by The air in Oaxaca’s Huatulco National Park is thick as soup, and the abundance of living things is so rich that my senses feel saturated. The Zapotec guide, Perfecto Careno Ramirez, highlights the bounty through memories of his childhood spent on this land. The grado tree is used to connect with ancestors in ceremonies; the vine roots of the cat’s nail saved his friend by delaying the deadly sting of a scorpion; and the ‘ear tree’ with its hard seed cases which his mother used to peel when she bathed.
Many hotels in the area offer guided tours of the jungle, stunning beaches and coral reefs, but I have booked through Huatulco Salvaje. Most of the members of this 12-strong Zapotec cooperative lived here before they were relocated in 1998 when the government declared Huatulco a national park. On the brightly painted porch of the cooperative’s office, founding member Sigifredo Castro tells me that despite their unique relationship with the land, they find it difficult to compete with tours offered by big hotels. “The all-encompassing model is broken,” he says, shaking his head. “Tourists don’t come out to meet the people, and the money they bring is mostly from Mexico.”
I started dreaming of this trip in Tulum while eating £20 aguachile and trying my best to avoid the various Instagram shoots that are happening around me. I knew I wanted to connect with Mexicans who were interested in preserving their land and culture, but between the shiny beach bars and the clubs blasting EDM, there weren’t many opportunities. A Google search for community tourism projects turned up nowhere. Facebook pages with ancient images suggested that the owners were more interested in running their projects than promoting them, and with my poor Spanish, phone calls were awkward rather than enlightening.
Back in Oaxaca, I roll down the car window and look at hills covered in verdant jungle sliding by. My friend Eytan Elterman, founder of Lokal Travel – a booking platform that supports small community-run projects across Latin America – has graduated. We’re on a scouting mission from the epic coast of Oaxaca to its mountain capital looking for new additions to the scene.
“In Mexico, remote communities with limited access to business opportunities often resort to logging or mining to survive. Or they migrate to the States, of course,” says Eytan, stopping to let a cow cross the road. “Community tourism empowers people to be stewards of their own land – not to mention offering travelers the chance to have cross-cultural exchanges that mean something.”
A few hours later, we are in a kitchen that is black with smoke in the stone of San José Manialtepec. Angela Carmona and Jacinto Garcia, who have lived in this house for 50 years, are about to reveal the recipe for their signature cheese. It is swelteringly hot and decidedly awkward. Although the cheese-making workshop is available for booking through Ecoturismo Manialtepec, the way Angela is quietly twisting her skirt suggests that few travelers take this offer up. Eitan turns out with his limbs gone into a bucket of whey, and everyone laughs. Angela runs over and shows him how to pack it into the press that once belonged to her grandmother, her hands flowing with the deftness of a master potter.
Later, Señora Gonzalez, who owns Ecoturismo Manialtepec with her husband, Ismael, molests us to the soundtrack of bolero music wafting over from the nearby yard. Although our faces are puce from our chase into the cooking fire, we proceeded to slurp up the deep dark sauce with gusto. She tells us that it took years of trial and error to perfect a recipe that includes cacao, five types of overnight-roasted chilies, bread and lots of wild herbs.
As Eytan and I steam in the air-conditioned car, he reflects: “What they offer here is very relevant. She’s just spent two days cooking the best mole I’ve ever tasted but it doesn’t make much of it. That level of care is just part of their culture.”
At this point, I am going to pledge my allegiance to community tourism forever. However, my romantic bubble bursts at Ventanilla, where two cooperatives from the same community fight to offer crocodile sighting tours on the lagoon where the Pacific Ocean swallows the Tonameca River. Before we’ve even left our car, two men – one from Lagarto Real Ventanilla, the other from La Ventanilla – pull up and start explaining the excellence of their trip.
I’m ready to swear my loyalty to community tourism when my romantic bubble bursts and two cooperatives battle it out to offer crocodile sighting tours on the lagoon where the Pacific Ocean swallows the Tonameca River.
Imogen Lepere
Both groups emerged after a hurricane with a vision to restore the mangrove forest – vital work as it provides flood protection and acts as a carbon sink – and both groups provide another form of income for local people rather than crocodile hunting. However, with more than 600 visitors a day between them, it’s a smaller experience altogether.
“I’ve seen this in communities all over Latin America,” Eytan says as we walk across a beach littered with bleached wood like dinosaur bones, a calling card from Hurricane Agatha. “If the income from tourism is not shared equally, factions start to fight for the resources.”
It’s a very different story in Teotitlán del Valle, a small town of adobe buildings with tiled roofs located 20 miles from the city of Oaxaca. Like many Zapotec towns, Teotitlán specializes in a particular craft: rug weaving. We are visiting the Vida Nueva workshop, the first all-women weaving cooperative in Mexico, which ranges from 12 to 20 members. Economic pressures leading to alcoholism and domestic violence mean that many of these women are divorced and struggle to find work because of the resulting stigma.
In the shaded workshop, the 20-something daughter of founder Pastora Asunción Gutierrez Reyes, Silvia, shows us the plants and minerals the women use to create dyes according to formulas she inherited from her great-grandmother. There is cochineal, the insect that bleeds dragon blood red; marigold blooms for mustard yellow and pink Brazilian wood. As she holds each bowl, I notice the outline of an airplane tattooed on her wrist. “Most of the women my age in the village are married and have some children,” she says. “I’m saving up to travel.” As Silvia grows up with a keen understanding of the power of cooperatives, we hope she will be able to share the benefits of connecting with local communities on our travels, for everyone involved.
