In this guest blog, Dr. Yorlis Delgado Luna, Abejas Sin Fronteras’ Coordinator, reflects on how defending native bees is a practice of food sovereignty, cultural nourishment, and resistance rooted in climate justice and communal care.
For generations, Indigenous, Black, peasant, and working-class communities have been guardians of biodiversity and ancestral knowledge. Native bees — both social and solitary — hold deep spiritual and cultural meaning. They represent buen vivir: a way of living grounded in reciprocity, balance, healing, and respect for the Earth.
For us, the pollinator crisis is not only an environmental issue — it is a matter of justice, survival, and dignity. Native pollinators are responsible for the reproduction of nearly 70% of food crops and native forests. Their disappearance threatens food sovereignty, biodiversity, and the delicate relationships that sustain life.
Pollination itself is sacred work. It is the movement of life, diversity, and interdependence. Whoever controls pollination controls life. Today, transnational corporations seek not only to control seeds, land, and water, but also to replace natural pollinators with technologies that deepen inequality and displace rural communities. In place of living ecosystems, they envision monocultures and artificial pollination systems disconnected from community, culture, and care.
Against this reality, native bee guardians continue to create spaces where bees — and people — can thrive freely. Through agroecology, ancestral medicine, collective organizing, and solidarity economies, we are weaving relationships rooted in trust and mutual care across borders. We gather not only to strategize, but also to nourish joy, healing, and hope.
Over the past several months, communities across the region have organized local actions to protect native bees and pollinators. These efforts have included strengthening agroecological plots, creating nurseries, and convening local, national, and regional peasant gatherings involving more than 1,200 participants. We have also held international gatherings of native bee guardians, bringing together leaders from 12 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean.
In Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala, we gathered to reflect on the historical and environmental realities shaping our communities, including the escalating pollinator crisis. Together, we shared strategies, built solidarity, and recommitted ourselves to what we call “pollinating memory and pollinating hope.”
One of the greatest gifts of these gatherings is the reminder that we are not alone. Across territories and languages, we find one another. We recognize ourselves in each other’s struggles, dreams, and love for the Earth. Together, we reclaim our identities, tell our own stories, and strengthen our collective path forward.
Raising native bees reclaims and restores networks of life and culture. For our communities, native bees are “grandmothers,” “guides,” “friends,” “family,” “life,” “hope,” “joy,” and “strength.” They teach us perseverance, cooperation, and interdependence.
This relationship with native bees unites peoples across Latin America and the Caribbean and offers a pathway toward ecological justice, food sovereignty, and collective liberation. Above all, it cultivates hope, social action, unity, and peace among peoples.
We also deeply value the solidarity of Unitarian Universalists who join this work in alignment with their commitment to justice, interdependence, and the inherent worth and dignity of every being. In a time of ecological and political crisis, this shared commitment reminds us that another way of living together is possible — one rooted in compassion, mutual care, and collective responsibility for our common home.
For us, native bees represent love for the territory, the seed, the water, and the forest. They represent love for our cultures, our ancestors, and the paths we continue to walk today. That is why we say that each of us is a human native bee, and together we are the hive of Abya Yala — pollinating memory, resistance, and hope.
