Photo and caption by Theresa Malone Clode

These campesinas, or farmers, spontaneously gathered around a freshly uprooted mound of flowers last June in the Plaza de Armas in Cusco, Peru. The women were among hundreds of campesinos who had come into the city from their rural farms to protest the use of genetically engineered crops, in an effort to save their traditional ways of farming. They stepped out of the protest parade to harvest the flowers, not wanting them to go to waste. I loved the personalities of their traditional hats, and their simple act of gathering the flowers that spoke so eloquently of their love for the earth.

Location: Plaza de Armas, Cusco, Peru