Fidel González is indigenous (Otomi) and grew up in Mexico City with his mom and his four brothers. He moved to the United States when he was 19 years old with the intention of working for a year to save money to travel to India. During his years in Mexico City, he became part of the Hare Krishna movement. It was in the temples in Mexico City that Fidel fell in love with music. While he did eventually travel to India, he traveled much later in his life. He moved from Mexico City to Texas for a short time and then lived in New York City for 30 years. In 2001, when his truck broke down in Albuquerque, he and his girlfriend at the time decided to stay. It was once he moved to Albuquerque that he found agriculture through Pablo Lopez.
“One day…Pablo Lopez, he’s an Apache … He said, ‘I know about something, but I don’t know if you will like it or not.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ And he said ‘Agriculture. Farming’”.
Today, Fidel farms in the South Valley of Albuquerque.
Fidel first played the guitar when he was six or seven years old. Thanks to his mom and the support of his community, he bought his own guitar when he 14. His mom joyfully supported his dreams of being a musician.
“I think she was wondering if one of her kids would do something like that. Because she was so happy”
Fidel’s ties his love of music and his spirituality directly to agriculture.
“Agriculture is the mother of all the arts. Agriculture is the mother of all the religions. Agriculture is the mother of all the political movements. So, when I started learning about music, I didn’t know that I’m going to go back to mom, which is agriculture.” These things together make Fidel feel human. (audio)
Fidel learned farming from Don Bustos through the Agri-Cultura Network, a group that Fidel named. When Fidel started the program it was a three-years, but in the second and third years, the more experienced trainees helped teach the first-years. Fidel’s appreciation for Don Bustos is clear.
“He helped me to remember something that we already know, which is agriculture. And in such a good way, because he’s such a great person. Really good human being. And he was there every time we had a question”
Fidel views farming and agriculture as distinctly different terms. He views farming as the practices and agriculture as a lifestyle.
“Yes. I told you agriculture is a way of life. Farming is the verb. Farming is to do it. But agriculture itself is a way of life. Mostly like I told you, since I’m involved with ceremony and I like to learn about Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism. I mean, you see the agriculture is involved in all of it. So farming is how you do it. So right there you got the mission and the vision. Because agriculture is the vision and farming is the mission is what you do to make it happen. Because you have to have your vision and your mission. When you see agriculture as a way of life, it’s a nice vision. But then how do you do it? Farming. So, you’ve got vision and the mission and the concept of agriculture.” (audio)
For Fidel, there are many challenges to growing in Albuquerque. Firstly, there is no year-round farmer’s market which makes financial feasibliilty difficult in the winter. The places to sell produce that do still exist in the winter such as restaurants and schools become very competitive.
There are also the challenges of growing in the desert. There is not a lot of water, so farmers in the Albuquerque area have to get creative. There’s also pests such as grasshoppers (20.2) and the ever-increasing heat (21). Local land access and the lack of a year-round farmer’s market in Albuquerque are the two challenges Fidel flags as most urgent.
Fidel discusses his broader definition of sustainability that informs his life and his farming practices. The number five is the idea that a community is sustainable if money has circulated in the community at least five times before it leaves.
“That is called La Tanda in Mexico …That’s how my mom bought my first guitar and my second guitar. And that is the concept of sustainability.” He applies the number five idea internally as well as agriculturally. “If I use that in myself and anything inside of me circulates in my system five times before it goes out, I can call it a sustainable internal ecosystem… to me sustainability begins by doing what you really like to do in life” (58) The number five points also to Fidel’s belief that sustainability is based in community and community support for agriculture. He discusses La Consecha, a non-profit organization that he started, that runs a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. The CSA supports farmers, but it is also subsidized for low-income community members. In terms of agricultural practices, sustainability to Fidel means saving seeds. When Fidel went to India to learn about agriculture, they told him that he couldn’t call himself sustainable if he bought seeds every year. “I had the chance to go to India to learn about agriculture. When I was there in the workshop, they asked me, do you do seeds preservation or do you buy your seeds? And I told them, I buy my seeds because I need many. And they told me, so don’t call yourself sustainable.”
(37; 12.2) When Fidel started farming in the United States, he found himself overwhelmed by the technical terms like companion planting, cover cropping, etc. He discusses the ways in which colonization and European knowledge systems destroyed and stole Indigenous knowledges, including agricultural knowledges, and made those knowledges inaccessible and technical. Agriculture, for Fidel, is about reconnecting with those knowledges that have existed for a very long time. In the audio below, Fidel discusses the impacts of colonization on knowledge.
Fidel slightly alters the religious saying, “From dust we came, and to dust we shall return” to “From compost we came and to compost we shall return”. The question is: what kind of compost will we be?
(48; audio)