Rebellious Forests

Pavel Hroch is a Czech photographer, translator, and journalist born in Bogotá, Colombia. His work has taken him to Mexico, Russia, the Romanian Banat, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Spain, and Cuba. He has had solo exhibitions at, among other places, the House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Bucharest, and the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City. His photographs have been published in periodicals across the world; for example Ojarasca and Cultura Sur in Mexico, and Lidové noviny and Reflex in the Czech Republic. León García Lam is a Mexican anthropologist and author born in San Luis Potosí. His work focuses on the community life of the indigenous peoples of San Luis Potosí and Michoacán and the guiding concepts of their cultures—their ritual system, their notion of body-person, their pilgrimages, indigenous rules and regulations, sense of community, childhood, heritage, arts and crafts, and health. In 2018, he received the Fray Bernardino de Sahagún Award for his research on the ritual system of the Pame people of Ciudad del Maíz in San Luis Potosí, and in 2022, an honourable mention from the Manuel Espinosa Yglesias Award for an article on the defense of the forests of the indigenous community of San Francisco Cherán K’eri.

• Prior to my personal encounter with the people of Cherán K’eri, I already knew that the Purépecha were a mysteryThe Meseta PurépechaInside and outside the festivalFractal repetitionStructuresThe “cargo”CirculationGamesFame and the PurépechaCherán K’eriDeforestation and resinStories from the Cherán uprising of April 2011Going back to traditionMy arrival in the Meseta PurépechaAbout the authorsMapPhotographsList of Photographs and Locations

Rebellious Forests won Silver in the 15th ICMA Awards. Jury statement: "The black and white shots have a documentary and often dramatic effect, as the cover shows. No tourist highlights are shown, but rather everyday scenes that give an insight into the situation of the locals." - ICMA