Skip to content

Donate now

Enter your ZIP code

Set your location

Tell us where you are so we can show you news from your area.
Visit MCC Canada.
U.S. Go to Canada site
Mennonite Central Committee

Relief, development and peace in the name of Christ

Search form

Learn more Get involved Centennial Contact us Donate
Get involved Current openings What we do
Learn more Centennial Contact us Donate
Menu

Mennonite Central Committee

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), a worldwide ministry of Anabaptist churches, shares God's love and compassion for all in the name of Christ by responding to basic human needs and working for peace and justice. ​

About MCC​

  • Vision and mission
  • Leadership and board
  • Annual reports
  • Funding/tax exemption
  • Historical records

COVID-19 response

  • COVID-19 stories
  • Resources for a time of uncertainty
  • COVID-19 regional updates
  • How you can help

Publications and resources

  • A Common Place magazine
  • In Touch newsletter
  • Intersections quarterly
  • Education resources

Stories

Virtual visits

Podcast

What we do

  • Relief
  • Food
  • Water
  • Health
  • Education
  • Migration
  • Peace
  • U.S. programs
  • Advocacy

Where we work

Donate to MCC

Give a gift that changes lives, supporting MCC’s work around the world. Donate now.

Events

  • Relief sales
  • Canning

Make kits or comforters

Advocate

  • National Peace & Justice Ministries
  • UN Office

Fundraise

  • Donate now
  • Legacy Giving
  • My Coins Count/Penny Power
  • Giving Registries

Serve

  • Work with us
  • Volunteer locally
  • Young adult programs

Alumni

Thrift Shops

Looking for more information?
Get in touch with a representative from your region here.

Happy Birthday, MCC! 

It's been 100 years since we first started responding to basic human needs in southern Russia (present-day Ukraine). Now, we continue to work for relief, development and peace all over the world. 

Engage

  • 100 Stories
  • Alumni reunions

Give Back

  • New Hope
  • Legacy giving

Advocate

  • Advocacy campaign

To mark 100 years of sharing God’s love and compassion, and your generosity and partnership through the decades, we invite you to explore stories from MCC’s decades of work around the world

Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe on Youtube

Looking for your local office? Tell us where you are so we can show you locations and news around you.

MCC U.S.
MCC U.S.
21 South 12th Street
PO Box 500
Akron, PA 17501-0500
United States
Office: (717) 859-1151
Toll Free: (888) 563-4676
mailbox@mcc.org

Contact MCC

  • General contacts
  • Media contacts
  • Contact Human Resources
  • Send us your questions
  • Welcoming Place

Find a Thrift Shop

Manage your subscriptions

  • A Common Place magazine
  • In Touch newsletter

Where needed most

A gift to where needed most supports the breadth of MCC’s work – meeting urgent needs and building stronger, healthier communities. Give today.

Donate

  • Legacy giving
  • Giving registries
  • My Coins Count
  • Current disaster responses
  • Support a service worker
  • Make kits and comforters
  • More giving projects

More information

  • FAQs
  • Annual reports
  • Privacy policy
  • Security information

You are here

  1. Home
  2. Stories
  3. Adapting to a changing climate in Southern Mexico

Adapting to a changing climate in Southern Mexico

April 22, 2022

By Kate Parsons

Our hosts set out a feast: fresh tortillas made from hand-milled local corn, beans and tomatillo salsa from backyard gardens, scrambled eggs with tomato and onion. Everything was grown within San José de la Nueva, a rural community in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Ernesto Gutierrez, pastor and director of the Institute for Intercultural Studies and Research (Instituto de Estudios e Investigación or IESII by its Spanish acronym) invited me and other Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) staff to visit this community to learn about agricultural innovations the community was implementing, including greenhouses, organic fertilizers, and efforts to grow fruits and vegetables year-round.

I had spent the previous two years advocating from my Washington, D.C. home office for support for adaptive agriculture projects like these initiatives supported by MCC. I read about changing weather patterns, but behind a screen it’s difficult to fully appreciate the impact these changes have on a community.

“When we were growing up, we ate naturally,” community member Adelina Velazquez told us, her grandchildren playing at her feet. “Beans, vegetables – we grew everything here.”

“My great grandparents used to know when to plant, but now we aren’t able to respect the traditional timelines.”

A few decades ago, she said, the rain started to become more unpredictable. First, there were the droughts – dry periods of two or three years where crops shriveled on the stalks. Then, rain would fall torrentially out of season, drowning them.

“My great grandparents used to know when to plant, but now we aren’t able to respect the traditional timelines,” Adelina continued, “Everything is harder now.” She shook her head. “How are my children going to live? How are they going to eat?”

Residents of San José de la Nueva are descended from a Mayan people group who have been cultivating the land in Southern Mexico since before the Spanish conquest. Most speak the Mayan language Tzeltal as their first language and Spanish as their second. Ernesto traces some issues of food insecurity back to the time of Spanish rule when indigenous Mexicans were forced away from their communities to work the Spanish colonist’s haciendas. “Before the conquest, the diet here was richer and more nutritionally diverse,” Ernesto tells us.

Staff in a greenhouse MCC staff tour a greenhouse in San José de la Nueva. MCC photo/Kate Parsons

Ernesto sees IESII’s role not as providing information that communities lack, but as helping communities reclaim knowledge that their ancestors held. His goal for these communities goes beyond food security – having enough to eat – but strives for “food sovereignty” – the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced sustainably.

Communities in Chiapas face twin threats to food sovereignty.  First, climate change makes weather patterns increasingly unpredictable. Second, large industries pollute and encroach on community land. Both factors fuel hunger, displacement, and a loss of cultural traditions.

“The church would be a living message of hope to the world, and, as such, would lead by example, showing everyone that another world really is possible.”

Small interventions can help communities adapt to unpredictable weather. Greenhouses, for example, provide more stable conditions for growing plants. Fertilizing techniques that enrich rather than deplete the soil help families to plant and harvest more often throughout the year.

But these interventions won’t bring back the weather patterns of Adelina’s childhood. As global carbon emissions continue to increase, temperatures will continue to fluctuate and weather patterns will continue to change. This impact will be felt unevenly, most impacting the rural communities and countries that contribute the least to climate change, communities like this one.

Community members standing near a fence Community members look into a neighbor's goat pen. Small animals like goats are sustainable sources of protein. MCC photo/Kate Parsons

I ask every MCC partner we visit in Mexico what messages they would like me to take back to the United States. From San Cristóbal to Mexico City one request emerges: “Stop contributing to climate change,” people tell us. The United States has historically contributed more to climate change than any other nation, and as a citizen of the U.S., I feel this outsized impact as an outsized responsibility.

I see in this also an opportunity for the church to live out its message. In a sermon posted on IESII’s website, Ernesto shared his desire that “the church would be a living message of hope to the world, and, as such, would lead by example, showing everyone that another world really is possible.”

“Toward life in all its fulness: social, economic, historic, cultural, ecological, and religious.”

Ernesto holds hope that churches around the world, united across differences, could be a countercultural voice defending the families, communities, and traditions that are closest to the earth God made. He hopes for change at a national and international level that would make possible IESII’s mission: “Toward life in all its fulness: social, economic, historic, cultural, ecological, and religious.”

There in San José de la Nueva, our hosts bowed their heads and prayed aloud in Tzeltal before inviting us to the table to share in the abundance of fresh, local food. We accepted the gifts, alongside the challenge to act.

Top photo caption: Ernesto Gutierrez (right), director of IESII, serves himself food prepared by Fidelia Calvo Gomez, Argelia Ton Hernández, Rita Ton Hernández, Otelina Gómez López (left to right) and other members of the community. MCC photo/Kate Parsons

Share this story
Share
Tweet
Plus 1

Donate today

Every gift makes a difference

Please enter your donation amount

E-newsletter signup

Stories and photos from MCC delivered to your inbox once a month

Connect with MCC

Like us on Facebook
View on Instagram
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe on Youtube
  • Learn more
    • About MCC
    • Where we work
    • What we do
      • Relief
      • Food
      • Water
      • Health
      • Education
      • Migration
      • Peace
      • Restorative justice
    • Privacy
  • Get involved
    • Employment
    • Events
    • Kits
    • Advocate
    • Volunteer
  • Donate
    • Donate now
    • Donation FAQs
    • Giving registries
    • Legacy giving
Mennonite Central Committee

   

© 2023 Mennonite Central Committee
Tax Identification Number: 23-6002702