Protecting Maya Q'eqchi biocultural sovereignty & agroforests in Guatemala

Project Story

Tuqtuquilal is a regenerative center in Lanquín, Guatemala, working in deep partnership with 109 Q'eqchi Maya families who together steward more than 200 acres of land across the bioregion. Tuqtuquilal has created farmers cooperative Red Ratzum which primarily buys cacao and other spices from the families at beyond fair-trade rates, employs 55 women to toast and peel cacao in the original ways, and transforms ingredients into products as living heirlooms of the Q’eqchi biocultural heritage, which all feeds economic and holistic well-being.

We believe caring for the land and earning a dignified living should be woven together, and that regeneration only takes root when the community embraces it fully as their way of life. Funds raised in this campaign will support two efforts that are inherently intertwined: an environmental education program that protects Lanquín's rivers and forests from increasing contamination, and the expansion of our native plant nursery so those same mountainsides can be replanted with species that serve as long-term streams of income for the families.

Our Mission

Tuqtuquilal is a Q'eqchi word meaning "harmony." Our mission is to create systems that foster harmony with life — in soil, in water, in culture, and in community — by weaving ancestral Q'eqchi wisdom with agroecology, artisanal production, ecotourism, and education. We work alongside families in an intercultural exchange of information and worldviews, and the goal of every project is to leave more capacity, knowledge, and income in the hands of the people who live here.

Background & Problem Statement

The Q'eqchi Maya communities of Lanquín has been largely forgotten by the systems meant to serve them. Most adults have little to no formal education and because most only speak Q'eqchi, not Spanish, they don’t have access to most jobs, services, and opportunities outside the village. Starting during Guatemala's civil war, original communities across the country were pushed into an economic system that, for many, functions as something close to forced labor: men leave their families for months at a time to cut sugarcane on the coast or migrate to the United States just to support their families; the social fabric of the community frays in their absence.

Also within these last few decades, processed foods and single-use packaging have arrived without any necessary trash infrastructure or knowledge of how they affect people’s bodies or the land. Families are getting very sick. When they get sick, many need to resort to selling their inherited lands to pay for hospitalizations or operations. The land is bought by outside developers who clear it for cattle or monoculture, and the cycle of degradation deepens: fewer forests, fewer streams of long-term income, more migration, more displacement.

Contamination of the beautiful mountains and waterways in Guatemala is visible everywhere. Plastic and household trash are thrown directly into the same rivers families drink from, bathe in, wash their clothes in, and that children swim in every day. When it rains, whatever sits on the mountainsides washes in too. Two years ago, this region was hit with an intense dry season; over 60% of cacao trees and nearly 100% the cardamom plants died a off almost overnight, wiping out a primary income stream for hundreds of Q'eqchi families and accelerating every part of this cycle at once.

We are working to stop that cycle and ensure a thriving future for this beautiful community. The way out, as we see it, is to help families earn a dignified living taking care of their own ancestral mountainsides — tending native plants that we buy back from them and turn into products — so they can stay on their land, keep their families together, and protect the forest along with their biocultural heritage. This future depends on healthy people and healthy land, and we believe that educational programs are the bridge to help people understand that pollution in the river is the same problem as sickness in the home, is the same problem as land loss, is the same problem as a father who has to leave to search for work. It is all connected.

Solution

This project uses a holistic approach that priorities ecological, economic and personal health as one.

With funds raised from this campaign we will prioritize both environmental education and reforestation. On the education side, we will organize talks in local schools and institutes, train local environmental educators so the work is carried forward by community members themselves, host ecobrick workshops that turn household plastic into a building material, and install a plastic-catching net at a strategic point on the river. The goal isn't a one-off cleanup — it's a permanent shift in how the community relates to its waste, water, and land.

On the reforestation side, we will expand our existing nursery. We currently have around 1,000 seedlings with space to expand to several thousand more. With funds we can hire a dedicated caretaker to source native seeds and care for plants through transplant, and distribute seedlings to the 109 families we work with. The species mix is designed for ecological and economic resilience: timber like mahogany, teak, and cedar; cash crops including native cacao varieties, cardamom, cinnamon, vanilla, black pepper and allspice; and emerging-market products like copal and balam. A family planting across all three categories creates a biodiverse agroforestry system that restores canopy, soil, and water, and yields income across multiple time horizons, so a single crop collapse like the cardamom die-off can never again wipe out a household.

Opportunity

Reforestation paired with environmental education turns regeneration into something the community owns and it proliferates for generations to come. Cleaner rivers mean healthier families. Diversified agroforestry means resilient income. Locally trained educators mean the work continues without us, and the model is replicable across many other Q'eqchi villages.

How We Regenerate

Tuqtuquilal itself began on a piece of degraded cattle land. We have transformed that ground into a regenerative farm now home to thousands of species of plants, a thriving cacao agroforestry system, food forests, and a living laboratory of bioconstruction and original Q'eqchi agricultural practices. Every method we will scale through this project has been tested on our own land first, alongside the Q'eqchi stewards and elders in the cooperative who have always known this territory best.

Tracking Impact

We will track impact across ecological, economic, educational, and cultural dimensions: seedlings produced and planted by species, hectares reforested, pounds of plastic intercepted by the river net and ecobrick program, families receiving seedlings, projected long-term income per agroforestry system, jobs created, children and adults reached through talks, and educators trained. Because this is community-led work, we will also collect qualitative reflections from families on how their relationship to the rivers, forests, and their own livelihoods is shifting. And we will observe our own center to see that when the community visits there is less trash on the ground than before, we see more children picking up plastic instead of throwing it down, and we see river banks free of garbage.

Our History

Tuqtuquilal was founded in 2017 with a vision to regenerate degraded land and create a longstanding mutually beneficial partnership with the Q'eqchi Maya community across three remote villages. We've built deep on-the-ground infrastructure: a regenerative farm and demonstration site, naturally-built cabins for hosting ecologically-minded tourists, an active cacao production operation through the Red Ratzum Collective, a growing native plant nursery, and an ecotourism program that educates on the biocultural heritage and channels income back to Q'eqchi families. With Ma Earth's support, we can move from demonstrating regeneration on our own land to spreading it across the bioregion — so families can stay on their land, dedicate themselves to keeping it clean and abundant, and the next generation inherits forests and waterways that are clean, respected, and thriving.

Learn more at tuqtuquilal.com.