In Mexico, Bees are the battle
This article is an adaptation of our weekly Photography newsletter that was originally sent out on May 15, 2021. Want this in your inbox? Sign up here.
By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences
They were two peoples who found peaceful ways of life with the earth and away from modern life, but ended up in conflict with one another.
The complex, sometimes codependent relationship of Maya beekeepers with Mennonite farmers fascinated photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Nadia Shira Cohen, who journeyed to a remote stretch of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to capture the parallel societies and their tension points.
Her images and Nina Strochlic’s words, in the June issue of National Geographic, convey the sweep of two worlds colliding. (Pictured above, Maya beekeepers, who say their bees are dying and honey harvests have fallen since Mennonites began planting genetically modified soy and spraying it with pesticides.)
Nadia worked hard to portray each group, both of which have sought spaces outside modern, mainstream society." She showed the grit of the Mennonites, fashioning a new community over the past three decades, and the frustration of the Maya, one of whom rented land to the Mennonites and couldn’t kick them out. (Pictured above, workers at the Mennonite colony of Nuevo Durango unloading soybeans at a silo.)
Before connecting with Nat Geo photo editor Dominique Hildebrand, “Nadia had already been engaged with this story for years,” Dominique tells me. “Nadia is so knowledgeable and sensitive to the complexities of the story. It might be easy to say: ‘Save the bees.’ But Nadia is sensitive to the nuances of two communities trying to live their best lives and continue their traditions.” Here are several of her images below:
Deforestation: Encouraged by the Mexican government, the Mennonites went to Yucatán’s Campeche state in search of farmland. Since 2002, the state has lost 1.9 million acres of tree cover, according to Global Forest Watch—including this patch outside Hopelchén.
Separate traditions: At left, 10-year-old Belén Madero Tuyub listens to a Sunday evening church service in Xmabén, Campeche. Her father, Hugo Eugenio Madero, is a beekeeper whose honey production has declined. At right, Anna Ham cleans a pig’s head at El Temporal, a Mennonite colony. Her family gives the head and organ meats of the pig to its Mexican employees.
Where the honey goes: A worker walks through the Miel y Cera (“honey and wax”) cooperative factory in Campeche, where most of the state’s honey is processed before being sold, often abroad.
Truck ride: A 10-year-old Mennonite, Peter Peters, holds onto the back of his father’s truck on the ride to the silo, where the soybean harvest will be weighed and deposited. The colony struck a deal with its Maya neighbors to increase its landholdings by over 50 percent, making room for the next generation of farmers. See the full story here.
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INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY
Not forgetting: When Oregon became a state, it had a clause in its constitution banning Black people. Present and former residents of Portland’s North Williams Avenue area, once the center of social and economic life for the Black community in Oregon, want to move forward while remembering the area and Oregon’s racist past. Photographer Diana Markosian, who made this image of the neighborhood’s Ruby Talton, 15, and her cousin, examined the lingering effects of Oregon’s past in this story with Nina Strochlic.
TODAY IN A MINUTE
Relocated: For years, photographer and filmmaker Isley Reust jostled with others in Los Angeles to get ahead in the industry. In 2018, she decided to move to one of the most remote towns in Iceland, PetaPixel reports. Her one-bedroom home, at the outskirts of a fishing village of 2,500 people, is surrounded by mountains and the sea. “The only dangers here,” says the regular runner and hiker, “are avalanches and rockslides.”
Long exposure: At first blush, this “camera” is just a tin can, a sheet of photographic paper, and a pinhole. But it can take a 10 million-second exposure of the Sun—depending on how long you leave it tied to your roof, Fstoppers writes. You have a question? Oh, 10 million seconds is just shy of 115 days and 18 hours.
Facing hate: For the past year, photographer Eric Lee tried to protect himself and family members from the pandemic. Now Lee, one of several Asian American and Pacific Islander photojournalists recounting these past months to NPR, has different worries—of some hate-filled person pushing his grandparents down in the middle of the street or punching them out of their walkers. “If hate is a virus,” Lee told NPR, “there is no vaccine.”
THE BIG TAKEAWAY
Precious sculptures: A father and son wanted to teach students about the sea. So Czech glassworkers Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf crafted nearly 10,000 models of 700 species of octopuses, jellyfish, anemones, and more. Photographer Guido Mocafico has spent years tracking down their 19th-century masterpieces, such as Caliphylla mediterranea, a kind of sea slug (above left), and Corallium rubrum, or red coral or precious coral (above right). “Leopold could create tendrils like silk strands and polyps like dewdrops. His specific techniques used with the glass creatures have never been fully replicated,” Natasha Daly writes in the June issue of National Geographic.
IN A FEW WORDS
We wanted to make the movie we would have made before we even went to film school, as though we knew nothing. Any idea we had, we would do it, even if it seemed crazy or stupid or pretentious or whatever.
Alfonso Cuarón, Director, on the making of Y Tu Mamá También, As relayed by Seth Rogen in: Mining the pitfalls and possibilities of adolescence
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On Monday, Debra Adams Simmons covers the latest in history. If you don't get the daily newsletter, sign up here for Robert Kunzig on the environment, Victoria Jaggard on science, George Stone on travel, Rachael Bale on animal and wildlife news, and Rachel Buchholz on families and kids.
THE LAST GLIMPSE
An adorned foot: “I’m a sucker for detail shots,” says Sara Manco, the National Geographic Society’s senior photo archivist. This image, of a Tamil girl’s foot and ankle in Sri Lanka, ran in our April 1907 magazine. Photographer and writer Eliza Ruhama Scidmore became the first woman to sit on the Society’s Board of Trustees. Scidmore is best known for her photography of Japan and her role in bringing cherry blossom trees to Washington, D.C. She traveled extensively, was friends with environmental pioneer John Muir, and spent her later years covering the League of Nations in Geneva.
This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams, and Jen Tse selected the photographs. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Rita Spinks, Alec Egamov, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have an idea or a link? We’d love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading!
