Mijenta Tequila and Women’s Earth Alliance Continue Partnership to Support Women Leaders in Mexico During to Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

September 16, 2024 -- To commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month and Día de los Muertos, Mijenta Tequila, the award-winning, sustainable and additive-free tequila from the highlands of Jalisco, today announced that it is continuing its partnership with Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA), which empowers women’s leadership to protect the environment, end the climate crisis, and ensure a just, thriving world.

From September 15 through November 2, a portion of Mijenta's sales proceeds will go to support WEA's Regenerative Agriculture & Health Accelerator program in Mexico. During this period, Mijenta will donate to WEA $1.00 from each bottle depleted to help fund this initiative.

“At Women’s Earth Alliance, we are deeply committed to amplifying the voices and leadership of women on the frontlines of regenerative agriculture and environmental protection. Through our partnership with Mijenta, we are able to invest in the incredible work being done by women leaders across Mexico—work that not only restores critical ecosystems and promotes sustainable and regenerative farming methods, but that also strengthens community resilience in the face of climate change,” said Daniela Perez, WEA’s North America and Pacific Program Director. “We believe that when women thrive, ecosystems and economies thrive alongside them, and we are honored to support the women leaders who are creating solutions for a just and sustainable future in Mexico and beyond.”

“We are honored to be able to help support the amazing work that the local organizations selected as part of WEA’s Regenerative Agriculture & Health Accelerator program are undertaking to address the complex and multifaceted challenges that women in Mexico’s agricultural sector face,” said Elise Som, Mijenta’s Co-Founder and Director of Sustainability. “I’m inspired by the thoughtful and holistic approach WEA has taken to supporting women working to protect and honor their land, heritage and communities.” 

Building on 17 years of global experience, WEA’s Regenerative Agriculture & Health Accelerator brings together women leaders working at the intersection of land, health, and gender. Uplifting women’s leadership, entrepreneurship, and environmental impact within the regenerative food and health sectors, the Regenerative Agriculture & Health Accelerator invests in women-led initiatives so their solutions can scale, replicate, and reach a global audience. 

Since announcing the initial grant recipients earlier this year, WEA’s Mexico Program Leads are continuing to accelerate their work. In partnership with WEA, these organizations are advancing community education, safeguarding the production of traditional crops, ensuring access to the market for women in agroecology, and protecting Mexico's precious biodiversity. With Mijenta’s support, WEA has provided funding to the following projects in Mexico:

• Las Cañadas Bosque de Niebla is an agroecological cooperative in Veracrúz that hosts courses and apprentice programs to enable community members to learn about and adopt sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices. Since 1994, Las Cañadas has conserved 260 hectares of cloud forest — one of the world's most biodiverse and threatened ecosystems — and implemented a range of agroecological food systems and eco-technologies that allow cooperative members to live sustainably on the land.

• Mujeres de la Tierra, Mujeres de la Periferia is an Indigenous women’s collective in Milpa Alta, an area on the outskirts of Mexico City. Economic dependence, limited access to secondary or higher education, and low rates of land- and home-ownership put women and young people there in a vulnerable situation, where they are particularly impacted by physical and domestic violence fueled by machismo, racism, and classism. Through workshops and awareness-building, Mujeres de la Tierra, Mujeres de la Periferia seeks to shine a light on the various forms of violence that threaten the lives of women and girls, while promoting the importance of caring for the land, good nutrition, and consumption of local products. The members of the collective are dedicated to defending their territory and stewarding the land by embracing traditional agroecological practices and promoting Indigenous foodways based on blue corn, cactus, beans and squash.

• Poj Kää works within the Indigenous Ayuujk community of Tlahuitoltepec, in the Sierra Mixe in Oaxaca. They aim to increase access to traditional Indigenous knowledge in agriculture and medicine, promote biodiversity, and ensure an equitable, sustainable society. Through participatory workshops, Poj Kää supports Ayuujk women, girls, and young people to learn about agro-ecology, medicinal plants, and land rights. They are also supporting community members to create ecological bathrooms and are preserving a botanical garden to promote biodiversity, protect ancestral knowledge about medicinal plants, and revitalize their Indigenous language of Ayuujk. 

• Sirenas de Mexico is a new collective being formed by several organizations dedicated to promoting gender equity while protecting Mexico’s precious ocean ecosystems. Communidad y Biodiversidad (COBI) was established in 1999 to promote marine conservation and sustainable fisheries management while working hand in hand with coastal communities and locally-led organizations — organizations like Sirenas de Natividad and Centro Comunitario de Investigación y Monitoreo Submarino (CECIMS). Together, the three organizations are creating a first-of-its-kind network, connecting Mexican women in ocean conservation, providing them with tools for implementing citizen science and monitoring marine biodiversity, and working to ensure safety for women in the industry. 

• AfroCaracolas is an anti-racist and Afro-Feminist collective in Guerrero dedicated to protecting and promoting the human rights of Black and Afro-Mexican women from an intersectional perspective. Their work is focused on increasing women’s political participation and economic autonomy, advancing Afro-centric and antiracist narratives, protecting reproductive rights, and fostering environmental justice. 

• Unión de Pueblos de Morelos (UPM) is a social and solidarity-building economic initiative that originally formed in the 1980s when representatives from independent farming (or campesino) communities throughout the state of Morelos came together in the hopes of achieving food sovereignty and a more just society. Today, UPM organizes with rural campesinos to help improve crop production and boost local economies — while ensuring that women’s participation in farming and food production leads to their increased economic autonomy. During COVID, the women of UPM created Bazar Campo-Ciudad, an online store through which urban consumers in Cuernavaca (and its surrounding areas) are able to buy fresh, local products from rural producers, ensuring fair pay and increasing access to markets for farm workers whose businesses were severely impacted by the pandemic.

About Mijenta

Mijenta is an award-winning, additive-free, sustainable Tequila from the highlands of Jalisco that celebrates the traditions of Mexican culture. Made with only the best ingredients and a meticulous distilling process, Mijenta comprises the essentials of a truly well-crafted tequila: complex, balanced and gastronomic. With community and sustainability at the heart of its mission, Mijenta is the first tequila producer to earn B Corp certification based on its holistic approach to environmental responsibility and development of meaningful and impactful partnerships. 

About WEA 

Women's Earth Alliance (WEA), founded in 2006, is on a mission to protect our environment, end the climate crisis, and ensure a just, thriving world by empowering women’s leadership. WEA provides leadership, strategy, technical training, and funding for women leaders to scale their climate and environmental justice initiatives while connecting them to a global alliance of peers, mentors, and funders.