Green Shoots 2: Finding Community on Both Sides of Our Shared Border

During the three years we lived in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, we were deeply affected by the profound communal sense that permeates Pátzcuaro, strongly supported by a generous hospitality that made us—newcomers, strangers and foreigners to boot—feel welcome.

The first Green Shoots post in this series introduces Gustavo Esteva's important work, Grassroots Post-Modernism, which discusses Mesoamerican traditions of community and hospitality. Some time later, I discovered a discussion of U.S. community written by Robert R. Archibald, a trained historian and President of the Missouri Historical Museum (MHM) in St. Louis, Missouri.

Returning to his childhood town to reflect on the meaning of community and history, Archibald gathered his reflections together in A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community. Remarkably, the Midwestern historian uses 'attachment to place' as the unifying theme for grounding his reflection on what and why history matters, and how history can more deeply inform community problem solving, empathy for others, and personal enrichment.

In sharp contrast to the mobile lifestyle that characterized the twentieth century U.S. lifestyle, Archibald recalls,

"A sense of attachment to place—including contested, submerged, and living memories generated over time...."

Archibald's identification of 'attachment to place' resonates with a key component of Mesoamerican culture—the profound connectedness with the earth possessed by indigenous peoples—the rooted certainty that their land is their proper place on this earth identified by Gustavo Esteva:

"...not even the five hundred years that have passed since the arrival of the Spanish has managed to disrupt their [indigenous] sense of place." 

Tellingly, Grassroots Modernism is subtitled Remaking the soil of cultures.
The etymology of the Spanish verb estar (to be) traces back to the Indo-European word "sta," which means to stand; some derivatives mean "place or thing standing." In English, for example, we have state, stage, stay, statue, station—all words sharing the same root as the Spanish verb estar.

Our friend Ina tells of buying a breakfast taco from an indigenous vendor in Oaxaca, who asked where she is from. When Ina replied, "I'm from Wisconsin in the United States", the woman drew herself up and replied simply, "Ya tu estás en mi tierra" ("Now you are in my land")—a simple statement of fact.

Archibald writes,

"If we are to rebuild healthy communities, we must oppose those forces that detach people from place and confine them in a lonely present, truncated from past and future alike, isolated from each other."

In Archibald's view, four core values—mutual obligation, sustainability, transcendence, and memory—organize and sustain community. His mission at the Missouri History Museum (MHM) is to build on these values in ways that facilitate civic dialogue and hence serve as a catalyst for generating solutions to community challenges of education, crime, environment, infrastructure, taxation, family, and neighborhood.

But on the other side of our shared border, Archibald's core values are eerily reminiscent of components identified by Gustavo Esteva as characteristic of Mesoamerican culture.

• Esteva: Community is knit together by threads (ties) of mutual obligation, rather than assertion of 'individual rights'. 

Archibald: "A community is a place, but it is also a mindset—an attitude that acknowledges people's connections with each other, a sense of responsibility for one another and accountability to one another. Through investment in the common good, individuals transcend self-interest and act for the good of the whole." [p. 133]

• Esteva: Men and women cultivate the land using sustainable techniques that demonstrate respect for the earth. 

Archibald: "From the sense of mutual obligation emerges an acknowledgement that the living generation does not have a right to use everything up, and that the future [generation] too has a claim on the planet and a right to a reasonable quality of life."

• Esteva: Human beings and the natural world make up parts of a single Life-Force; a sense of transcendence derives from recognizing this essential relationship. 

Archibald: "The sense of transcendence speaks to humans' spiritual and emotional requirements that are, in turn, the wellspring of inspiration and creativity."

• Esteva: Myths and legends told by los grandes (the old ones) are handed down across generations, thus preserving the collective memory [identity] of the people—who they are, who they belong to, and who belongs to them. 

Archibald: "Public history practitioners must ensure that change does not overwhelm continuity; through remembering [stories, narratives] we construct identity for ourselves and our communities."

Under Archibald's leadership, MHM strives to be a place (!) where people can present multiple narratives about the community, where they can try to construct and present history [stories] in ways that deepen people's recognition of each other while developing historical narratives that connect them to others and facilitate solutions to problems. 


Gustavo Estefa might sum up the mission of MHM in one word: hospitality. Treating each other (the stranger) with dignity and respect—seeing in the other simply another part of one's own self, another part of the essential Life-Force—is at the heart of hospitality as practiced in Mesoamerican culture.

My architect sister and I engaged in an ongoing dialogue about possible connections between landscape, which surely embraces the concept of place, and spirituality. Several weeks ago, I read an article about new ideas for twenty-first century suburban spaces.

To my delight, one idea focuses on creating park-like centers for living, working, and playing in new suburban environments. The centers described by these futurist-planners seem remarkably like the plazas that are even today the pulsating heart at the center of life, work and play (fiestas) in Mexico's cities, towns, and villages.

So there you have it! At the grassroots a discovery of Green Shoots—the sights and sounds of community resonating along and across both sides of our shared border.

Green Shoots Part 3 features conversations between Bill Moyers and two remarkable women who actively live and nurture community in their lives. Here's the link:  Green Shoots: Nurturing and Living Community