As the days get warmer and the water murkier, it is important now more than ever to protect our beautiful planet. These efforts are not new, and Latinas have been at the core and forefront of fighting for environmental justice beyond Earth Day. Check out below for 10 Latina activists working towards a greener planet.
1. Elizabeth Yeampierre
Yeampierre is an internationally recognized Puerto Rican attorney of African and Indigenous ancestry and environmental/climate justice leader. She is a long-time advocate and trailblazer for community organizing around sustainable development, environmental justice, and community-led climate adaptation.
2. Yesenia Funes
Funes is a New York-based, queer, Salvi-American environmental journalist trying to change the world through her words. She covers issues that focus on the intersection of race and the environment.
3. Dolores Huerta
Huerta is the iconic labor leader who mobilized and organized farm workers alongside César Chávez in the U.S. 1970s and 1980s. Her work discusses climate justice and the intersection between environmental racism and gender, class, immigration status etc.
4. Katherine Lorenzo
Lorenzo is an Afro-Latina environmentalist who started organizing from a young age. An immigrant from the Dominican Republican, she “frequently mentions that conservation is an inherent part of Latinx culture.”
5. Xiye Bastida
Bastida is a Mexican-Chilean environmental activist and member of the Indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec nation. As part of climate justice movements in New York and across borders, she has been a voice for immigrant, young, Indigenous, and Latinx people.
6. Helena Gualinga
Gualinga is an Indigenous environmental and human rights activist from the Kichwa Sarayaku community in Pastaza, Ecuador. She has lived between Finland and Ecuador, and her work focuses on the intersection between indigenous rights and climate change.
7. Gabriela Rivera
Rivera is an environmental activist and the Field Manager of Moms Clean Air Force, an organization addressing air pollution. As a formerly undocumented immigrant from Mexico, she encourages Latinx and immigrant communities to join the environmental justice fight in the U.S.
8. Frances A. Pérez-Rodríguez
Pérez-Rodríguez is Puerto Rican environmental activist who was raised in New York City. She currently manages the community farm at La Finca del Sur and works on developing programming with a focus on urban farming and food sovereignty.
9. Nicole Hernández-Hammer
Hernandez-Hammer is a Guatemalan-American climate change activist and biologist with a focus on rising sea levels and the effects of climate change on marginalized communities.
10. Francia Márquez
Márquez is an Afro-Colombian environmental activist who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize as a result of her anti-illegal gold mining work. She is an advocate for the ancestral rights of the land and fights environmental racism both in Colombia and abroad.