ARGENTINA: Gatherings for Life and the Future
29th Seed Festival of Misiones Province
On Pachamama Day, organizations from Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay gathered in Aristóbulo del Valle, Misiones, one day after the 29th Provincial Seed Fair, to strengthen the political, organizational, and educational capacities of leaders and organizations in the Triple Frontier region committed to defending seeds as the heritage of the people.
The event was attended by more than 800 people from organizations in the three border countries.
YLNM member BePe participated in this political coordination meeting as an organization that is part of the MAELA Network, the Latin American and Caribbean Agroecology Movement. In addition to the indispensable exchange of experiences and contextual analyses, the meeting affirmed that agroecological practices and those of the social and solidarity economy are real alternatives for breaking free from the system of death generated by colonial, patriarchal, and extractivist capitalism. In this context, it is worth noting that the territories of Catamarca constitute “sacrifice zones” for big capital: we have endured nearly thirty years of mining exploitation disguised as a “productive and progress-generating” activity. The experience of participating in the process of creating alternatives constitutes a vital response to challenge the prevailing notions of progress, development, and authentic wealth for the people.
True wealth does not lie in money or in the financial system, which was invented as a fetish to distort the reality of life itself. True wealth lies in the alliance of peoples who have formed communities rooted in their territories, the true producers of life and the future. This alliance possesses the power and ancestral memory to bring us back to the reality of life: a marvelous emergence that springs from the relationships between the Cosmos, the Earth, and the human and non-human beings born of it.
Only by recognizing our origin can we build a future, one that is more than merely “sustainable,” but a future worth living. On this path, the gathering was also a timely opportunity to develop a plan for tri-national collaboration among seed-saving organizations and others dedicated to advancing agroecology and creating community-based, territorially rooted spaces.
We continue to walk in these footsteps, inherited from ancestral struggles. Furthermore, at BePe, we are committed to standing alongside the organizations from Catamarca and Santiago del Estero so that they may be part of the preparations for Brazil’s National Agroecology Meeting, to be held in Foz do Iguaçu in June 2027.
