Mexico’s New Movement Institute for Indigenous and Peasant Youth
Grassroots International is honored to be a supporter of IALA Mexico and to be in long-term accompaniment of the movements behind it.
Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO)
UNOSJO is a Zapotec Indigenous organization, established in 1990 by 26 regional and community-based Indigenous campesino organizations in the Juarez Mountains of southern Mexico. UNOSJO fosters locally controlled, environmentally and culturally appropriate development and defends the land rights of the area’s Indigenous communities. They are a leading voice protecting watersheds and access to water, defending indigenous varieties of corn, and resisting the introduction of genetically modified (GM) corn in the Oaxacan countryside as a participant in the Network in Defense of Corn, the Oaxacan Collective in Defense of Territories, and in the Confederation of Peoples in Defense of Water.
In recent years, UNOSJO has been active in exposing and resisting extraction, as well as carbon offset programs like REDD+ (“Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”) that allow polluters to keep polluting in the Global North, while violating territorial rights in the Global South.