We have a lot to learn from those who take into account the lives of all and not just of a group, from the communities that live in harmony with the prosperity and fluidity of nature. And at the same time, we have to undo a lot of things that we've learned.

Lolita Chavez (Iular Ulew; Guatemala, 1971) is the representative of the Council of Peoples K’iche, the mother defending nature, land and human rights and indigenous activist. When he began to do community work in plain sight, he began to suffer attacks and threats and had to flee Abya Ayala, among other things, because of the violent pressure exerted by the transnationals of our environment. He told us that at the Orereta conference. It does not come in search of charity, but of making its situation known and claiming cross-border reciprocity.

The problems not only arise from their leaders, but all around us are basic links. Transnational corporations, weapons and colonization have their origin here, and that's what Lolita asked us. Hydroelectric companies limit rivers to generate “green” energy. For the benefit of a few, the life of the river and its surroundings becomes a market issue, but the peoples surrounding the reservoirs remain unlit. The green energy of the headlines destroys the green medium. “People are treated as non-people,” he explained with rigor, as the lives of the locals are not taken into account.

Behind this transformation into a market object is the brutal model of ownership of the capitalist system, in which people and nature are merely objects of trafficking. But not everything started there: the invaders took over the land and used it for the purchase and sale, not so long ago. To mark more deeply the property of the territories and of the people, they forced the inhabitants to dress in a colour. Today, this type of colonization is totally internalized and collected today as folklore.

And meanwhile, the community joins Mother Nature, find answers to the problems together, keep in mind the words of their ancestors, fight against land ownership, heal each other and cross borders in collective solidarity.

We have a lot to learn from them. We are also colonized people, and at the same time we are within the colonization processes of other territories. You need to have that awareness, if you want a habitable world. It is time to realize colonization, to initiate processes of disappropriation and to transcend imaginary borders.