Since 2019, Jesús Cruz López has been the communal properties representative of San Pablo Huitzo, an Indigenous community in Oaxaca. In December 2022, he began actively participating in a farming communities integration and cooperation process to better manage governmental resources and coordinate regional cross-community programs, with technical support from the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Conanp). These efforts succeeded in uniting the farming communities surrounding the Central Valleys of Oaxaca in their ancestral vocation of community conservation of forests and mountains. In December 2023, Cruz López became president of the Union of Communities and Ejidos for Conservation of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, an organization that assembles 25 farming communities in favor of conservation of the region’s forests and water, along with beneficiaries of the Local Mechanisms to Pay for Environmental Services program (during FY 2024), with support from the National Forestry Commission (Conafor) and the Government of the state of Oaxaca. This program actively conserves 70,000 hectares. As such, it’s the country’s largest socially responsible conservation fund. More recently, in September 2024, Cruz López joined Conanp’s National Council for Protected Natural Areas.