Stopping Climate Change Starts with Heart and Latinx Communities

Latinx communities have a strong querencia, or soul’s longing for place. It is a deep relationship to the environment that is passed down to us through our Indigenous and African and agrarian roots. To connect with Latinx environmentalism and concern about climate change, one must connect to where it lives – in our hearts. Unfortunately, the public, private and non-profit sectors of the climate movement do not adequately engage the Latinx community because they consistently and systematically undervalue the level of interest, passion, leadership and innovation that we have for the environment and climate change. They measure it under the lens of white environmentalism, overlooking Latinx leaders, the frontline communities that are incubators of innovation, and our natural ways of living that are consistent with environmental stewardship. The climate movement must get in right relationship with the Latinx community and, in so doing, will recognize that our environmentalism and concern for climate change is tied to our relationship with the land, air, water, our ancestors, our young ones, and future generations. This orientation of relationship with the environment and with generations past, present and future, is deeper, longer-lasting, broader reaching and desperately needed. It is what’s needed to transform the climate movement into a peoples’ movement and a peoples’ movement lives in the heart and less in the head. By getting in right relationship with the Latinx and BIPOC communities, one can get in right RELATIONSHIP WITH the environment. Stopping climate change starts with the heart. Let’s connect to our own and then to each other’s.