León Enrique Ávila Romero is a full-time professor-researcher in Sustainable Development at the Intercultural University of Chiapas (UNICH). He is the leader of the consolidated academic body "Heritage, territory, and development in the southern border of Mexico", a member of the SNI-CONACyT level I, and an honorary member of the SEI Cocytech. He is an Agroecology Engineer from the University of Chapingo, an intern in History from the UNAM, a Master of Science in Natural Resources and Rural Development from the Colegio de la Frontera Sur, and a Doctor of Agricultural Sciences from the Department of Rural Sociology of the UACH. He was a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley (USA), the Catholic University of Bolivia, the University of the Republic of Uruguay, the University of Girona (Spain), and the University of Bielefeld (Germany).

 

Research Lines

Agroecology and peasant farmers

Sustainable development and good living

Territory and biocultural heritage

Socio-environmental impacts of the African palm

Interculturality and Higher Education

Publications

Monographies

2020. Alternativas al colapso socioambiental desde América Latina. Guadalajara / Bielefeld / San José CR / Quito / Buenos Aires: CALAS.

2020. Semillas, plantaciones, datos y drones. La colonialidad agrícola en Améria Latina. México. (en prensa)

2012. Las Estrategias Sustentables de Desarrollo Autónomo en Chiapas. Madrid: EAE Editorial Academia Española.

Complications

2016. Jorge Magaña Ochoa; Belkis Graciela Rojas Trejo; León Enrique Ávila Romero y Agustín Ávila Romero (coords.): Estudios latinoamericanos. Pueblos originarios hacia el siglo XXI. Nuevos enfoques. México: UNICH / CLACSO.

2013. Matías Carámbula Pareja y León Enrique Ávila Romero (coords.): Patrimonio biocultural, territorio y sociedades afroindoamericanas en movimiento. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

2012. Stefano Claudio Sartorello; León Enrique Avila Romero y Agustín Ávila Romero (coords.): El Buen Vivir: Miradas desde adentro de Chiapas. México: UNICH / IESALC / UNESCO.

2011. León Enrique Ávila Romero (coord.): Desarrollo sustentable, interculturalidad y vinculación comunitaria. México: UNICH. (No. CH/304.2097275 D4).

2010. León Enrique Ávila Romero y Giovanni (coords.): Patrimonio natural y territorio. Málaga: EUMED / UNIVERSIDAD DE MALAGA.

Articles and chapters (selection)

2019. "Social Movements." En: Olaf Kaltmeier; Josef Raab; Mike Foley; Alice Nash; Stefan Rinke y Marion Rufer (coords.): The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas. London / New York: Routledge. 415-428.

2019. León Enrique Ávila Romero; Emilia Cordero Oseguero; Jhonny Ledezma Rivera; Ana Galvis y Agustín Ávila Romero: "La agroecología como alternativa: movimiento, ciencia y práctica ara la justicia y soberanía alimentaria". En: Revista INTERdisciplina, 7 (19). 195-218.

2018. “Historia de la agroecología en Chiapas”. En: Ramón Mariaca Méndez; Cecilia Elizondo y Felipe Ruan Soto (coords.): Etnobiología y Patrimonio Biocultural de Chiapas. Tomo I. San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, México: ECOSUR. 131-156.

2018. "Crisis socioambiental y desastres: la generación de poder social en México". En: Ávila Carillo, Enrique y Ávila Rojas, Odín (coords.): 1968. 50 años de represión, despojo y resistencia. México: Ediciones Quinto Sol. 131-143.

2017. Agustín Ávila Romero y León Enrique Ávila Romero: “Las nuevas Zonas Económicas Especiales en México: despojo agrario y resistencia campesina”. REVISTA NERA, 20 (40). 138-162.

2017. con Sulvarán López, José Luis y Escobar Sandoval, Rodolfo Plinio “Los seres sobrenaturales de Tapalpa, Chiapas. Una aproximación al patrimonio biocultural zoque”. En: Sulvarán López, José Luis y Sánchez Álvarez, Miguel (Coord.): Patrimonio, Territorio y Buen Vivir: una mirada desde el Sur. México: UNICH. 27-50.

2017. con Ávila Romero, Agustín / Carámbula Pareja, Matías / Rodrigues de Oliveira, Adriano y Pinkus Rendón, Miguel Ángel. “Reestructuración capitalista, dominio agroenergético y disputas territoriales en México, Uruguay y Brasil”. REVSITA ARGUMENTOS UAM XOCHIMILCO 30(83): 17-42.

2017. Agustín Ávila Romero y León Enrique Ávila Romero: “The Myth behind Sustainable African Palm Crop. Socio-environmental Impacts of Palm Oil in Chiapas, Mexico”. En: International Journal of Ecology and Development, 32 (4). 1-19.

2017. Agustín Ávila Romero y León Enrique Ávila Romero: “Cambio climático y justicia ambiental: Impactos y alternativas en los pueblos indios de México”.  En: Revista Ecología Política, 53. 84-87.

2016. con Ávila Romero, Agustín. “Las Universidades Interculturales en la encrucijada”. NOESIS. REVISTA DE CIENCIAS SOCIALES Y HUMANIDADES, 25 (50). 198-215.

2016. con Betancourt Posada, Alberto / Arias Hernández, Gabriela y Ávila Romero, Agustín. “Vinculación comunitaria y diálogo de saberes en la educación superior intercultural en México”. REVISTA MEXICANA DE INVESTIGACION EDUCATIVA, 21 (70). 759-783.

2016. con Ávila Romero, Agustín. “Reconfiguraciones territoriales y neoextractivismo. La nueva Zona Económica Especial en Chiapas, México. CARDINALIS ARGENTINA 7 (2). 4-34.

 

Research project as a fellow of CALAS:

Alternatives to socio-environmental collapse from Latin America

America is going through an environmental crisis, which is leading the subcontinent to collapse, understood as a change in society, and in the way we live today.

This ecological crisis has been deepened by the deepening of the neoliberal economic model, and the deepening of extractivism, which has generated a dispute over common goods. There are real battles for water, protected natural areas, forests, jungles, seas, and air. This dispute is accentuated by extractive activities such as mining, energy production, the way of producing in agriculture, and the socio-environmental impacts generated by cities and industry, with processes of real estate speculation and revaluation of rural spaces in which currently a strong issue of dispossession is being exercised over rural communities and indigenous peoples.

Against this background, in Latin America agroecological proposals, cooperatives, solidarity economy networks, appropriate eco-technologies, and new societal constructions based on paradigms such as living well or good living are being developed, which are sowing hopes of avoiding collapse or attenuating their impacts, under the development of moving societies that reflect and act in defense of mother earth or nature. They put differences and inequitable accesses at the center of the debate, in which care arises as a fundamental aspect to walk, generating foundations to transform the patriarchy and the predominant economic system.