Founder José González, and LO’s first National Director, Graciela Cabello.

One thing I’m looking forward to is cultivating and growing the Yo Cuento Blog. After all, Latino Outdoors began as a blog in 2013 by José González. As part of the celebration, we will be featuring written reflections from those who have been a part of LO from the early days when the seeds of change were just being planted, including LO’s first National Director, Graciela Cabello, Founder José González, and Founding Board Chairperson, Richard Rojas, Sr. We will also be hearing from newer voices and fresh perspectives who are planting the semillas to take LO into the next 10 years.

These voices will share unique perspectives centered around our anniversary theme of growth. What growth have they seen in Latino Outdoors as a movement and community over the past 10 years? What kind of growth have they experienced or helped nurture in the larger world of equity, access to the outdoors, and conservation? What growth have they experienced within themselves?

In 2023, we will feature and publish a new Crecemos Outdoors: Now and Then blog piece every month. These cuentos, these memories, and observations will serve as a way to remember and appreciate, but also as a way to record our own history. These stories and histories will serve as a reminder of what we can accomplish.  They will be first-person accounts that future generations can look to and learn from 10 years, 20 years, and 100 years from now – the 50 and 100-year-olds did it, y nosotros ¿por qué no?

In addition to our monthly Now and Then blogs, we are collaborating with Latinx/e/a/o artists from across the diaspora, and we will be sharing their commissioned artwork throughout the year. These works of art will celebrate the diversity within latinidad and vary as much as the individuals who created them. They will include poetry, watercolor, graphic art, original music, illustrations using natural pigment turning tierra, semillas, and plantas into paint, and more.

As we celebrate 10 years of growth, we will also continue to celebrate every day of 2023 – the outings, the workshops, Semillitas Outdoors, Orgullosamente Outdoors, Latino Conservation Week, and more. We’ll be hosting Livestream panel discussions designed to connect LO leaders and the greater community with opportunities to learn about issues surrounding Indigenous identity, roots, history, sovereignty, land stewardship, land acknowledgments, and beyond. 

Photo by Michael Ocasio

In the past 10 years, we’ve seen BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) outdoor organizations, clubs, coalitions, and spaces grow from a seedling to a sturdy tree. During this time, we’ve seen progress toward more diversity and representation in workplaces. In the last decade, we’ve witnessed and been a part of a cultural shift, a movement that has met the moment. 

The first 10 years of Latino Outdoors were about scratching out a place, about surviving. These next 10 years? They are about thriving. 

Whether it’s your preferred tradition to sing Happy Birthday or Las Mañanitas, we invite you to join us in this important and monumental celebration. We see all the individuals, organizations, clubs, and affinity groups that have planted their seeds and we see you growing. We are like trees in the same forest. We help each other and we communicate, we protect each other, and we thrive as a community.

For our first art piece of Crecemos Outdoors: 10 años, we’re proud to share a piñata-inspired design full of celebration and meaning.

As we have written before: The Latino Outdoors logo consists of two primary symbols. 

“The larger of the two, placed off-center to the left in a petroglyph pictogram style, represents the sun. Two concentric rings form its body. Surrounding the rings, are the rays of the sun, composed of triangles. The four larger triangles represent the cardinal directions. 

To the right of the sun, slightly elevated, is a symbol that evokes a gust of wind or a small cloud. However, it actually represents voice and is inspired by the Aztec speech glyph found pictorially in codices.”

For this special occasion, we have created a version of the LO pictogram with 10 festive elements symbolizing 10 years. These pieces of confetti and dulces adorn the familiar sun glyph, which is embracing cultura and engaging in a sort of code switching by simultaneously representing a piñata. Below the anniversary logo is text reading: “2013 Celebrating 10 Años 2023”.

So let’s break open that piñata and celebrate 10 years of growth, 10 years of movement building, 10 years of dreaming and creating, 10 years of Latino Outdoors.

It’s going to be a big year for LO and we’re so excited to share it with you. This is your celebration as much as it is ours. Feliz cumpleaños, Latino Outdoors. Dale.

#CrecemosOutdoors10

Do you have a memory or cuento to share from your time with LO over the past ten years?

We’d love to hear it.  Email christian@latinooutdoors.org or submit your cuento HERE.

Día de los Muertos en Movement Boulder

Por LO Colorado

Latino Outdoors Colorado is excited to bring Día de Muertos to Movement Boulder from Monday, 10/31 to Wednesday, 11/2. We want to kick off this celebration by doing some learning on who we are, what the holiday is and what it means to us to celebrate this with the greater climbing community.

Latino Outdoors
Latino Outdoors is an organization that inspires, connects, and engages the Latine/x community in the outdoors. We embrace culture and family as part of the outdoor narrative, ensuring that our history, heritage, and leadership are valued and represented.

The Colorado chapter of Latino Outdoors started in 2016 and our chapter’s volunteers consist of climbers, anglers, hikers, backpackers, environmental and wildlife advocates, and so much more. The majority of the events that we host are beginner, youth, and family friendly and always free to attend. As a chapter, we value providing to our community lasting access to experiences in the outdoors and having a volunteer cohort that represents the various possibilities of what it means to be a leader in the outdoors.

What is Día de Muertos?
Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead is primarily a Mexican holiday, but many Latin American and non-Latin American communities celebrate this or similar holidays. Some of those countries include Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, Haiti, Philippines, Brazil, and Costa Rica. Día de Muertos is a time to honor, remember, and temporarily welcome back our loved ones who have passed away and it is a celebration that has come about from the blending of Mexica (or Aztec) tradition and the colonial influence of Spanish Catholicism.

For Día de Muertos, we guide our loved ones back to us with the use of an ofrenda or an altar. The ofrenda is meant to guide the dead back to the living, but also gives the living relative a chance to build a memorial to honor their loved one that has passed. All ofrendas will be unique and different, but there are some traditional elements of the ofrenda that are often expressed. The ofrenda should represent the four elements: fire, wind, earth, and water. Fire usually takes the shape of a candle that guides our loved one to our ofrenda. Papel picado, a thin and colorful sheet of paper, represents wind and will move as the loved one returns. Earth will typically be food that your loved one enjoyed or the traditional pan de muerto, a pan dulce that represents death by taking the shape of bones and a tear to represent sorrow. Water can be represented by actual water or another drink that will quench the loved one’s thirst after the long journey to the living. Other important items include cempazúchitl or marigolds, copal incense, and calaveras or sugar skulls.

The duration of Día de Muertos varies depending on where you are celebrating and who you are welcoming back. Typically, you have your ofrenda ready for loved ones by October 31st so they can find your ofrenda and then it continues to be celebrated throughout the 1st and 2nd of November.

Steven Ochoa, a volunteer with Latino Outdoors, shares what the celebration means to him:

“Día de los Muertos to me is a celebration of life based in duality. The ceramic calaveras (sugar skulls) on my altares (altar) each represent a person that has transitioned to mictlan. Mictlan is a Nahuatl word that translates to “the land of the dead,” (composed of the words miqui meaning to die, and tlan meaning place of). Mictlan is not equivalent to afterlife in western religions, rather it is a continuation of life in a different plane of existence. Día de los Muertos is the one time per year that loved ones can cross back to our realm from Mictlan, and as such we build altars for them to find their way to us. The ofrenda consists of their favorite foods, drinks, and anything else that brought them joy on this side of existence. These elaborate creations are absolutely works of art that inspire and should move you, but they are not backdrops. In my personal experience, I am okay with people taking pictures of my ofrenda, but I am not okay with someone posing in front of them. I believe my loved ones are present at my ofrenda at all times, and it is disrespectful for someone to use my loved ones as a backdrop. 

It has been important for myself to reach spiritual nepantla, meaning the spiritual middle where I have been able to embrace the best parts of what I’ve been taught and the indigeneity I aspire to reclaim. So I invite everyone to be moved and to take pictures of my personal ofrenda respectfully with the knowledge you are taking a picture of my father, grandmother, cousin, and best friends.

I end with a translated quote from Octavio Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude that best captures the essence of Día de los Muertos amongst Mexicans: “The Mexican does not fear death. The Mexican jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of their favorite toys and their most steadfast love.”

Movement Boulder Celebration

We feel it is important to bring this celebration to the broader climbing community, as death is something that we deal with too often in this activity. By sharing our cultural practices with you, we hope to provide a space where death and grief are acknowledged. A place where our loved ones that have passed are celebrated, honored, and guided back to our reality.

On the morning of October 31st, Latino Outdoors volunteers will be setting up a community ofrenda that will be available to climbers at Movement to contribute to. On November 1st, we will be tabling at the gym so you all can learn more about our work and ask any questions you may have about the holiday. On November 2nd, we will be hosting an event for our Latine/x community and will be around the gym if you would like to connect with us. After our event on the 2nd, we will be taking down the ofrenda.

We invite you to contribute to the ofrenda by bringing pictures of your loved ones and any food, drink, or objects that honor their lives.

Ocean Teaching Us To Love Nature

por Michael Brito

Michael Brito grew up in Southern California, where the long stretches of sandy beaches inspired his love and connection to the outdoors. As a high school student, he would stake out bonfire pits with friends and watch the waves at the beach. Like generations before, he connected with his community around a fire. The fire’s warmth, crashing waves, and the painted sunset pulled him away from everything. Brito found a connection to the earth on those long beach days.

Brito attended UC Davis initially as a Political Sciences major. While he felt the need to pursue a career connecting people for the common good, he struggled to figure out how he could do so while finding an occupation that sparked a fire in him. After two years of struggles as an undergrad, Brito found his community among students studying Marine Sciences. Being part of this community allowed him to look closer at the coastal marine life they were observing. Very quickly, he created an even deeper connection with the ocean.

This community of students inspired Brito to switch his degree and pour all his remaining time into studying and asking ecological questions about coastal oceans. Becoming familiar with the neighboring marine life or how marine algae produces more oxygen than all the world’s forests sparked that fire Brito had been searching for. He became aware of how the world’s oceans are suffering from climate change yet protecting us by absorbing the carbon dioxide humans have been pumping into the atmosphere. Deeply moved, Brito was mobilized and became an advocate for ocean conservation. After college, he worked on the first ever captive rearing program for the critically endangered Sunflower sea star, Pycnopodia helianthoides. While this was important work, he felt he could make a more lasting impact on conservation by engaging with coastal communities.

Brito stumbled upon the Mendocino Coast on a road trip and was left in awe by the beautiful coastline. He immediately found a job in Fort Bragg with Pacific Environmental Education Center (PEEC), teaching fourth to eighth graders about the Mendocino coast’s natural history. He now works with the Noyo Center for Marine Science, supporting the mission of promoting conservation through the education of the local community. Brito hopes to work with the Noyo Center for Marine Science to reach Mendocino county’s Latinx communities and give them guided access to outdoor spaces.

Brito believes fostering an outdoors that welcomes diverse groups of people is essential because everyone must be given a chance to connect to the earth and green spaces. When Western thought-centric ideas dominate a space, they can exclude other ways of thinking and discourage others from being part of it. As a person of color, he understands that there is an egregious lack of leaders of color. Having navigated through white-dominated spaces, Brito believes that we must continue to engage local underrepresented communities so that everyone can one day be part of solving current issues such as climate change. The solution starts with creating opportunities for Latinx and people of color to get outside and have an enriching community.

The most significant barrier Brito anticipates as the major roadblock for people to get outside is the difficulty for low-income families of color to afford to spend time outdoors. This problem has only been made worse by the lack of accessible public transportation. As Brito continues his work, he hopes that more community members want to contribute to Latino Outdoor’s mission to get all people outside.

Michael Brito is a 24-year-old who recently joined the Latino Outdoors North Coast Chapter as an Outings Leader. He’s worked as a teacher naturalist for P.E.E.C. and gained a deep appreciation for the Mendocino Coast. Michael enjoys reading books about marine life and exploring the local tide pools. He looks forward to creating a more inclusive, diverse, and welcoming space for all in the outdoors.