For decades, the Cucapá—the "people of the river"—watched the Colorado River retreat, leaving behind a parched landscape where their traditional fishing livelihoods perished alongside the wetlands. Today, Ángel Pesado and two fellow members of the Pozas de Arvizu community are turning to the land to find what the water once provided. Through the Alianza Revive el Río Colorado, a coalition of Mexican and American organizations has rehabilitated 500 hectares across the delta, planting roughly 700,000 trees to catch the diverted flow of the river.
The bees forage among winter-blooming cottonwoods and encelia shrubs, producing a honey they have named Quaz miñey—a Cucapá phrase meaning "something sweet." This is not merely a commercial venture but a restoration of a broken cycle. As the water returns through a 14-kilometer canal system, it brings with it the bobcats, beavers, and migratory birds that had long abandoned the region.
The survival of the landscape is tied intimately to the survival of the Cucapá culture itself. Amelia Chan Díaz walks through the El Chaussé site with the community’s children, pointing to the native willows and mesquite. She teaches them the names of the plants in their ancestral tongue, a language now spoken fluently by fewer than 200 people, all of whom are over 40 years old.
In the shade of the growing forest, the children learn that the environment is not a static background but a living relative. The honey they harvest is a physical manifestation of this recovery—a dense, pale substance that carries the essence of a river that was once thought lost to the desert forever. By integrating indigenous knowledge into the project’s design, the restoration serves as both an ecological buffer and a cultural sanctuary.