by Gabriel Millán Garduño, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México
By mid-2011, with the intention to start a social advertising campaign promoting succulent plants, a small project that should have been maintained and expanded with limited financial and human resources, I came up with the idea of creating a website focusing on Mexican cacti. Considering the large number of users we were expecting and the abilities in creating virtual communities, Facebook was considered to be the best platform for the site.
In early 2012 the project was reinforced and named Salvacactus de México. The entire project started in a quite intuitive manner, being closer to media, marketing and advertising considerations, rather than taking shape as botanical or ecological evidence. This approach of the entire Mexican cacti phenomenon is perfectly reflected by the primary target of our website, which is to raise awareness and spread messages against the collection of cactus specimens, cuttings and seeds from their natural habitats, assuming that the illegal harvesting is the greatest threat to this plant family.
Once the first releases online, using advertising techniques and constantly applying the "trial and error" method, Salvacactus was gaining more and more followers, albeit at a slow pace. While our interest and eagerness to learn more about the Mexican cacti grew, the first members of Salvacactus (Gabriel Millán Garduño, Adriana Villafuerte and Iván Figueroa) noticed that the project cannot revolve only around illegal cactus collections, as it would leave aside the biggest threat for the cacti: the land use change and the subsequent loss of habitat, which is the main threat, for cacti and for other biological families alike. The transformation of its objectives at that time didn’t occur only for its members, but together with our curiosity and interest, it attracted the interest and interaction of several other followers of Salvacactus, transforming the page due to their own input and feedback, and some of them were experts in the field.
Fig. 1 The first postal of the campaign "Échale la mano a las cactáceas" (give a hand to the cactaceae). This image
is focusing on preventing cactus collection from its habitat.
And so, as time passed, the Salvacactus network grew, and more and more members and repeat visitors shared their pictures or thoughts with us. In November 2012 the team was joined by Cesar
Hernandez, a young agro-ecology
student, native of San Luis Potosi. Enthusiastic and altruistic, he began sharing with Salvacactus page his excellent photographs of the cacti from his region, but also from other states of
Contributions
– Volume 2, No. 4 (7) – December 2013 88 the country. Cesar Hernandez's participation marked a milestone in the history of the project and as a direct result of the visual wealth and impact of his images Salvacactus gained much more visibility and a larger number of followers. The quality of the images, his experience in identifying cacti and above all, the willingness to cooperate was reflected in the page, which not only increased in followers, but achieved a much higher engagement from its audience.
Fig. 2, 3 Second and the third postal of the campaign "Échale la mano a las cactáceas".
The first image is focusing on preventing littering and the cactus habitat preservation and the second is focusing on promoting trade of cacti legally produced in greenhouses.
In 2013 we considered the Salvacactus logo, aiming towards a greater brand identity and trying to craft it as a visual reference. The logo was extracted from the Codex Boturini (also known as "Tira de la peregrinación") (*), which describes the journey of the Mexica tribe from Aztlan to the Valley of Mexico. One of the pages shows two globose cacti on which human sacrifices were performed, probably Echinocactus grusonii or E. plathyacanthus. With a logo from such an old document, Salvacactus consolidated and defined more incisively its scope: Mexican cacti.
Currently, Salvacactus can be defined as a cyber-activist page. As a result it produces, develops, disseminates, and promotes shared content from both own and external sources, in order to give visibility to Mexican cacti, to raise awareness and spread knowledge of their habitat, characteristics, distribution, biology and threats, as well as the biological and evolutionary richness surrounding this plant family. This project seeks to create a new level of awareness, to drive beyond a web-page showing pictures of cacti and a space for dialogue, debate and peer learning. Salvacactus does not try to "teach", but it opens the space and creates channels for information to flow, everything from expert commentary to rural anecdote.
Fig. 4 Fourth postal of the campaign "Échale la mano a las cactáceas", this was conducted to underline the importance
of cactus knowledge for their conservation.
Salvacactus' vision is not to be only a website. Our future vision is to build a civil society organization, to conduct
– Volume 2, No. 4 (7) – December 2013 89 on the effect of human interventions in arid and semi-arid eco-systems, and lobbying to change rules, regulations and legislation for the preservation of Mexican cacti.
For the time being Salvacactus is being directed by: Gabriel Millán Garduño, media and communication student, who coordinates the content, public relations and also assures the Facebook users interface; Cesar
Hernandez, agro-ecologist engineer, who shares his
wonderful photographs of wild cactus life; Antonio
Arias, ecological restoration master, who serves as an
external counsel on ecologic issues; and most recently
Eva Almanza, agro-ecologist engineer, who also shared
her images for publication and began her involvement as web-page administrator.
Fig. 5 Fifth postal of the campaign "Échale la mano a las cactáceas".
This insist on the importance of not extracting cacti from the wild and appreciate their beauty in habitat.
Although this is the only "staff", Salvacactus has received and receives substantial contributions from many people, some well-known, some not, who joined the
Salvacactus’ ideals by giving visibility to the Mexican cacti and deliver a strong message in support of their
conservation, from the virtual barricades, some even indirectly, due to their continuous involvement in this project.
Fig. 6, 7 The poster promotes the idea that mining is one of the most threating activities for biodiversity and The Image promoting thr World Environment Day.
Among the many people who have worked together with the "Salvacactus Project" we can mention: Adriana
Villafuerte, who is preparing a series of fantastic artwork on cacti, to show that art and conservation can work
together, Silvia Rivera, who was formerly involved with the Charco del Ingenio Botanic Garden and who “boarded”
Salvacactus’ train, supporting the project and establishing a beneficial and direct relationship for both portals; Dag Panco, a Romanian hobbyist and Senior Editor of this journal, who invited us to publish this essay, and who always
– Volume 2, No. 4 (7) – December 2013 90 passionate and having a huge determination to defend
the Mexican natural resources; Felipe Escudero, whose experience, expertise and patience are invaluable and who shared his knowledge without hesitation and supports the conservation; Miguel González, master in management of arid wild ranges, who is a fierce critic of publications and thanks to whom precision is a long sought goal, and many others, some temporary, some permanent, directly and indirectly, are part of the
Salvacactus movement, a movement that seeks nothing
but help for the conservation work of Mexican cacti. Fig. 8 Image promoting the International Day of Biological
Diversity.
Salvacactus is always looking for people to become part
of its staff, so if you are interested please contact us either by writing us at [email protected], by sending us a private message on our website
www.fb.com/salvacactus, or by contacting Gabriel Millán Garduño at [email protected].
(*)The Boturini Codex was painted by an unknown Aztec author sometime between 1530 and 1541, roughly a decade after the
Spanish conquest of Mexico. Pictorial in nature, it tells the story of the legendary Aztec journey from Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico. Rather than employing separate pages, the author used one long sheet of amatl, or fig bark, accordion-folded into 21½ pages. (Wikipedia)