Episode 14 (Season Finale): “Across Waters, One Farming Community”

In the Season Finale of Of Seed and Soil: Unincorporated Voices of Food, Farming, and Freedom, host Sommer Sibilly-Brown sits down with Eira Rodríguez, a farmer and advocate from Vieques, Puerto Rico, who works with the collective La Colmena Cimarrona.
Eira and her community have been important partners with Virgin Islands Good Food, working together to learn more about each other’s communities and mobilize brigading efforts and mutual aid to support farmers across the Caribbean. Their work reminds us that the challenges facing farmers such as climate change, land access, and food security, do not stop at borders.
In this powerful conversation, they discuss:
    •    The strength of community-based farming movements in the Caribbean
    •    How mutual aid and brigading help farmers recover and rebuild in times of crisis
    •    The importance of collaboration across borders, languages, and cultures
    •    Why farmers throughout the region must work together to strengthen our food systems
This season-ending episode highlights the reality that our islands are deeply connected. When farmers share knowledge, labor, and resources, we build something bigger than any one farm—we build a regional movement for food sovereignty.
As this season of Of Seed and Soil comes to a close, we celebrate the farmers, chefs, advocates, educators, and community leaders who have shared their voices and reminded us that our food future depends on cooperation, care, and collective action.
Learn more: https://www.goodfoodvi.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goodfoodvi
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodfood_vi/?hl=en
Subscribe and stay connected as we continue uplifting the voices of those growing food, building community, and shaping a more resilient future for our islands.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:10

Welcome to Upseed and Soil. I am Summer Sibley Brown, your host, and we are happy to have you join us on another edition of our podcast in which we talk about the unincorporated voices of food, farming, and freedom. This podcast is happening in the US Virgin Islands and hopefully spanning across the Caribbean, and we talk about uplifting the stories of our food system. And today we are going to talk about the food system and the connectedness between the US Virgin Islands and VAKIS because our guest is Aira, and she is here visiting us from VAKIS. And she represents La Colmina Simarona. Hi, Aira, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Hola, I'm really good. Thank you for having me here.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

Um, so the yeah, no, so you know prima. I'm gonna call you Prima because that's what we call each other. Um, I love your energy and I love your smile, and I love the laughter and like the the joy you bring to the work of like farming our food system. So I imagine hopefully we'll be laughing a lot as we go through this um iteration of a non-bilingual bilingual podcast episode, right? So we're gonna ask from the audience, we're gonna ask a little bit of grace because we're navigating two languages um where people are both partially fluent, right? See, see, okay, all right. So the first question um that I think is helpful to everybody is who are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Hi. So my name is Eira Rodriguez. I'm from Vieca, Puerto Rico. Uh I work as a facilitadora in La Colmena Cimarrona. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

Facilitadora. So facilitator.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

That word, you're like, yeah, that was what she said. Yeah, no. So you work as a facilitator for La Colmena Cimarrona. Yeah. Um, let's let's do the basics. Do you have brothers, sisters, only child?

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Well, actually, I'm a twin sister. You're a twin? I'm a twin. Like identical? No, we're totally different people. Um, she's more like from the city, and I am more like human. See, yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_04 2:36

Completely country, completely farming, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Um, I didn't know that you were a twin. This is awesome. See, see, and I also have an older sister from my dad's side.

SPEAKER_04 2:45

Okay. Yeah. So, Vieques, you have a twin sister. You've lived there your whole life. Yeah, my whole life.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah. Since we were born, uh, Vieques doesn't have a hospital right now. We've been like uh after Eureka Maria, we've been without a hospital, an emergency system. Uh people ask some cruis has to travel to the main island to have uh emergency um uh care center. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

Even for things like giving birth, even yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

But you were born on VIKS, no, no, um was like in 2013, that year uh the uh little kids can be born at the time, uh and I think was just one year, and my uh new fle was one of the bad little kids that came born. So right now he's 12 years old. So yeah, since that nobody can be born.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

So no, um I'm making a correlation. So just for a listening audience, I'm going to go through the fact that we're Viecas is so Vieques is a small island off of Puerto Rico. Yeah, how big is Viecas?

SPEAKER_02 3:57

It's about 52 square miles around.

SPEAKER_04 4:02

So for me, that's someplace in between the size of St. Croix and the size of St. Thomas because St. Croix is 84 and St. Thomas is 34 square miles. So they're not the same, but they both anchor, like anchor off where there's hospitals in St. Thomas and St. Croix, but not in St. John. So St. John, which I believe is much smaller, and I won't say the square miles because I don't know it. Um, like we could look that up. But St. John, St. Jonians have to leave St. John to go to St. Thomas to the hospital to be born, much like Viekense have to leave Vieques to go to Puerto Rico to be born and then come back. So, like, that's just one thing we have in common. This conversation is about agriculture, but it also like the infrastructure and the structure of our islands are very similar, though we speak different languages, right? And it feels like sometimes we're worlds apart, we're experiencing the same things right a little bit back, like back to agriculture. So you live on Vieques, how did you start farming? Like, where did that come in in your life?

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Uh, that's a cute story. So, um it is a cute story, you're like, it's so cute.

SPEAKER_04 5:20

Okay, tell me.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah, because I like at first I used to work at a distillery in the island of Vieques, and then at that time, the uh owner of the distillery he has his own fruits growing up, you know, because it's really expensive. Uh, you know, bringing stuff to the Vegas. So he started farming over there, and uh at one time he was like, you know, Ira, uh turn out the tractor, go ahead and bring me some uh dirt and then bring here, and then you see those uh three lemon trees. I need you, I want you to farm that. Yeah, plant it. I was like, oh sure, but uh I don't know how to drive a tractor. He was like, okay, it's no problem, just go ahead. And I went there, I turned off the tractor. He, you know, you see this. If you press here is uh front, you feel press here is back, and you have it.

SPEAKER_04 6:19

Trial by fire, you just like get on, you can do it. This is forward, this is backward, go.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

That's it, and then I was like, okay, when I when I get there, I feel so powerful. And I'm like, yeah, man, I'm in the tractor.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

And then after that, I'm still stopped working in the in the distillery, and then I went to start volunteering the La Colmana Simarana.

SPEAKER_04 6:45

So that's like that's like a like in Puhe, right? They pushed you into it. You you didn't go looking for farming, you were working in a distillery, and yeah, the name of the distiller was just like do it, and you you did it. Are the trees existing today?

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Yeah, we actually have lemons right now.

SPEAKER_04 7:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Oh, palitos are tiny trees.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

Those are your tiny trees. Wonderful. So you said and then you went to volunteer at La Colmena Simarona. What is La Colmena Simarona?

SPEAKER_02 7:21

So La Colmena Cimarona is an organization. Uh wow, telling this in English is so different. Say it in Spanish and then we could go through it. La Colmena Simarona is an organization that sembraries and education of Vieche about the sovereignty alimentary. So for us it's really important to know if it's not just farming island, you know, teaching everyone to know that we have food, we can grow our own food because one of the first needs of the island is when we get to the supermarket or uh tiny markets, we cannot find everything there. So we can like we it's normal, it sadly it's normal for us to go to the supermarket and see me empty. And we're like, oh okay, we can go to another store and we can just find it, but that's not like the normal role. You should go and buy your stuff and be able to have it.

SPEAKER_04 8:21

So let me see, because I know you said it in Spanish and you said it in English, but I'm I'm gonna say it too, right? Basically, what you're saying is La Colmena Simarona is an organization or a collective of people in the equis who think that it is important to teach people about planting, to educate the community about farming, to make sure that people have nutrition access to nutrition. Right, right. That how do you say nutrition in Spanish? Nutrición Ike Alimento food. Food, uh-huh. See? So one of the things that I think we should talk about is the fact that we have the same challenges, and in order to work together, we're like bridging a language gap, right? But somehow, even though, like I said, we both have like broken pieces of it, we have clearer communication across food than people who speak our language, right? So that's like a really powerful part, I believe, of our story is how food is bridging places where we think natural language should be between English and Spanish. What we have is like food work, right? And it's been super clear, right? Even though I don't consider myself bilingual, I know exactly what you and Anna are telling me.

SPEAKER_05 9:43

Same, same, right?

SPEAKER_04 9:45

So that's that's that's beautiful. And you know, you guys are experiencing this authentically as we navigate. Like, how are we gonna do a show that tells people who we are and the work that we're really proud of? Oh, and by the way, we may have to do some of this in Spanish, some of it in English, and then some of it in Spanglish, right? Which is like, hmm, how are we gonna translate that? We'll figure out by the time you see the episode.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

So pito sung the bayabajo, subtitles on the bottom.

SPEAKER_04 10:15

So, okay, so you were working at the distillery, you became a volunteer at La La Colmena, which is a collective. How long have you been volunteering and what has that added to you?

SPEAKER_02 10:29

So I've been volunteering in 2023. That's uh when I started volunteering, and then the second day out every Wednesday we have uh brigada, so every Wednesday we like get together, and my second Wednesday, I was like, Anna, can I take some photos and videos? And she was like, Oh my god, yes, definitely. And she gave me their Instagram and said, Take all the pictures you want. And I was like, Oh, this is so cool. I have an Instagram. So I started doing um uh reels and videos and taking some photos, and uh people start liking them a lot, like telling Anna, oh, I love loving the videos, I love what you're doing, and then um so after people like approaching to her, she was like, you know what, you will start working here. I was like, Loca Locera, and then um in the end of the in December of 2023, she was like, Oh Aida, you will start uh on in January the next year, okay? I was like, Yeah, yeah, you start in January.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

I was like, Xavier, yeah, yeah. So just to recap, right? So una brigana, that's a brigade, uh-huh on another episode with Xavi, um, who was also interviewed, she talked about mutual aid, right? And part of mutual aid is brigading, and we talked about how that brigading is used to build skill. And La Colmena Simarona does that weekly on Wednesdays, right? Um, and then you basically became their social media manager like by accident, yeah. Okay, and you still managing their social media today?

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Uh yeah, I'm the ones who do the reels, go and watch the reels. Um, see I five. So um I'm doing like the reels, like we all all of the like the ladies, oh so yeah, the la uh is an organization from direct dirigida, directed by women. So all of us are the ones who all of us like work in the social media, but I'm more focused on the photos and the reels on the on the Instagram.

SPEAKER_04 12:57

So when you say women, right, mujeres, how much of them?

SPEAKER_02 13:04

So we have a junta, it's like uh a direct direct direct a director? Um no, it's like um it's a group of people that is not like paid or nothing, they just don't take decisions about the board. Yeah, exactly. Think it's the board.

SPEAKER_04 13:26

Yeah, close enough. We know it's the board. The people who are telling who agree on what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Right, right. So most of the the junta, they're like females, and then working directly with La Colmena, we have three um como gestoras, like the bosses over there. Okay, yeah, that there are Annalisa, who is the foundator, la fundadora, and Lisa the founder. We have um Do you remember this?

SPEAKER_04 14:01

What does this mean? Where did we experience this? Suave. So another important part of what we're gonna share is that we were in an encuentro together, a gathering um that had mixed languages, and we had um facilit we had translation, right? How do you say translation in Spanish?

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:27

We had translators, live translation, right? Where we had in headphones and you had your channel and it was speaking in English or Spanish. And when the translators were speaking, if they did this, it meant that we needed to slow our speech so that the translator could translate and other people could hear it clearly. That is why I started doing this, so Ada could Mija would be proud, right? Mio, we have to make sure she sees these episodes so she saw that we learned something, and it was really focused in in language justice, um, and when bringing people together who speak different languages, giving people the autonomy and the opportunity to speak in their language, to speak in gender-neutral language, right? And um, so yeah, so you can slow down, we don't have to rush. Okay, so you were saying at La Colmena Simahona, there are three major bosses.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

And then the foundator is Annalisa, and then the co-foundator is Elda Guadalupe, and then now is Katherine Martinez doing the historia stuff, and then we also have uh Ilandra Guadalupe, see, Ylandra Guadalupe, and she's uh doing the administration stuff, and I am the facilitadora who is the one that makes everything easy, like cleaning up, having the stuff in the farm. Um, and we also have another facilitator that he's a male, and we are really proud that we have him there because he's a young young boy. He's a young young male, young young man, young man, and then he, you know, in Vieques is it's sadly is like people of his uh males of his his age, he just go and works in streets and um you know to sell like how old is he? He's 20 something, maybe 20 to 21. Yes, he's really young, and people at that age in Vegas is like it's really hard to get like um secure jobs. Like if you want to see if you want a job, you just and be like good paid, you have to work with the major stuff in the government stuff, or you have to uh work with uh tourism, and then when you're not uh be living well or speak about the language, it's really hard to you to have a good job with a good pay. So we're really proud that he's like choosing working with us because we know we're not easy to be around a lot of ladies.

SPEAKER_04 17:11

So the thing that I really impressed me, like really, really, really impressed me when I went to VAKIS um for the gathering that we had, and was that it was all not just ladies, but it was all young ladies, right? Like people ages 20 maybe to 35, right? Like that's not what it looks like or feels like on St. Croix. St. Croix is like everybody is like 40 to like 56. There are some young people who are coming, but like in the ICUS, what I experienced was a very young, vibrant movement, like um full of power, like people like it was just it was just a different energy, it was beautiful. And I was like, where did they get all these young women who were like lifting bags and moving vans and like chopping peas? Like all the women had machetes, and was like it was it was but the also the very a very welcoming experience. Um, you guys were very loving, you guys were very kind, you guys were very open, right? So it was like this mix of beautiful and capable and strong, but like soft and caring and helpful. That's what I like. That's how I experienced La Colmena Simarona, like yeah, really beautiful. So, okay, so outside of providing the social media, what are some of the practices or things that you guys do with farming and how much land are you farming? Like, what makes La Colmena Simarona different?

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Um is 20 acres uh right now. So right now we are renting that space uh to um hello um administracion de terreno, which is part of the government too, and then it's like eight hundred dollars per month to um you know for rent the to rent the total 20 acres.

SPEAKER_04 19:28

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

So um for us it's like very expensive right now. Working in the land is just me, Annalisa, and Brian, and then we are the ones who are taking care of around the 10 acres that we are having cleaning right now.

SPEAKER_04 19:45

So it's wow, yeah. Three people working 10 acres?

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Yeah, it's really hard.

SPEAKER_04 19:50

What are some of the types of things you guys are growing?

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Uh so we're trying like because it's really dry, it's not rain too much. Sometimes we can see all the rain and the clouds going.

SPEAKER_04 20:00

Coming to St. Corey?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Passing, passing the island and go to the main island to the yumke. We're like, come on. So um we have it right now uh gatherings from the Caribbean through the internet. That's why we that's why we have in the encuentro with the most of the people who are um in in like being around this um so we have in the Zooms and the gathering and talking about the shit.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

I can carry the bridge here for us. Gracias. So we have um in our WhatsApp chat, so we use technology, WhatsApp and Zoom to stay connected, and in the WhatsApp chat, the name is Agroculturus de Caribbean.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Agricultura de Caribe, right.

SPEAKER_04 20:48

Right, but what it means is basically it's like Caribbean agricultural history, it's a Caribbean farmers group where we're talking to people from Haiti, um, St. Kitts, um, Jamaica, St. Croix, San Andres, Colombia, where we're gonna go. So we can talk about that in a little bit, but like um the Dominican Republic, right, just different farmers, and it's funny because this is like in this chat, there's French, Spanish, and English speaking people, and we're always talking to each other and sharing pictures, and again, food is a bridge. So, one of the things that La Colmena has done um that Ada's trying to share, is that you guys have really facilitated hosting that chat and bringing us all together, right? Right, and keeping us talking, right, and then bringing us together in person. Right, right. We did that. You did that, I didn't think you did that, and the mechanism like we were on Zoom for a year talking to each other, right, and we had translators again online. Lakulmena would host the call, um, they did. Really cute icebreaker activities. Um, and then we yeah, we just kept it going.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Right, right. So through those meetings, we are like learning a lot about other uh brothers and sisters are in farming. So right now we're trying to like collect all that information and bring it to the to the to the land. And right now we're having a lot of three fruits. Uh we having bananas, papayas, and we have grapefruit, we having um guava trees, we having like uh most of the trees are are um fruit from from from the same island, like seeds from the same island. And then uh we're knowing that um that VKS is really dry, so we're uh stopping making beds, like the tiny like beds that we have. So we're having a place for just beds, and then most of the place we're having is for trying to more do like uh fruit uh fruit fruits more plants more fruits, yeah. And then um I um talking to Analysis that we one of the things we already know is about like the sunflowers. So a lot of people come to the habla colmena asking for sunflowers. We uh plant sunflowers because of the bees. They have a lot of the finca to grow pasture fruit, to grow like all the these like amazing fruit from the island. So yeah, so we are like how they say poly pollination? No, no, no, no. We do like poly like it's not more monoculture, yes.

SPEAKER_04 23:52

I see.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Um so companion planting, right? Right, right. So we see uh a lot of things like together for protects all themselves, like from the I get it.

SPEAKER_04 24:07

So see, this is this is what happens in real life. So what we're talking about is la colmena si machona, they are agro, they use agroecological practices, right? Agroecologia.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Agroecologica.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

Right, and that means that we use practices that don't like use pesticides but are basically land-based and mimic the way things happen in nature. And so we're planting these fruit trees together so that they have a better chance of surviving.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 24:40

One thing that I thought was interesting that before we move on, I want to do every every tree you just named, if I'm gonna say it in English and you say it in Spanish, because I did this with Omar, and it was really helpful because like, for instance, grosera, where would I ever learn that word? Which is gooseberry, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Gooseberry, we also have it in La Colmana, right?

SPEAKER_04 25:01

So banana, guinea, guinea and plantano, so plantain and guineo, right? So guava, guayava, guayava, um, passion fruit, bad cha. Um, what else did you say? So you said banana, papaya, papaya, papaya, it's saying papaya, right? Right, it's so papaya is papaya, but like when I was in Vieques, sitting down, just talking with Omar and looking across, like, here's how we say this here, here's how we say this here, and even in Jamaica, we we had a chance to go through Colombia, San Andreas, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, and umis and talk about the the common names that we call things, which is something that is just so simple that if we all knew that sometimes we're talking about the same thing. And when I went to Hawaii, we did the same thing because they called parcha lilikoy. Oh, yeah, and pana, breadfruit, ulu, right? Which Xavi mentioned she worked for the Ulu Institute, but I I forgot to mention that that Ulu means breadfruit, right? But they say pana in Puerto Rico, so it's just like we're all talking about the same things in island life. They call malanga taro, and I believe we call it oh my gosh, what we don't call it before we get dashin. That's what we don't call it, right? But it's yeah, but it's the same, it's the same ground fruit. So, like, even in this, hopefully, anybody watching this episode, if they just walk away with the different names of things, I feel like we we did our job. And if they walk away saying, Oh, there's a relationship that we could be building, even though language isn't the same, I feel like we did our job. I want to talk to you a little bit about earlier when we were not on camera, we were talking about the connection to Vieques and St. Croix in specific. Tell me what you know about that connection.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

So after, and when La Marina was in the island, you know, they take us from the from the land and they put on in the same area. Uh, a lot of people start traveling to San Croix. And for me, it's like go to San Croix is the most vegan set thing you can do. Like, for real. Like everyone like, I went to San Croix, I go to San Croix. So it's really like familiar for us. Like, know that people, a lot of Viegences and family in Viekense are a lot of family here in uh in San Croix, like it's really normal.

SPEAKER_04 27:53

So historically, for those who don't know, that Vieques was occupied by the military for a very long time. Um, when did you guys like actually actively push them out? What year?

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Yeah, it's been like 21, 22 years ago of that. Yeah, so it's like a lot of people fight for that uh revelation.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

So during that time period where the VS was militarized and they pushed the Bakense to certain parts of the island, in common timelines, right, the sugarcane industry is booming here in the Virgin Islands. So we're talking about Estate Bethlehem, the Bethlehem Sugar Factory, and what that means is that there's an opportunity for Biakense people to find work and build lives on the island of St. Croix. So many of those families travel from Viequis to um St. Croix, and so we have a lot of people whose origins are Biakense here, right? So when you say being going to St. Croix is one of the most Viekense things you can do, right? Like that's historical. So two of my two of my board members um have Viekense roots, um, one has Kulebren roots, and two guests, Tariq and Tamara, who are on um a podcast where we focused on like land, on this podcast where we focused on land, they both had Viekense origins, right? So just in this small little season one and what powers good food, the relationship with VAKIS comes up, and I didn't realize it until I met Jade, um, who was from Viecus, who came to St. Croix to do work, and she's the first person who told me, she's like, you know, we have a lot in common, right? And then when Chasty came here, he was like, I want to find every B I Kensa person, right? When we had the conference, yeah, you're gonna catch the B okay. It's like I want to find my family, I want to find my people. So yeah, I think um I think there is so much more to our relationship. So La Colmera Simarona is a collective, a collective of who, what, like how many farmers. Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

So Chasty and Erica, they both is part of the collective of the um La Colmera Cimarrona. So La Colmena Cimarrona has four like for me pilares. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 30:32

Four pillars.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Yeah, the most important one is the finca is la siembra.

SPEAKER_04 30:37

Farming.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

The second one is uh el panal, which is the the part where we share with the people knowledge and studying and all that, doing that.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

So the education platform, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:50

And then the third important like pillar that we have is la colectiva, which collective work.

SPEAKER_04 30:57

We're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

So um it's really beautiful to see like how we can like um it's not having the lot, the knowledge, and just farming or sharing it, it's like being a group, like working together, communities, right? Because it's so beautiful, like when when all of the collective are together, the work is really done, like for real. And then it's really beautiful how see how in every month we gathering together. So one of the farms that we're have like having this next month, this last month was in La Colmena, and we're having a lot of trouble with the uh la riego, like the water thing, okay. Irrigation, yeah-huh, and then we have a lot of trouble, and then all these guys started helping us, and now we have water, so we're really glad and happy that we haven't them in the in the in the farm because it's really dry right now in the summertime, so yeah, we're like when we're together, we the job is really done, and I'm really we're better together, right?

SPEAKER_04 32:04

We are literally better together, right? And so, one of the things that I understand, and I understand this because I asked Anna because after I left um the gathering that we had, which we affectionately call the encuentro, right? Well, after I left the encuentro, I was like, wow, this energy is really different, this energy is really good. I want to learn more how to cultivate it because there was a lot of trust, there was a lot of work we achieved in a small moment, and even though we were navigating a lot of changes, it didn't feel like chaos, even though it was chaotic, it still felt like smooth. So when I called Anna and I asked her about brigading specifically, she was like, she told me about the two types. So she told me about the weekly brigade, which happens on Wednesdays, and it's like volunteering and skill building, right? So people come, they might not know what to do. You're gonna teach them what to do. Right, this is how you weed, this is how you blah blah blah, and you're gonna do it. And then she told me about the monthly farmers brigade, right? And that is with people who are farmers who have expertise or they know the practices, right? So now you can come and problem solve or finish a larger project, and in your case, it was irrigation and water. And tell me how you say irrigation in Spanish again. Riego. Riego. We're gonna get it, right? Um, but this is how language is also acquired, right? So, in a in a weird format, like making mistakes and fumbling to speak Spanish or fumbling to speak English, or fumbling to plant trees for the first time, is like you don't get to do anything, you don't get to learn how to walk without crawling, and you're definitely fouled on. So I feel super comfortable. It's weird that we're doing this on camera, but like let's get it. Um, so you were saying like the third pillar was the collective community building.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Right, and then there in that collective, we have five groups of uh farmers who don't own own the land like us. We're renting, they rescue the land, so we don't have title of we and them don't have the title of the of the land, so that's we have in common because doesn't have those papers, it's really hard to find founds or found help to farm in their land. So that's why we have this collective for L help each other for if they need some water, we just made the irrigation irrigation, irrigation stuff. So yeah, you're so funny.

SPEAKER_04 34:41

Like I'm laughing at myself, but you make the irrigation, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Right, right. Um anything that they need, we just having the opportunity to help them, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:52

So when you you just said something that I find very interesting, you said rescue the land. How does one rescue land? What does that mean? What is rescuing the land look like?

SPEAKER_02 35:05

So um most of the Vegan says uh don't have the title of the land, and then there is oh, this this is like really important um for us. Uh La Colmena, the name of organization is but based on the this histories, so thing about rescue lands. Okay. So um La Colmena, we choose La Colmena because um around 20 20 years ago, more than uh we have a barrio called uh Monte Carmelo.

SPEAKER_04 35:39

A barrio is a community or neighborhood. Go ahead, Monte Carmelo neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Yeah, and then he started rescued that land that the Marines have kept it. So he started doing his house in the top of the hill, and a lot of the Marines trying to take out his his stuff and his family, and he's like putting a lot of bee boxes around of their stuff. When the Marines start opening them, the bees come in and attack them. So that's uh a mean of resistance to be a forma de resistance, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:16

So basically, what um it is sharing is that there's a person who when he rescued the land, it was land that was captured by the Marines or used by the Marines. He went, he put his house on the land, and then he strategically placed bee boxes to be his defense. So the symbol of La Comena Simatona is actually a beehive.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Right. Right?

SPEAKER_04 36:38

So that makes so much sense. And what does your shirt say? Oh, siembra teesta. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Um it's like um two, como se dice doble sentido?

SPEAKER_04 36:57

It has two meanings?

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Uh something like that, yeah. It's like C this. I don't know how to say it. Like we're always here.

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Okay, so we will figure out how to translate siempre te esta.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Like you know, Puerto Ricans are really like double double sentido. How say double sentido?

SPEAKER_04 37:19

Um, I know what you mean, it's like double anthem. But one thing like one thing means it it means this, but it also means that.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:27

Oh, okay. So then we can't siembrate. Wow. Okay, that is like for obsidian soil after dark. I want to learn. We're gonna talk about this off camera. But to round out this conversation, um, if you could tell any person anywhere in the world um the importance of rescuing land, right, right, right, like what does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 37:55

It means like uh that's like our first like problem. Like everybody can say it's really worried about our land because it's it's this is like really hard to talk about because it's like they giving come regalandole nuestra tierra a la gente. They're giving us our land. Like we we don't we we don't have any value, like we are like they are just selling these lands to these white people. They don't care about our language, they don't care about our culture, they don't care about us, they don't care about anything. They just want a pretty big house with a big fence to nobody to see and be from the playa, and they they forget that we are from there. So we take out the marines walking around the streets with their guns and all that, and now we have in these white people walking around with their jeeps or they see at the playa walking around, and then we're losing our land. So we have to rescue, rescue, rescue our land, like giving inside the month, inside the how does it mountains? No, because we don't have mountains in View. Hills, like hills or hillsides, yeah. So we having this is like we're having to open file, we're having to do a lot of stuff to can give people uh secure land, you know.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

Yeah, so how I would translate this and how I would wrap up this conversation is the truth is is that my interpretation of what we're sharing is that viakense, many of them feel under attack. Um, they feel like their land is in danger, and that's why they call it rescuing it because your home, you're talking about the military came and took it, and now people from outside who have money, they can buy pieces of it, but they're buying pieces of it and erasing the people from it, the culture from it. You don't have access to it, they're just building up walls and doing exactly what the military did. And you guys see that as a threat against the land. So you're actually protecting the land and rescuing the land from the same situations happening again with a different actor. Um, we, you know, this is like conversation one. We're gonna have more conversations over time and we're gonna invite more via quien say more people from Puerto Rico and other islands to share these kind of stories because that's the purpose of the podcast. So if you just listened to the multilingual episode um of Seed and Soil, we'll ask you to subscribe, like, comment. Um, but more so, we also want to ask you to consider um what it means to be in relationship with land and what land remembers and who land belongs to. So as we talk about land stewardship and how you purchase it and where you go, be how are you in care of that, right? Just remember Vicus because their story is not that much different from St. John, St. Thomas, Saint Croix, St. Kitts, you know, any island paradise. So thank you for watching.