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It must have been growing — in the back of our minds and deep in our hearts — over nearly twenty years of traveling in southern Mexico—Oaxaca, Yucatan, Chiapas—and coming home to Vancouver Island with treasures to fill our house. Each year we brought back photographs, ceramics, textiles, love for the xoloitzcuintle, impressions and always ideas.
The Milpa Project was built one observation, one idea, one friend, one tortilla at a time. It came to life during a Christmas stay in the community of San Felipe del Agua on the flank of the mountains north of Oaxaca City. It was there that we met our collaborators Mauro Perez Cruz, Blanca Cue and Andy Keith and thought about the winter fallow milpa that lay in the valley below our rented house.
The Milpa Project is built around a portfolio of photographs that document all stages of the milpa and the way this ancient form of agriculture sustains and informs life in San Felipe, a community in heart of the birthplace of corn. The purpose of the project is to broaden knowledge and garner support for one of the world's best examples of sustainable agriculture. The 21st Century, its technology, expanding globalization and the pressure of modernity threatens the milpa and all it provides — tradition, community, food for the body and sustenance for the spirit. We hope the Milpa Project will do its part to reduce the threat.
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