From June 15 to 25, 2025, La Via Campesina (LVC) held its first International Climate Brigade in Puerto Rico, a landmark event that inaugurates a new strategy of peasant action and solidarity in response to the global climate emergency. This initiative is born from the conviction that organized peoples should not wait for climate disasters to mobilize: the time to act is now, strengthening peasant agroecology, food sovereignty, and popular organization as concrete responses to climate impacts already disproportionately affecting rural and coastal communities.
The brigade brought together 23 participants from 15 peasant organizations across Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania, alongside members of Organización Boricuá and the Puerto Rico Institute for Agroecology (IALA-PR). For ten days, the brigadistas worked shoulder to shoulder with farming families, sharing knowledge and building international bonds of solidarity. This collective action — grounded in peasant labor, communal living, mutual learning, and practical support — embodies the internationalism that has always been at the heart of La Via Campesina.
Borikén: Land of Resistance and Peasant Agroecology
Puerto Rico, or Borikén as called by its Indigenous peoples, was the chosen site for this first climate brigade experience. This was no coincidence. The island is a striking example of the devastating effects of colonialism and climate change, but it is also a territory of grassroots struggle and rebuilding. Following Spanish colonization in 1493 and U.S. invasion in 1898, Puerto Rico remains a territory subordinated to external decisions, limiting its sovereignty — including its right to decide on food production and consumption.
Within Puerto Rico’s colonial context — where over 80% of food is imported and U.S. federal laws dictate daily life — deeply transformative experiences have emerged linking food sovereignty with struggles for self-determination, antiracism, and climate and environmental justice.
The passage of Hurricane María in 2017 left a deep wound: thousands of lives lost, a collapsed energy system, and entire communities abandoned by institutions. Yet it also sparked a powerful popular response. Since then, initiatives like Organización Boricuá and IALA-PR have shown that it is possible to build an agroecological model rooted in the Caribbean context, resilient to disasters, and grounded in social justice.
An Ecosystem of Alternatives and Sovereignty
The brigade integrated into a local ecosystem already building grassroots alternatives. The Puerto Rico Institute for Agroecology (IALA-PR) advances comprehensive political and technical training based on participatory action research, accompaniment, and Buen Vivir. Its work is linked to concrete tools like the Carmelo Fund, supporting agroecological research in honor of Carmelo Ruiz Marrero, a pioneer in the fight against GMOs; Café Gran Batey, a for-profit venture sustaining training efforts; and the legal support program for farmers and fishers, which provides legal support and organizational accompaniment to historically excluded sectors.
Comedores Sociales and Super Solidario are two sister initiatives born from the urgency of building a dignified life from the ground up, organized by and for the people.
Comedores Sociales emerged after Hurricane María, when the structural precarity of the food system became evident. Through this initiative, those who face hunger actively participate in the fight against it. This practice transcends mere assistance: it is a popular kitchen that nourishes both bodies and the ideological and spiritual processes of liberation. Those who initially came seeking food out of necessity now lead spaces of decision-making and organization.
From Comedores Sociales also arose Super Solidario, a self-managed, non-profit food cooperative operating with minimal profit margins. In the face of speculation and a distribution system controlled by large chains, Super Solidario offers fresh, agroecological, local food at accessible prices, honoring the fair price set by farmers. Ninety percent of its fresh products come from 15 local farms, many family-run and some agroecological. This experience is based on the principle of solidarity exchange: members contribute between four and eight hours of participation each month and in return can purchase products at cost and participate in decision-making. Additionally, they maintain a collective map of supplier farms, strengthening ties with producers while promoting food system relocalization.
One of the most strategic initiatives is the Land Access Campaign, which fights for secure tenure for farming families, including housing and perpetual guarantees for agricultural use. From this campaign emerged the Agroecology Trust, a tool that protects land from speculation and ensures its use for producing healthy, local food. All of this combines with agroecological schools, consumption networks, community activities, and local brigades that, beyond physical work, promote autonomy, culture, and dignified living.
Peasant Internationalism in Action
LVC’s International Climate Brigade in Borikén is a concrete expression of peasant internationalism. Far from being a simple exchange, this experience symbolizes the weaving of a global fabric sustained by solidarity, collective work, and political commitment to local struggles. Borikén is not alone. This brigade demonstrates the weaving of living alliances among peoples facing the same system of oppression and betting on a peasant path to confront the climate crisis and injustices: through organization, peasant agroecology, care, collective memory, and shared struggle.
Notably, children between the ages of one and eight played an active role in the activities. The brigade became a living example that other worlds are possible—where care and tenderness are experienced collectively.
Farms Visited and Collective Work
The First International Brigade of La Vía Campesina in Borikén visited eight farms, one agroecology school and three community projects that embody agroecological resistance and the construction of food sovereignty from diverse angles. At Comedores Sociales (San Juan and Caguas), the brigade discovered how a cooperative supermarket, “Super Solidario,” operates not only as an access point to fresh, fair food but as a political space for popular education and revalorization of peasant labor, promoting community autonomy without state dependency.
At El Josco Bravo (Toa Alta), agroecological education is a key tool to rebuild the connection to the land and strengthen self-management against the colonial legacy, while on several farms in Orocovis, practices adapted to the territory — such as triangle planting and Ecotherapy — strengthen collective connection and the historical symbol of resistance represented by the machete.
The visit to Guaraguao farm highlighted self-organization as a response to state bureaucracy and food sovereignty as an indispensable foundation for political sovereignty, linked with international struggles against colonialism and GMOs. In Pueblo Nuevo (Ciales), the brigade experienced the value of mutual accompaniment and community joy as essential engines of the agroecological movement.
The Peasant Agroecological Project (PAC) in Lares combines peasant training and solidarity economy, promoting youth leadership and deepening sovereignty from the grassroots. Finally, at Hacienda Hostosiana (Mayagüez), post-hurricane resilience intertwines with cultural identity and social justice, highlighting the historic role of women in agriculture and reaffirming agroecology as an act of memory and resistance.
Throughout the brigade, participants shared equally in undergoing the often invisible, daily labour of cooking, cleaning, and caring for children. This commitment to collectivity built a feminist care economy that is helping us realize the world we want.
The First International Brigade of La Vía Campesina in Borikén demonstrated that brigades are a fundamental tool for organization, solidarity, and political education, capable of strengthening the peasant movement through collective practice and ongoing learning. Agroecology confirmed itself as a central political project for food sovereignty, anti-colonial and anti-capitalist resistance, integrating ancestral knowledge, territorially-adapted techniques, and a deep spiritual connection to the land. The brigade also highlighted the persistent historic resistance of communities to colonial structures and corporate food dependency grounded in autonomy, self-organization, and solidarity economy models that challenge market and state oppression. Finally, the experience reaffirmed intergenerational resilience and peasant hope as essential drivers of climate justice, food sovereignty, and dignity of the peoples.
