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Lázaro Cárdenas Elementary, Grades 4-6 It is 9 a.m. and children are hurrying to arrive to school! You can see in the images that students are not wearing very warm clothes. Here they still have very sunny mornings and day-times, in spite of the already average frosting at night in our region with perhaps 0 degrees C. overnight in communities at the highest elevation in the region (three thousand meters altitude). Within only some days, cold fronts are forecast to reach the central part of México. High possibilities of a litte snow seem probable over the coming days or weeks. We’ve been told that this will be a colder Winter than we have had the last few years. This community is an Mazahua Indigenous settlement. Around both sanctuaries –“Sierra Chincua” and “El Rosario,” the Otomí and Mazahua indigenous populations are still alive; their traditions are still prevailing in their lives, and in some places, like in this community, their language is still a little spoken by children. Their parents are mostly bilingual as are most of their grandparents, but many are only monolingual, speaking Mazahua or Otomí as their only language. At the time the monarchs arrive, on the 2nd of November, our ancestors’ calendar in agriculture says that it is the time for harvesting corn crops. After corn, potatoes are harvested. Potatoes grown in our region are considered among the most delicious in our country. Some wheat and oats are the other two kinds of grain grown in our region traditionally. Nowadays, because of the climate change, red tomatoes and avocados are grown in some lower latitudes as it has been already mentioned in case of the avocado farms. Cattle and backyard animals are only grown for the family’s consumption and very local commerce. Nowadays young Indigenous women do not wear their typical apparel as it used to be a few decades ago. Grandmothers are the ones still preserving their traditional dressing. When Estela arrives children hurry bringing their seats, choosing on their own “an special place for receiving our Symbolic Monarchs.” As at every school, students go over again about the life-cycle of Monarchs, average living time, and length of life for the Mathusalen generation (time in the Mexican mountains). We discuss the reason for migration, overwintering in our forests, local hábitat provided for their survival, other polinators accompaning Monarchs in our surrounding, and mating time and leaving. At observing the maps from where their North American and Canadian Friends send their symbolic Monarchs and gifts, they notice that the main migration occurs from states located at the Eastern side of the United States and South Canada. Their gifts tell them, together with the decoration in their symbolic Monarchs, what it is like over there where their Northern Friends live, regarding flora, fauna, sports, culture, their school, how big their class groups are, whether they practice music or art classes or sports that students here in our region do not have at schoo, etc. Gifts to the classroom: “Todos Nuestros Secretos” book; “Frida Kahalo”, book; “Abremente” game.
The children bid good bye to Journey North assuring that “this Monarchs’ season promises to be spectacular in population, since we have seen so many passing by!” Back in their classrooms everyone waves good-bye to the camera “wishing the months will pass-by soon, for our next time together! Butterflies Received Fernforest Public School, Brampton, ON
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