Estela RomeroDecember 04, 2020"El Oyamel" Village

"El Oyamel" village

Estela RomeroDecember 04, 2020"El Oyamel" Village

THE STORY

Having announced in advance to Monarchs’ arrival on the “Day of the Dead”, that Northern children and teachers would create and send their Ambassador Monarchs this season to their counterpart students living and attending schools around Monarchs’ Sanctuaries, in spite of the current circumstances, the Symbolic Migration has been put in agenda by different groups of students, teachers and families around Monarchs’ overwintering spots. Today the program has been called to perform its lesson by a group of parents and the elementary school director at one of the several small villages settled at the very bottom of the “Sierra Chincua” Sanctuary: “The Oyamel Village”. “We have lived from our forests a whole life; but now we start to get concerned about the shortage of water, the climate change causing either droughts or frost-burning to our crops, the diminishing of some species of medicinal plants and the loss in the typical abundance of mushrooms which this year was strange during the raining season, which, by the way, stopped more than one month earlier than it should have; it is so dry and hot; this is not normal to our local climate” –a family father and his wife, this latter volunteering to come to the front with a group of children exposing images and reflecting together with the audience on our topic this year, “The Benefits of Trees”, expressed--. Many of these children the Symbolic Migration visited today, (specially the oldest ones), remembered many of the facts on pollinators and on endangered and extinct local animal species we studied together one and two seasons ago, so they were marveled to repeat such facts before their parents and to introduce them to the younger children. “this means that from a little womb, to spiders, to insects, to reptiles and birds including of course bats (their eyes widened at referring to bats!), our local nature is a beautiful knitted piece which each single fine thread tied one to the other” –Alondra, the girl wearing mouth and face mask concluded after the participation of her partners each pronouncing one little fact on the “benefits of trees”, either our forest trees or our local fruit trees, directly linked to the rest of our ecosystem and main actors of its existence up to now. The whole audience, specially parents, of course, were simply astonished at seeing the map showing how small and unique our Oyamel nucleus are, being the largest spots all throughout México and perhaps all over the globe. At closing the presentation, parents asked for the possibility that the program next year visits again the students at the schools, but also convokes to family meetings like the one held today at the center of the “El Oyamel” community, where an average of 18-20 adults, moms and dads, attended with their children. Receiving their Ambassador butterflies in their little hands meant to them an alliance with their northern friends in the name of Conservation for Monarchs’ habitat.