Camino de las Monarcas

Hello! My name is Alex Wand // Alejandro Botijo. I am a musician who, in the fall of 2018, embarked on a bicycle trip through migratory paths of the monarch butterfly from Los Angeles down to Michoacan, Mexico. I have documented the journey by posting daily videos that are annotated with stories and ecological research along with original music and sound design.

The inspiration behind this trip comes from the book, Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway, which explores ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and its inhabitants in the next geological epoch. In the final chapter, co-authored by Fabrizio Terranova and Vinciane Despret, a fictional community settles on lands that have been damaged by fossil fuel extraction, mining, mono-crop agriculture, and deforestation. A central task of this community is to repair this land and form alliances with threatened species. Each newborn is paired with a non-human species that they protect. The protagonist, Camille, is paired with the monarch butterfly and plants milkweed and works with people on the monarch’s migratory corridors to protect this threatened critter. Camino de las Monarcas is my own real-life version of this fictional story.

Due to a complex set of mostly human-caused factors, monarchs in North America have suffered population loss upward of 90% in recent decades. In an effort to counteract this, I sowed native milkweed and wildflower seeds on roadsides and other under-utilized land along the monarch’s path. This will give them a fighting chance to sip some much needed fuel for their fall migration. My landing point was the Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency in Michoacan where I was artist-in-residence during the month of January. Here, I wrote about my experiences, made sound art, and worked on this film.