# The Mexican women who defied drug-dealers, fly-tippers and chauvinists to build a thriving business

The Guardianas del Conchalito ignored chants of ‘get back to your kitchens’, determined to protect the environment and create a sustainable shellfish operation.

The women set about positioning boulders around the perimeter of the plantation to stop the lorries from coming in and to deter the motorbikes. They dug channels from the sea to restore the water flow to the mangroves and cleared the rubbish. They kept watch at the water’s edge, shouting at the illegal fishing boats, some of whose occupants were their own relatives, to go away.

And perhaps most impressively, they patrolled the land through the night, facing down, they say, the drug-dealers and telling them to move on.

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Today we are talking near the old picnic table, sitting under a newly built palapa, or thatched sun shelter. Although February is winter and it’s early morning, the sun is already strong; temperatures will reach 28C (82.4F) in a few hours’ time.

The Baja peninsula, snaking for 775 miles (1,250km) down the Mexican coast from the US border, is desert plains dotted with cacti. It is a growing tourist destination, and the guardians of the mangroves suspect some of the rubbish in their mangroves was illegally dumped by construction companies.

The jewels of the region are the beaches: the nearby coves of Balandra are said to be the most beautiful in Mexico. And the seas here in the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez, is teeming: the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau called it “the world’s aquarium”. It is home to about 900 species of fish, including more than 70 found nowhere else on the planet, and its marine megafauna includes whale sharks, grey whales, and humpback whales.

Slowly, the fishers of El Manglito came to understand the importance of sustainability, and the need to stick to quotas so the shellfish would thrive. The women’s first meeting around the picnic table had been in 2017; by autumn the following year, the area was unrecognisable. The drug-dealers had moved on; the fly-tipping had stopped. The mangroves are green and healthy now, and the whole plantation is pristine, with no litter in sight.

At one point during our conversation, a motorbike appears with two young lads on the back. Several of the women get up and run across, shouting at them to go away. They do and quickly: the guardians of the mangroves clearly are not women to be ignored.

After the mangrove was cleaned up, the women say that the men thought they could go back to how things had been – them doing the fishing, the women cleaning the shellfish for very little money, as they had in the past. “But we felt we had done the work,” says Daniela Bareño, 35. “We knew we deserved more. Chela would go down to the shore when they were out in their boats and yell: ‘These are ours.’ And the men would shout: ‘Get back to your kitchens.’”

By now they were getting funding from environmental organisations. One of their backers was Wildcoast, a California-based charity dedicated to conserving coastal and marine ecosystems. Celeste Ortega, Wildcoast’s mangrove conservation manager, says: “We started talking to the women about the mangroves and how it’s not just what’s happening in the ocean … it all affects the shellfish.”

My girls are proud of me. One is at university doing bioengineering

“After all this, I feel very happy,” says Claudia Reyes, 41. “I worked very hard. I know it’s possible. I feel like I can achieve things – I have the knowledge and I can help the community.”

And their work has paid off in other ways too. Andrea Mendez Garcia, 27, studied marine biology after school, becoming the first university graduate from El Manglito. Her inspiration is her mother, Marta – a guardian.

Other women say their work has influenced their children as well. “My girls are proud of me,” says Adriana Mendez, 56, of her two daughters. “One is at university doing bioengineering and agriculture.”

And their relationships have been upended, too. “I used to ask my husband’s permission if I wanted to leave the house,” says Rosa María Hale Romero, who’s in her early 60s. “Now if I go out, I just tell him: ‘I’ll be back.’ And instead of me serving him, he brings me my coffee.”

All the women laugh, in shared recognition; and then they are silent for a moment. After a while, Reyes speaks again. “The truth is, it wasn’t only the mangrove we transformed,” she says. “We transformed ourselves as well.”

The giant cactus at sunset in Baja California Sur

This article was amended on 14 March 2025. La Paz is in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, not Baja California.
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