The Beehive Collective: Mesoamerica Resiste - work in progress
The Beehive Collective began in 2000 when a group of eight women activists collaborated on a large stone mosaic mural. Since 2000 the Bees have been making anti-copyright, political graphics for education and organizing. Over the last six years the Bees have distributed more than 60,000 posters through entirely grassroots, by-hand distribution.
The all-volunteer Beehive has grown to about twelve people, most of whom are based in Maine, and some work out of Colombia, Canada, and sometimes other parts of Latin America and Europe.
All their illustrations are hand drawn using pen and ink. The research, design, and metaphor development part of the process is usually much longer than the illustration itself. Once inked the graphics are scanned and then reproduced digitally.
The following is a sneak-peak into the Behive’s current work-in-progress entitled, Mesoamerica Resiste: Tales of ants and economies, the Plan Puebla Panama’s new name, and other stories. This giant poster focuses on Project Mesoamerica, a plan for the development of infrastructure mega-projects ranging from Mexico through Central America to Colombia. While it’s sold as a regional integration plan ‘connecting Mesoamerica’, on the ground research exposes this project as an acceleration of centuries of colonialism and genocide founded on racism, military occupation, short term consumerism and foreign control of land and natural resources. Mesoamerica Resiste will be the third piece in the Beehive’s graphic trilogy about corporate globalization.
Please keep in mind that these photos are very small details of an unfinished double-sided 6foot long poster, so the images do not give a proper sense of scale and certainly don’t do justice to their work. This is just to serve as a sneak-peak into what they are currently working on. The Beehive Collective will also be presenting some of their work at the upcoming The Question of Sustainability conference on the Canadian mining industry in Toronto.
Juan, one of the busy bees hard at work. In the foregroud is a part of the poster representing women on the front lines. A standoff between military forces and animals representing women illustrates both widespread military aggression against civilians and widespread resistance to it. The use of force against the people has taken many forms throughout the Americas from colonial times to today. The characters here illustrate the different faces of repression on the ground: military from the South, military from the North, death squads, private security forces, militarized riot police, organized crime, and plainclothed paramilitary. Unable to advance, the invaders find themselves surrounded by a blockade of women defending their land, safety and community. Part of this scene, where the snails are pushing back the soldier, was inspired by an image of a standoff between a military installment and refugee camp in Chiapas. While drawing on a specific incident for the imagery, this scene represents many standoffs between armed forces and unarmed civilians in defence of their communities.
Every critter that is in the poster is based on a real species native to somewhere between Mexico and Colombia. Some of the species are endemic, meaning they belong exclusively to a certain habitat (sometimes limited to a tiny geographic region). The ecological diversity in the graphic is a metaphor for the cultural diversity of the region, also facing threat of destruction -- from colonial times to today's implementation of the Plan Puebla Panama. The rain forest holds its richness in the upper layers of the canopy, meaning that once its cut down the soil left behind is weak, and the damage is irreparable. Parallel to how the rain forests can't grow back, cultural diversity, once destroyed, is gone forever. Refugees. Forced to flee, the refugee birds clutch their nests and take flight for the trees. This part of the drawing represents stories of people who survived the war, the scorched earth genicide. The broken nests symbolize the destruction and separation of families in exile. In ecological terms, the birds tell a story of habitat destruction caused by construction of infrastructure. Those displaced aren't only communities of people -- but also many other creatures.
A small detail of the part of the drawing representing the popular assembly, where the creatures are assembled in a meeting. All the species of animals and insects come from different places and habitats from Mexico to Colombia that would be affected by Plan Mesoamerica. This is symbolic of regional organizing meetings where people come together to discuss their common problems and how to organize for change. Unlike the top-down 'consultation' process that officials use to inform communities about official plans, everyone's voice is heard at this meeting. Communication and decision making are horizontal and participatory.
This section of the poster represents the farmers' market. In the face of industrial agribusiness' attempt to dominate land and markets, and to control seed and food supply, the farmers' market is a source of real, safe, clean and sustainable food. This market gives life to biodiversity, healthy ecosystems, local economies, food sovereignty and seed sovereignty, all those things that industrial monoculture destroys. The characters in the market illustrate the importance of biodiversity for healthy food systems, and highlight the life-giving relationships between animals, insects, and plants. All the vendors are polinators, the creatures that flowering plants need to produce fruit. They inlude the bat, moth, thrip, fly, bird, bee, butterfly, and beetle. All the shoppers in the market -- mouse, rabbit, squirrel and monkey -- are seed dispersers. Plants rely on help from creatures such as these to transport their seeds to new places. The varieties of vegetables and fruits illustrates all originate in the region.
This cave symbolizes fertility, the womb, water source and life source. Inside the cave, new life emerges. A vampire bat midwife assists a home birth. Midwives are one of many examples of community-based alternatives to the practice of Western medicine that treats pregnancy as a medical problem. Pressure to conform to hospital birth and medical treatments dominated by pharmaceutical drugs reinforces this mind-set and plays a part in marginalizing and discrediting the practices of traditional and indigenous medicine. This scene is symbolic of the diversity of medicine, health and healing practices struggling to stay alive.The bunches of plants surrounding the cave's edges are native to Mesoamerica and are sometimes used in traditional practices for fertility and womens' health. As opposed to the pharmaceutical industry's approach to medicinal properties to be patented, copyrighted and monopolized as for-profit commodities, the herbal medicine in the bat cave is shared among the community.
Here we see some bees working on laptops, speaking on the radio, and making silk-screen prints. Free media, independent media, community media and other alternative means of communication are vital to social movements. They provide sources of critical information and report the motives, proposals, stories, achievements and values of communities and organizations on the struggle. Indymedia and community radio are sometimes the only way for people in the struggle to know they aren't isolated but are part of a larger movement.
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