PBI-Mexico accompanies Tosepan Cooperative assembly where the security situation of communities is discussed

Published by Brent Patterson on May 23, 2025May 23, 2025

PBI-Mexico has posted:

“Last Sunday, May 18, PBI was invited by the Tosepan Cooperative, integrated by more than 200 communities of the Sierra Norte de Puebla, to accompany their assembly in which they discussed the security situation in the communities.”

Tosepan Kali has explained: “Tosepan Kali, which in our Nahuatl language means ‘Our House’, is a cooperative of alternative tourism, created under the cooperative movement of the Tosepan Titataniske Cooperative Society, an organization comprised of indigenous peasant families from the Northeastern Sierra of Puebla, working together to improve our quality of life.”

Their webpage adds: “At Tosepan Kali, we are committed to conducting tourism activities in harmony with nature. For this reason, all our facilities are equipped with eco-technologies, such as the use of alternative materials, rainwater harvesting, wastewater treatment systems, solid waste management, and solar energy capture systems.”

El Pais has also reported: “In 1977, a group of Nahua indigenous people from the Sierra Norte de Puebla, in Mexico, organized to go on horseback to collect four packages of sugar in Zacapoaxtla, a municipality 140 kilometers away, to get rid of the intermediaries and get a fairer price. …That same year, the peasants collected nine tons of pepper with the contribution of a part of their crops: their product was sold outside the region and the price they obtained was three times higher than that paid by the intermediaries. In 1978, they did the same with coffee, and in 1980 they officially formed the Tosepa Titataniske Regional Agricultural Cooperative Society, which means United We Will Overcome.”

That article adds: “Its network has also extended to the defense of the territory against extractive projects in the mountains, generating a strong commitment to issues of environmental conservation, gender equality, human rights, education and identity, explains its president.”

Alberto Feliciano Severiano, current president of the Union of Tosepan Cooperatives, says: “Thanks to the existence of Tosepan, it has not been possible to install megaprojects in Cuetzalan that would damage the environment in an irreparable way. For example, in 2022, the Supreme Court of Justice invalidated the mining concessions, which were more or less about 745 thousand hectares, and which they wanted to exploit in the open pit. That seems to me to set a very important precedent for history.”

In 2018, the Cooperative also commented: “It is important to point out the work in defense of the territory that we carry out hand in hand with other social organizations in the region, which aims to protect the villages from the environmental deterioration that concessioned extractive projects seek to install in the mountains.”

We continue to follow this.