Prior to our recording, we asked Yira to send us some information on her current projects. She blew our mind!
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ACTIVITIES
1. I worked with my husband, Jonathan Barbieri, to established the 1st lending library in San Luis del Río which is a small town of Mezcal producers in Oaxaca.
2. I appreciate with all my heart the work of these diverse crafts people and I have been dedicated to raising awareness about the rich cultural identity and great skill that go into the making of these fine traditional textiles
3. Together with Ana Paula Fuentes the founder of the Textile Museum in Oaxaca and the Mexican philanthropist Guadalupe Alvarez, I organized events for weavers to exhibit their magnificent work. Among those Maestros Artesanos are:
a. A Mixtec cooperative, located in San Juan Colorado, that plant the original cotton from the coast of Oaxaca and spin and dye their threads
b. Another Mixtec cooperative, located in Pinotepa de Don Luis, that continue the tradition of harvesting purple dye from a certain mollusk that lives on the rocks on the shorelines of Oaxaca and whose ongoing activism serves to protect the CARACOL PURPURA
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c. A zapotec cooperative who have been cultivating silkworms and spinning and weaving fine huipiles and rebozos for centuries.
d. Mixe textile families that are rescuing ancestral iconography.
I advise the artesanos, both men and women, on how to use social media to best reach their target audience.
https://www.instagram.com/coyuchi.san.juan.colorado/ (Mixteca que siembran algodón nativo)
https://www.instagram.com/purpura.tixinda/ (Mixteca que cuidan el caracol purpura)
https://www.instagram.com/arte_textil_mixe/ (Mixes)
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITIES
LA FERIA DE LA AGROBIODIVERSIDAD
· Is a seed exchange for indigenous communities to come together to exhibit and exchange the seeds that they have conserved and cultivated for years in their respective MILPAs (a cultivation system with corn, squash, chiles, beans)
· I’m the liaison between restaurants, traditional cooks, chefs and bartenders for La Feria. About 5 years ago, when we started distilling native corn, my husband and I approached the organizers to support the seed exchange. We knew they were always struggling with funds to pay for transportation for the campesinos or to pay for the music or food. There is always a lack of funds. So one year we sponsored the music band, another year we sponsored a bus to bring the campesinos, and 3 years ago there were almost no funds and I got together restaurants with traditional cooks, chefs and bartenders, to do a fundraiser and it was a success!
DOCUMENTARY LOS GUARDIANES DEL MAIZ / THE KEEPERS OF CORN
La Feria de la Agrobiodiversidad inspired my husband and I so much that together with filmmaker Gustavo Vazquez from San Francisco, we created a full length documentary about native corn. It took us 3 years to complete the film, which is in ixtec, Zapotec, Chinantec, as well as Spanish and English. The film describes the relationship of indigenous communities with native corn and their struggle with climate change, immigration and the incursion of industrial corn flour.
Here is a 20 minute shortcut
password: seedbank
DISTILLING ANTIQUE GRAINS
Under our new label Maiz Nation, my husband Jonathan and I, collaborate with indigenous communities in La Mixteca Alta, Chinantla and Valles Centrales to conserve and foment the traditional farming methods for Native corn and antique wheat.
We are currently producing white and aged whiskey from different types of native corn and local botanicals to produce fine regionally specific gins. We are about to launch La Ginebra Mixteca produced with local botanicals from la Mixteca Alta using maiz nativo Chalqueno and antique Trigo Pelon as our base for distillation
MUJERES DEL FUEGO
Together with Olga Cabrera, a Mixtec traditional cook and Carina Santiago, a Zapotec traditional cook. We created a program called Mujeres del Fuego or Women of Fire as a platform to highlight the work of independent women from Oaxaca and across Mexico and the world. In our first episode our invitees were, internationally renowned traditional cook from the Zapotec town of Teotitlan de Valle Abigail Mendoza and Isabel Sanchez, a rising star in kiln-fired ceramics who also happens to have designed the hand of fire, with which we identify as Mujeres del Fuego. In subsequent episodes we will invite women from regions across Oaxaca who produce works in terracotta and black and green pottery. We will also have the pleasure of interviewing maestras mezcaleras and maestras pulqueras, cantineras, weavers, silkworm farmers and designers of fine handmade garments. For the near future that the platform will grow to include entrepreneur latinas who have migrated outside of their own countries to make important contributions wherever they land.
· About mujeres del Fuego https://fb.watch/4gH8Joq4Rp/
· Pagina de Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MujeresdelFuego
