Forests are our lives.

• Author: Valenzuela, Luisa

Ecologically speaking, in my country, the bad news is a nightmare and the good news sounds like a dream. Though native people insist that nature is always in balance, a nightmare is taking place on their land. Their settlements and subtropical forests, called yungas, are threatened by the propagation of transgenic soy. On account of this, women of the Wichi and the Guarani indigenous peoples came to Buenos Aires to protest. "We are being robbed of our Mother Nature", says Octorina Zamora, a Wichi cacica. "To lose the forest is to lose our lives, for we, the native people, are part of the forest".

The women are dedicated to raising consciousness about what's happening to their lands. The fate of the native flora and fauna is one of the main concerns of the group; wild animals are not only their life support, but their distant friends. These women are aware of the evils that deforestation and soy monoculture bring. Dengue, a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes previously under control, is thriving because the insect's natural predators have disappeared. Increasingly the region is subject to droughts or torrential rains and floods, like the ones experienced in Tartagal last February. History seems to repeat itself. In a quest to once more become the granary of the world, local and multinational avidity seems to have no restraint. No...