Tierra Roja Sanctuario
We aim to restore our lands through sustainable practices such as targeted grazing, reintroduction of native plants, and soil remediation through cactus preservation and natural compost. We hope to restore ancient foodways that humans, animals, and insects depend on through the restoration of tunales (cacti food forests) - a sub-ecosystem within thornscrub forests.
Our community historically has and continues to face a series of issues related to environmental injustices. The land is in Hidalgo County, the most obese county in Texas where few people have access to greenspaces and our traditional ways of eating.
Our primary sources of food and health, our thornscrub and tunales, have been ripped from their roots, privatized, or made inaccessible. Restoring our thornscrub forest and foodways in our increasingly urbanized, impoverished, and marginalized border communities creates an opportunity for reconnection to the land and our traditional ways. Our lands have demonstrated resilience despite their exploitation.
We model our efforts in restoration after this resilience.
CALLING IN
While our practices and efforts acknowledge our ancestors' intrinsic relation to these lands, we look to our community and relatives today to further guide these efforts. Alongside our sheep, the efforts to revitalize and regenerate the soil of our humble 10-acre and half-acre homestead in South TX become a rhythm and lifeway.
Here we strive to rewild the land by restoring our beloved Thornscrub. We do this by planting native trees and grasses, creating an environment that will allow us to grow and protect endangered cacti species that are present and vital to our way of being. With our sheep and our surrounding community, we can steward the land to nourish reciprocal relationships that bring us back to the natural cycles and rhythms of the earth.
This labor is one of honor, that will inherently teach us so much about the world we walk on. In reflection of these lessons and what the animals and land teach us, we hold workshops and teach-ins that further familiarize our neighbors with the skills attained by our conjoined practices.
We do not think of the land as ours. Our communal relation to it will allow us to respond to the needs of our community. The work and efforts on the land are an ever-changing vessel of our response to and reflection of what the land communicates to us.
If this brief history and overview of our intention resonates, we hope that you'll continue this conversation with us as we seek to weave relations with our community and relatives who recognize the importance of this work.