Last week I attended a Latin American youth meeting at the International Conference Centre here in Durban. Although English is my first language and my day to day medium of communication, I was surprisingly very comfortable to be surrounded by Spanish speakers.
I learned Spanish at an early age because I lived in Peru from age seven to twelve. I still speak Spanish when talking to my grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Even so, somehow, I have always felt like there was a divide between my environmental activism and my Peruvian heritage. For example, in order to reduce my environmental impact, I adopted a vegan diet (vegetarian diet without any animal products such as dairy or eggs), yet the typical Peruvian meals contain a lot of meat, cheese, milk, eggs, etc. When I visit my relatives, they have trouble accommodating to my diet and will often joke about my environmental activism. I am not at all offended by this, but I was disappointed that I could not merge these two important aspects of my life: my heritage and my environmental lifestyle.
However, this meeting made me realise that I was wrong to think that. The truth is these passions are not as divided as I thought. Most of the youth at that meeting shared my connection to the Latin American culture and also my passion for environmental activism. I realized that the environmental movement is much more inclusive than I ever thought. It is only a matter of time before the rich and poor, young and old, women and men, all religions, races, also realize how big this movement is.