Indigenous farmer Jesús León Santos hardly knew what to do 25 years ago when he decided to try to regenerate eroded land in southern Mexico. Now he is celebrating winning the Goldman Environmental Prize 2008.

León Santos has known since childhood what it's like to live where degradation means trees are scarce. - Courtesy of Grupo Periodismo para Elevar la Conciencia Ecológica

“We showed them that the cultivation techniques of our ancestors are the best and that they represent life. We are on the right path,” León Santos said in an exclusive Tierramérica interview.

This farmer, 42, has led land recovery projects since he was 18, inspired by traditional indigenous knowledge, and on Apr. 14 was awarded the annual prize given by the U.S.-based Goldman Environmental Foundation, seen as the “Green Nobel”.

León Santos's program is carried out in an impoverished indigenous region of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, part of the Mixteca, one of the worst eroded areas of the world, according to the United Nations. The area is also suffers high emigration.

The Small Farmer Integral Development Center of the Mixteca, which León Santos heads, planted about four million trees there, developed rainwater retention systems and promoted traditional crops. Some 400 indigenous families have benefited directly from the projects, and many neighbors are actively participating in the initiatives.

Most important, they have recovered the tradition of the “milpa”, a style of agriculture developed by the pre-Hispanic cultures of Mesoamerica, which helps keep soils fertile.

The Mixteca covers parts of the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Puebla, in southern Mexico, and is home to Mixteca or Ñuu savi Indians (people of the rains or of the clouds). In Oaxaca it extends across 16,000 square kilometers.

Goldman Prize winner León Santos, who received an award of 150,000 dollars, is this year's representative for the North American region. The other winners were Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza of Ecuador, Feliciano dos Santos of Mozambique, Rosa Hilda Ramos of Puerto Rico, Marina Rikhvanova of Russia and Ignace Schops of Belgium.

TIERRAMÉRICA: — What does it mean to you and your organization to win the Goldman Prize?

JESÚS LEÓN SANTOS: — It has been the most important thing that has happened to me in a long time. This unites us with people who are conserving the environment and makes us stronger. The 150,000 dollars will go to a fund in my organization to continue developing our work. Imagine that! It represents the budget of an entire year. We manage some 100,000 dollars that come from European organizations.

TA: — To come up with and develop projects like yours in a poor area, with degraded land and high rates of emigration is an uphill battle. How did you begin?

JLS: — I became involved in this because when I was a boy I saw that we faced many difficulties. My parents sent me to look for firewood and I had to walk hours and hours because it was very scarce. The trees had disappeared. We thought that the Mixteca had to be green again, like it was in the past, and those were really only words because we didn't know what to do. Then there came clarity, and 25 years later we see that we have achieved what we never imagined possible.

TA: — What are the most evident changes?

JLS: — Many people who come to the parcels say that it's a paradise, and then I say that it is a paradise that has been created little by little. Today we enjoy the wood and the birds that for years we didn't hear singing because there were no trees. The soil is beginning to change. When one walks through the trees, the sound made by our feet on the leaves was something we had never heard before.

TA: — What role did the pre-Hispanic techniques for cultivation and land conservation play in these achievements?

JLS: — In addition to planting trees and creating ditches to retain rainwater, we pushed the recovery of traditional farming systems, the “milpa”, which consists of planting maize, gourds, beans and others on the same parcel, using our seeds from our own harvests, without buying anything. This means the soils don't deteriorate and it improves fertility.

Unlike monoculture, these systems not only provide a balanced diet, they conserve soil fertility. In the 1970s and 1980s, when they began using fertilizers and improved seeds here, this knowledge of our peoples was pushed out. But we have recovered it.

TA: — The genetically modified seed companies are asking Mexico to allow its maize varieties to be planted here because they say they are much more productive. What do you think?

JLS: — The GM seeds can be monsters in comparison to what nature has done. We can't be playing with what is natural, and those companies are truly creating monsters that attack life, not just the native seeds but also ourselves. What I'd tell the seed companies is that they carry out campaigns that are not ethical, because they lie and they bribe governments.

TA: — But each year there are more and more GM crops in the world and their promoters argue that this technology has come to stay.

JLS: — To everyone who thinks that our ancient systems are a matter of romantic ideals we say that we are on the right path. What they are proposing is a disaster. When those modified seeds can't be controlled, they can cause a global catastrophe.

TA: — How should this danger that you see be dealt with?

JLS: — We have to do what they do: campaigns. They have an incredible amount of money and can make their million-dollar propaganda, and at times even buy the authorities to allow them to plant their crops. We have to work in a different way: convince the public and show them that in truth what we are making is life.