Lavender’s sweet smell of success
By Alexis Ann Hercules and Gregory R. Gunter

Local lavender queen Jeannie Ralston & husband Robb (at left) supported St. Anthony’s Alliance co-founders Dr. Teresa Balcomb and Dr. Jim Tryon.

The scent of lavender wafted through the air—and across attendees’ tastebuds, thanks to complimentary lavender margaritas—at the first annual benefit in support of The Lavender Project on August 6. At final tally, an oversold crowd of 200 allowed the nonprofit to exceed its financial goal of raising $10,000.

Hosted at the Candelaria estate of Mary and Charles Marsh, the event drew sponsorship from Coates/Dolan, La Conexión, Petit Four, Rosewood Artesana and St. Anthony’s Alliance. Roving waiters—highly popular among the finger-food crowd—passed scrumptious botanas provided by Banquetes Marcela, Berlin Restaurant, Harry’s New Orleans Café, Planta Baja, Ten Ten Pie and The Restaurant.

Not familiar with the Lavender Project? Here’s a brief primer: St. Anthony’s Alliance—a US–based medical nonprofit started by physicians Dr. Teresa Balcomb and Dr. Jim Tryon—first sponsored nutrition and medical care to the pueblo of Rancho La Colorada (north of San Miguel) in 2005. They learned that the landscape and climate were ideal for growing lavender, allowing the local community to become self-sustaining by growing a profitable crop and then producing, marketing and selling lavender-based products—all the while learning valuable business skills many of us take for granted.

The community’s lavender profits now enable its workers—mostly women—to derive an ongoing income, growing ever more independent of outside resources and allowing their US-based husbands to return home to a viable career.

Singer Martin serenades artist and lavender benefit volunteer Cynthia Eckhardt as part of the evening’s entertainment.

The August 6 benefit raised US$10,200, with a dedicated $1,300 for the purchase of equipment and materials so women can make and market beeswax candles and lavender honey. Get your molletes ready! This is the fourth lavender-related business the community will develop.

The remaining US$9,100 will be allocated toward purchasing greenhouse tables, pots and soil nutrients for rooting out cuttings of lavender. The farmers hope their nursery business will take off this year with the completion of their greenhouse this past spring.

More tubing and drippers will expand drip irrigation of another hectare of lavender.

The money will provide a year’s supply of essential oils and primary ingredients for making soap, and a sink and plumbing for the soap facility. They plan to build a small store in the community center to sell lavender products.

A micro-loan fund allows the farmers to pay community members to root-out lavender cuttings in their home and then sell them back to the farmers. The farmers can then rapidly double or triple the number of hectares of lavender under cultivation, allowing all community members—even children—to participate in the profits.

St. Anthony’s also funds a program for schoolchildren that provides soy milk atole and soy doughnuts for breakfast each day for a peso; a small library and computer center with internet; and a scholarship program for 30 students. Fifteen children also participate in Los Ojos de Los Niños camera program.

Rancho la Colorado’s lavender-based products—from soap to sachets—are available at many shops around town, including La Victoriana and Terra. Learn more about St. Anthony’s Alliance at www.stsnthonysalliance.com and the Lavender Project at www.thelavenderproject.com.

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CEDESA Tour
Wed, Sep 30, 9am
Meet at Fábrica la Aurora
100 pesos half day, 
250 pesos full day
Info: 152-8166

Take an eco-tour of CEDESA
By Holly Yasui

Centro de Desarrollo Agropecuario (CEDESA), a nonprofit grass-roots development center, has been organizing rural communities in northern Guanajuato for 40 years, focusing in the past decade on ecological sustainability and self-sufficiency.

Founded and run by campesinos, CEDESA promotes an integrated concept of development—not only economic, but also social and personal—encouraging active participation in cooperative work, raising consciousness about environmental issues and instilling love for and rootedness in the earth and one’s community.

CEDESA has been collaborating with various nonprofit organizations in San Miguel, including the Midday Rotary Club, Instituto Tierra y Cal, Casita Linda, Center for Global Justice and Vía Orgánica, with the support of the Bernard Weisman Foundation, the Unitarian Universalists and the San Miguel Community Foundation. CEDESA’s diverse projects include training mutual-aid teams to build cisterns for collecting rainwater, designing backyard gardens, workshops on construction with adobe, a water-testing laboratory, participation in international student internship programs, organizing a regional forum and coalition of environmental groups, and fair-trade marketing of organic products.

The CEDESA eco-tour offers two options for visitors from San Miguel: a half-day and a full-day trip. The visit includes a video that relates some of the history of CEDESA, followed by discussion and a walk around the facilities. A tabletop scale model provides an introduction to three areas of the “sustainable campesino home” project, upon which CEDESA itself is based: the traspatio (yard), the monte (uncultivated land) and the parcela (cultivated fields).

In their traspatio, CEDESA has installed several eco-technologies: wood-saving stoves, rain harvesting, dry composting toilets, gray water recycling and drip irrigation. Visitors also will see a solar distiller (in development) and a unique didactic structure built on the grounds: a large outdoor scale model of the Independence Aquifer watershed, created during a 10-month course on groundwater recently given at CEDESA by the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM). The tour continues to the fruit and vegetable gardens including nopal cactus “tunnels” and composting areas and, time permitting, the monte where beehives are located, the granja where farm animals are kept, and the parcelas terraced and farmed with various soil conservation techniques that CEDESA teaches to other campesinos.

Lunch is prepared mostly from CEDESA’s organic gardens and fields, and from other producers of the Network of Mexican Community Commerce (REMECC), of which CEDESA is a part. After the meal, guests visit a campesino community to see and discuss the work being done by families who have implemented CEDESA projects.

Located south of Dolores Hidalgo, CEDESA is an hour away from San Miguel. We leave at 9am from the Fábrica La Aurora parking lot and the half-day trip returns at 2pm, the full-day trip around 6pm. We will carpool, so let us know if you are interested in the half-day or full-day trip, and if you can drive (all highway in the morning; over some dirt roads in the afternoon). Both trips include interpretation and translation, and the full-day trip includes an all-you-can-eat lunch, with vegetarian option.

For more information or to sign up, email cedesa.english@hotmail.com  or call 152-8166.

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The Feast of San Miguel…Experience the catharsis of fiesta 
Photographic essay by Deborah Whitehouse

When people from different walks of life—many who would never meet or interact in any other way—come together in fiesta celebration with art, music and dancing, they transcend their differences and become one for the duration. Like the fiesta itself, they are eternal in their expression of catharsis.

It is that experience of catharsis that heals the community and each person within it. And like art, it transcends local identity and emerges as universal expression.

Cultural expression has become one of the defining characteristics of the new millennium. As fiesta, it supports awareness and understanding, a healing process in itself. We celebrate and heal each other as we celebrate and heal ourselves. By empowering ourselves we strengthen the human spirit of each individual. An empowered community sustains the individuals within it and has the strength and presence to reach out to others in camaraderie and peace. The tribal experience becomes larger than life—larger than the individual—as we become ourselves and become each other.

I am every person I photograph.

For the past 20 years Deborah Whitehouse, a resident of San Miguel, has made cultural expression the guiding principle of her work as a photographer and public art photo muralist. Currently, she is expanding her photo essay, “The Catharsis of Fiesta,” and publishing a children’s picture book, The Gift. Visit www.deborahwhitehouse.com.