The women protecting mangroves and defying chauvinists

The guardianas fought drug dealers, fly tippers - and their own husbands - to build a thriving eco co-operative

- Joanna Moorhead

Ahead of the small boat, as it bobs on the waters near La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, is a long line of old plastic bottles strung together on top of the waves. Underneath them are as many as 100,000 oysters, waiting to be sold to the upmarket hotels down the coast.

Cheli Mendez, who oversees the project, pulls a shell up from below, cuts it open with a knife, and gives me the contents to try: a plump, tasty oyster. Mendez is one of a group known as guardianas del conchalito, or guardians of the shells. It is, she says, the first oyster-growing business in the region run entirely by women.

But this is far from the only success this group of women has had. It all began with four of them sitting round a rickety picnic table, staring out across a rubbish-strewn mangrove plantation in the spring of 2017. They were angry: their fishing village was being ruined by drug dealers and fast-encroaching tourism, and the shellfish were being depleted by illegal fishing.

None of the women had been educated beyond school, but they did understand that they risked losing everything unless something was done to change things.

"The mangroves were dying, the trash was everywhere," said Graciela "Chela" Olachea, at 63 the oldest of the group. Huge lorries would arrive to fly-tip on a regular basis, and joyriders on motorbikes would screech across the land. Claudia Reyes, 41, said: "Things were bad, and getting worse."

Soon others had joined them at the picnic table in El Manglito, the neighbourhood of La Paz made famous by John Steinbeck. He wrote about the area's pearl divers - the forebears of these proud, strong women.