Maya Alliance does not have reasons to celebrate World Bee Day

Mèrida, Yucatàn, (May 21, 2021).- “On May 20, World Bee Day, we have nothing to celebrate, because with sadness we are witnesses, in our daily lives, that bees are the first to perish due to the impacts generated by the different activities promoted by the development model of crops and that also destroys the rest of the biodiversity in our territory, ” the Maya Alliance for Kaabnalo’on bees said in a statement yesterday.

“Through our history, bees taught us that organization and cooperation are necessary for collective well-being, taking only what we need for good living, we can support other forms of life to also extend and that their cycle continues for the benefit of all, ” the report continues. 

They point out that as a Maya people, they continue with the legacy and wisdom inherited from their grandparents, one of the most important inheritances is beekeeping, an ancient practice that protects the jungle and that has allowed them to survive for generations without generating negative impacts on nature, “however, this important activity has been undermined for decades by the imposition of a development model that is contradictory to our integral way of understanding and relating to life,” they point out. 

They affirmed that these activities such as agribusiness, mega-pig and poultry farms, mega tourism and real estate developments, the energy, and food industry, have caused the dispossession of the land, the fragmentation of the social fabric, problems in our health, the massive deforestation of the jungle, the death of millions of pollinators, the contamination of water and soil, the loss of identity in our peoples and the harmony of natural cycles have changed.

The Kaabnalo’on Alliance, made up of more than 12 groups and 760 members, in 83 communities on the Yucatàn peninsula, we have organized to analyze and propose an agenda of actions that favor the protection of bees and the jungle. However, articulation and linkage between the three levels of government, academic institutions, and civil society, in general, is necessary.

Source: La Jornada Maya