Arturo Míl watches his wife Lidia Toto and several other village women gather cattails at the edge of Catemaco Lake, one of Mexico’s largest inland water bodies. “Without this, there’d be more pressure on us to cut down the forest,” he says. The cattail, called tule here, washes up every autumn on the shore by Ojoxapán, a village of 300 residents in the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve, in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz. After its flowery tip and roots are plucked off, the tule is placed in neat bundles, then carted off and laid out on Míl’s roof, where the plants will dry for four days in the fierce sun. It will then be ready for Lidia and 20 other women working in a... [Log in to read more]