Reciprocity with the Earth in community: Barrio Birds

We believe that caring for our home means caring for the life around us—and that includes our feathered neighbors. Over the past seven years, a CUBs partnership with La Mujer Obrera has blossomed into the inspiring Barrio Birds initiative in Barrio Chamizal, El Paso, Texas. This isn’t just science for the community; it’s science by the community. With the support of Celebrate Urban Birds, La Mujer Obrera has been learning at the Tierra Es Vida community farm and Chamizal community garden how to grow and care for bird-friendly native plants, including cultigens with ancestral and local cultural significance. At the same time, they observe, with curiosity, the impact on migratory and over-wintering avian species, in order to restore habitat responsibly in and near the barrio.  It’s a powerful act of reciprocity with the Earth: as we support the birds, they connect us more deeply to each other and nature.

La Mujer Obrera’s Barrio Birds initiative began with children and teachers from the organization’s Rayito de Sol daycare and learning center who at first observed only five to seven avian species visiting a CUBs quadrant they selected at the farm.  On a 2019 field trip to the Franklin Mountains State Park, the children were enchanted by all the birds at the water feature.  Asked if they would like one at “el jardín grande”—Tierra Es Vida, where they go for weekly nature play—they responded with a resounding “¡Sí!” so Rayito families, with La Mujer Obrera staff and volunteer support, began restoring bird habitat at the farm, building a solar-powered water feature surrounded by native plants.  By 2025, they could report over 50 bird species visiting the CUBs quadrant along with many native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

This experience taught valuable lessons about engaging in fair, community-driven practices that restore our connections with nature and each other within shared habitats.  Barrio residents organizing with La Mujer Obrera have met with CUBs staff to discuss the transformative aspects of an approach to community gardening that centers reciprocity in relationships with each other and the land, even in a hyper-urban, fragmented environment where generational harm has been done by a history of exploitative, extractive practices by external institutions, as residents continue to organize for fairness through better access to resources that support the community’s own knowledge, values, and priorities.

In the face of these challenges, La Mujer Obrera has been restoring biodiversity in public and private spaces and events that honor and enrich the cultural integrity of an underserved but highly creative community of households largely headed by low-income working women of Mexican heritage.  Our CUBs-Barrio Birds collaboration has been valuable in that it contributes to these transformations to restore and care for bird-friendly habitats in ways that also restore and care for vital human relationships that are rooted and flourish in community.