Mexico: Personhood for Cenotes

Indigenous Mayans want their sacred cenotes to have personhood status.

A huge poplar tree stands proud in Maribel Ekā€™s courtyard, adorned with a sign that reads: ā€œFlorece desde adentroā€ (ā€œIt blooms from withinā€). Deep underground, the treeā€™s long roots search for the water that makes this land special: a sinkhole lake, known as a cenote.

Cenotes provide an important water source to Ekā€™s community of Homun, in the Mexican state of Yucatan, and a livelihood for locals who lead tourists from around the world into the caverns to bathe in their crystalline waters. But more than that, cenotes are sacred to Indigenous Mayans like her.

The threats to cenotes have been multiplying in recent years. In addition to uncontrolled urban development and the lack of drainage in cities, new dangers include the increase in breweries and massive soybean fields andĀ the construction of the Maya Train, which has embedded thousands of steel pillars in this underground paradise. But what most worries the Guardians of the Cenotes are the pig farms.

Read the full story on AP

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