Campaign Story

The San Agustin community needs your help to reactivate community tourism after the impact of a tropical storm.

Since 2012, in our Mayan community of San Agustin, we have developed a community tourism project to share a different development model with travellers, students and other communities, that includes gender equality and is based on respect for nature.

In this project, we the inhabitants, share with our visitors the ecosystem that forms part of the Puuc Biocultural Reserve, as well as its Mayan cuisine and traditions.

Visitors can tour jungle trails on bicycles, an archeological site representative of the Puuc style, an agricultural plot where corn is grown, a demonstrative apiary and a camping zone where they will sleep underneath a starry sky in a magical experience.

Likewise, men and women, through agroforestry and backyard agriculture diversify activities. Colorful hammocks are delicately woven by hand by expert artisans and the sewing workshop produces embroidered pieces that supplement the community’s income.

Through forest management, the ejido (a unique form of land tenure in Mexico) conserves the largest community-owned jungle in the state of Yucatán. In a small sawmill and carpentry workshop, we create furniture and beekeeping boxes. This management protects the jungle, regenerating the forest with minimum impact. Jaguar individuals were identified by camera traps located in the community which provides proof of ecosystem integrity.

After the Tropical Storm “Cristóbal”, which hit the Yucatán’s Peninsula in early June 2020, all of these activities were put at risk. With precipitations over 500mm in a few short days, our community was flooded, affecting the community carpentry workshop, the restaurant, the small gardens and the agro-diverse crops.

We are calling on the general public and the friends of the San Agustín community to support us to rebuild what we lost and to collaborate with the recuperation of this piece of jungle, which is still alive, but needs our help today more than ever.

Learn more about the San Agustín ejido in this publication Soluciones locales de comunidades mexicanas, a los desafíos ambientales globales “ Click here to learn more: Local solutions of Mexican communities to global environmental challenges