The women of Chelem, a fishing community on the northern coast of the Mexican state of Yucatán, hadn’t planned to work in mangrove restoration. At first, it was simply an opportunity to make money to support their families, so they signed up for the project.

It was 2010, and the initiative, led by the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTA) at the National Polytechnic Institute, aimed to restore a mangrove forest that had been devastated by the construction of a port in the late 1960s.

The group has since come to be known as Las Chelemeras (“the women of Chelem”), who have learned to restore and defend mangroves and who, 15 years later, continue to do so.

Keila Vázquez, coordinator of Las Chelemeras, remembers this place, known as the Yucalpetén bend, as barren.

“It was caused by dredging for a nearby port,” Vázquez says. “All the gravel from the port was dumped there: the topography changed, the salinity increased and the water stopped flowing.”

That’s where Las Chelemeras came in. The 14 women in the group, ranging in age from 30 to 85, learned about the different mangrove tree species of the area and what they needed to survive and grow, Vázquez says.

“Despite being from the coast, we didn’t know why the mangroves were important,” Vázquez says. “For example, they protect against cyclones and act as nurseries for commercial marine species such as prawns. Now we understand how much they benefit us.”

She adds, “We know that each of our actions is benefiting the environment and contributing to the economy and protection of the coast itself.”

The second Las Chelemeras project began in 2015, in the nearby municipality of Progreso, to restore an area of 110 hectares (272 acres) inside the State Protected Natural Area of the Marshes and Mangroves of the Northern Coast of Yucatán, a wetland reserve impacted by highway construction.

“The highway is wide — six lanes — and stretches from Mérida to Progreso, interfering with the hydrological flow of the mangroves,” says Calina Zepeda, an expert in climate risk, resilience and restoration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), an international NGO that has supported and financed the project. “This led to the loss of many mangroves and also caused a large part of the wetland to dry up, while another area flooded.”

To date, Las Chelemeras have restored more than 60% of the forest and 90% of the water flow in this affected area inside the reserve in collaboration with CINVESTAV and TNC, according to Vázquez. She adds that their work has focused on hydrological restoration, with the opening of channels and the creation of tarquinas, topographical modifications that act as small islands where new mangrove trees can grow.

“When the hydrology is restored and the water begins to flow again, it brings with it black mangrove seeds and they propagate there on their own,” Vázquez says. “This is natural regeneration. We don’t plant them. But in the last two years, we have been helping with the reforestation of red mangroves.”

Saving the mangroves

The State Protected Natural Area of the Marshes and Mangroves of the Northern Coast of Yucatán is an important biological corridor that encompasses several ecosystems. According to the Ramsar Sites Information Service (RSIS), it includes mangroves, sea meadows, petén — islands of trees surrounded by marshes — lowland forest and savanna. It’s home to three mangrove tree species: red (Rhizophora mangle), black (Avicennia germinans) and white (Laguncularia racemosa).

The reserve provides habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals, some of them globally threatened, such as the Yucatán killifish (Fundulus persimilis) and the blind swamp eel (Ophisternon infernale) — both listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List — and the golden silverside (Menidia colei), a species of small fish found only along the northern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula and offshore islands. The site also hosts a large number of waterbirds, including the American flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber) and the reddish egret (Egretta rufescens).

It’s in this biologically diverse area that Las Chelemeras work. They not only build channels and dig up sediment to reestablish the water flow — manually, with tools they made themselves — but they also recreate the topography of the area by building small islands out of wooden posts, shade cloth and soil. These are the tarquinas, or nurseries, where they cultivate new mangrove trees.

“We make the channels and take the sediment [and use it to build] the tarquinas,” Vázquez says.

The tarquinas are piles of earth built in the most flooded areas of the mangroves and fenced with mesh or greenhouse cloth to keep the sediment from washing away. Claudia Teutli is a researcher at the National School of Higher Education of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (ENES-UNAM) who, together with Jorge Herrera of CINVESTAV, has accompanied Las Chelemeras since the beginning and provided technical and scientific assistance to develop the group’s skills and formalize their knowledge.

Teutli says the goal of the tarquinas “is to help establish the seedlings, because these areas can flood up to 2 meters [6.6 feet].” By doing this, they contribute to the recovery of the mangrove’s ecosystem services, she says.

The women make their own tools to do their work. For example, the jamo, a stick with a net attached to one end, is used to clear channels.

“After working with a shovel and pick, they extract the sediment with the jamos, so that the water drains through the nets,” Teutli says, adding that they made them because shovels, in addition to being expensive, rusted too quickly and lasted less than a week, after which they would have to get rid of them. “These other tools can last months and have been a great success.”

Teutli says Las Chelemeras also weave baskets out of coconut fiber and palm leaves to transplant the mangrove seedlings and prevent contamination with the plastic bags normally used in nurseries.

Las Chelemeras say their workday begins very early in the morning. After they finish, in the afternoon, several members pick up their children from school, take them home and make them meals. Many say they also have jobs outside the mangroves, and some say they’ve invested their earnings from their work in the mangroves by opening shops and small catering businesses.

Vázquez says that for their mangrove work, they make sure responsibilities are divvied up equitably.

“There are two members whose job it is to watch the birds, another two who monitor, others who supervise … and that’s how we divide up the tasks between everyone,” Vázquez says. “We try to make sure that tasks are evenly distributed, so that no one gets upset. There’s a reason we’re all still here after [15] years. We know how to work together, and we understand one another.

A source of pride

Vázquez says the hard work of Las Chelemeras has turned what were once barren and desolate landscapes of mud back into vibrant forests.

“All this vegetation is thanks to our work and our effort, all the exhaustion we experienced: it tells us it has been worth it,” she says.

In addition to the mangrove trees themselves, Vázquez says she’s seen many other species return to the area.

“There are crabs, fish, and what here in the Yucatán we call caracol chivita [Melongena corona, a species of sea snail]. But what has surprised us recently are prawns, and seeing that there are birds,” she says.

This, in her opinion, is one of the best parts of their work. “We have such diversity: we see reddish egrets … and white egrets, flamingos and groove-billed anis,” Vázquez says. “Being in this place really brings me peace. It comforts me, listening to the birds, seeing them in the trees, together with all the other animals. It makes you forget the world, the noise, everything.”

Vázquez says the mangrove trees have become like family to Las Chelemeras.

“I think it’s women’s intuition,” she says. “We say that the seedlings we managed to grow there are like our daughters. When we see their propagules, we say they are our granddaughters. We’ve made this place our home.”

What they want most, Vázquez says, is for new generations — especially their own children — to take part in conservation work. She says to this end they’ve introduced volunteering days, in which around 500 university students have participated in restoration activities.

“We aren’t going to live forever,” Vázquez says. “We know we need new generations to continue our work. My 2-year-old grandson likes birds; he’s made his own little mangrove nursery. They are the ones we need to bring into this world.”

Banner image: The 14 women who make up Las Chelemeras. Image by Claudia Teutli.

This article was first published here in Spanish on Jan. 27, 2025.

Dig, dump, repeat, then watch the forest grow: Q&A with mangrove restorer Keila Vazquez

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