Green Shoots 5: Ever-Widening Circles of Response to Environmental Threat

Hermann Bellinghausen reports on Mexico's indigenous peoples for La Jornada. Several days ago, his article "Where the Living Jungle Lives" appeared. The story of an outsider's first visit to the community, "Sarayaku: A Journey Into the Heart of the Resistance", includes details and photos that enrich Sarayaku, the Kichwa community described by Bellinghausen. Links to relevant articles are provided below this translation.

"Where the Living Jungle Lives"

Hermann Bellinghausen,

La Jornada, 10/5/2015

One afternoon late in 2011, while sharing manioc beer under an umbrella a few yards from the Bobonaza River [flows into the Amazon] in Ecuador's Amazon jungle, José Gualinga wondered, What is the "living forest" (Kawsak Sacha in Kichwa, or Quechua). Here's how he answered his own question:

"A space of beings where we people elevate our physical, psychological and psychic emotions. For example, in August most of the people move into the jungle, not in a community, but into the jungle, in little houses deep in the interior. There the children, women, everyone, re-create, pick up their life. They go to see the Masanga, the mysteries. This strengthens you and makes brotherhood, unity and respect for the natural world" (Ojarasca, October 2011).

At that time, Gualinga presided over Sarayaku's Governing Council. Before and after, he has taken on various responsibilities representing his people in national organizations and before the world. The Sarayaku defeated an oil company and the government of Rafael Correa himself. They are living proof that it can be done. Bearing the voice of his people, Gualinga has traveled. He does not ignore the essentials of the global environment, or the poisonous honeys of the "first world" or the stinky breath of the leadership circles in Quito [Ecuador], but he knows that in his place life is better without poisons and in harmony with the natural world.

The Kichwas of Sarayaku pulled themselves together. They let the land speak, and they live as she says:

"It is sacred territory, one must not destroy it. The living jungle is also the place where the shamans and elders transmit their knowledge—the science of the jungle, how to know the trees, plants, fish, animals, orient yourself, dream, have visions. This is our science, the relationship with this world. A language of communication with the animals."

Gualinga spoke of the Amazonian indigenous project that goes against the grain of the capitalism that has historically ignored the indigenous people and their existential choices. It is long-term; it is for today and for when we die. This future defines the present. Not the opposite, like the non-neoliberal project that subjects the future to the present. Gualinga confided:

"This proposal that all nationalities of the center-south Amazon region are developing—the Kichwa territory is one border, and the territory extends all the way to the Achuar and Shuar territory. The indigenous territory is five million hectares [12.4 million acres; 19,305 square miles]. The northeastern jungle, Sucumbios, Orellana are already affected, but here the jungle remains well protected."

Now, four years later, the people of the Amazon march once again in the Ecuadorian distances [outside the jungle] to demonstrate their rights and their principle of existence in resistance to the populist-extractivist government of Correa (who has already had to legislate on the rights of Mother Earth).

"As the government expands the oil blocks, we propose declaring the living jungle to be sacred of the beings, where our life is constituted. We propose plans of life: managing the natural resources according to our vision grounded in a fertile earth, applying the knowledge of the peoples and the social behavior that make Sumaj Kawsay (Good Living in Kichwa; in Spanish Buen Vivir). Within that [proposal] we are going to use the natural resources for education, health and our own economy. The platform, the great vision, is to maintain the Sumaj Kawsay, where the natural world is not contaminated but free."

This way of thinking is winning significant battles. In Argentina, impressed by the examples of Bolivia and Ecuador, a Supreme Court Justice wrote "La Pachamama y el humano", Mother Earth and the Human Being (published by Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 2012). Justice Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni undertakes a legal, philosophical and humanistic review, from Kant to Monod, of man's relationship with the natural and animal world. Zaffaroni calls for working "intelligently" in the search for a "friendly coexistence" between man and La Pachamama, Mother Earth. On page 12, he writes that if they continue preying on the rivers, mountains and animals that live there,

"the planet is going to continue living. It is not going to end, but we are the ones who are not going to continue living, we human beings."

The most lucid indigenous peoples in South America are moving forward on a risky, but possible project. They have managed to set legal limits .... In a 2014 interview with Lobo Suelto [Unleashed, Loose Wolf], Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui declared:

"What we do is transform ourselves into a collective will of 'doing'. We always project ourselves toward the outside as collective wills that break the barrier between the manual and the intellectual."

In her criticism of the government socialisms that, including Bolivia, just don't understand the indigenous peoples, the relentless Aymara thinker said:

"We are no longer alone, since also accompanying us are a whole lot of critters and the Earth." ... 

Are we speaking of a dimension more humane than democracy? Spanish original

* * * * *

There is no more fitting way to close this post than by presenting the ambitious campaign sponsored by AVAAZ to establish in the Amazon River Basin the world's largest environmental preserve: 135 million hectares [333,592,265 acres; 521,238 square miles] of Amazon jungle. That's more than twice the size of France! The petition states:

"But it won’t happen unless Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela’s leaders know the public wants it. That’s where we [AVAAZ] come in. 

"Colombia has just said it is on board. Now, if we create a huge global push to save the Amazon and combine it with national polls in all three countries, we can give the Colombian president the support he needs to convince Brazil and Venezuela. All three leaders are looking for opportunities to shine at the next UN climate summit. Let’s give it to them.

"The Amazon is vital to life on earth—10% of known species live there, and its trees help slow down climate change by storing billions of tons of carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. Experts say this reserve would be a total game-changer for stopping rampant deforestation. Sign the petition now, when we reach 1 million signers, indigenous leaders will deliver our petition and polls directly to the three governments."

* * * * *

Let me give the last word to Paul Hawken:

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. 

What I see everywhere in the world are tens of millions of ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.

Still Curious?

• Paul Hawken (2007), Blessed Unrest; website links to Video (5:45): Paul Hawken delivering core message about this nearly invisible, but powerful worldwide movement. Highly recommended.

• Hermann Bellinghausen, "Donde vive la selva viva" [Where the living jungle lives] (La Jornada, 10/5/2015).

• La Jornada Ojarasca website (Spanish):

• "Los Kichwas Amazónicas Protegen Sus Territorios Gobernándose A Si Mismos" [The Amazon Kichwas Protect Their Territories By Governing Themselves], José Gualinga, Kichwa leader;

• "Sarayaku: crónicas del buen vivir" [Sarayaku: Chronicles of the Good Life], Hermann Bellinghausen (Pastaza, Ecuador).

• Chakana Chronicles blog:

• "Sarayaku: A Journey Into the Heart of the Resistance" tells the story of an outsider's first visit to the community of Sarayaku, with photos; 

• "How You Can Help" (Video, 2:36; Spanish with English/German subtitles): Patricia Gualinga, Kichwa leader, sets Amazon struggle in global context a la Paul Hawken. 

• "Resistance to Mega-Mining Projects in Defense of the Water" (Video, 6:32; Spanish with English/German subtitles): Carlos Pérez Guartambel, leader of the Confederation of Kichwa Nationality, explains how mega-mining projects threaten the water; Carlos Pérez Guartambel holds the doctorate in Law and devotes his practice to 'Indigenous Justice'. 

• Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni (Argentina Supreme Court Justice), "La Pachamama y el humano" [Mother Earth and the Human Being] (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 2012).

• AVAAZ: About Us; AVAAZ-sponsored petition to create world's largest environmental reserve in the Amazon River basin.

• Previous Green Shoots posts in Jenny's Journal:

• Green Shoots 1: Living Mesoamerican Community;

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

• Green Shoots 3: Nurturing and Living Community in the U.S.;

• Green Shoots 4: Social Movement Afoot, Eluding Radar of Mainstream Culture.

Green Shoots 4: Worldwide Social Movement Is Afoot, Under Radar of Mainstream Culture

When we moved to Mexico seven years ago, I recall idly wondering how we might be affected by living long-term outside the United States. For the first few years we were caught up in building some master of Spanish and becoming acquainted with the endlessly fascinating, complex levels of Mexican culture. We had neither time nor emotional space for thinking about it.

During the three years we lived in Pátzcuaro, we were especially attracted to Purhépecha culture. That interest, in turn, led us to explore in greater depth what anthropologists more broadly call Mesoamerican culture. We visited many, if not most, of Mexico's southern archaeological sites, all the while becoming increasingly aware of similarities between the linguistic and cultural groups we visited. Regardless of location, these groups share two major themes: a common cosmovisión, or worldview, and their profound relationship to la naturaleza, the natural world.

Meanwhile, disheartened by all that is not being done to deal with climate change, I had come to wonder if the relationship forged with Mother Earth by Mexico's indigenous peoples might be unique to Mexico. Fortuitously, I came upon the work of Paul Hawken, environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author whose influential writings have shaped corporate sustainability. Prior to the 2007 release of his book Blessed Unrest, the environmental magazine Orion published an article adapted from the book.

In that 2007 piece, Hawken relates that over the last fifteen years he's given close to a thousand talks about the environment. Afterward, people would gather to talk, ask questions and offer their cards:

The people offering their cards were working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. They were from the nonprofit and nongovernmental world, also known as civil society. 

They looked after rivers and bays, educated consumers about sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade policies, worked to green inner cities, or taught children about the environment. Quite simply, they were trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice.

Arriving home from a trip, Paul would take out the cards, look at the names and logos, and reflect on their various missions. Then he'd put the cards in paper bags. Tellingly, he writes: "I couldn't throw them away."

Eventually, Hawken got curious: did anyone know how many organizations there were? His initial curiosity evolved into a "hunch that something larger was afoot, a significant social movement that was eluding the radar of mainstream culture."

Government tax census records in some countries enabled him to extrapolate the number of environmental and social justice groups. At first, Hawken estimated the number of environmental groups to be 30,000 worldwide — a number that swelled to 100,000 when he included social justice groups:

"Historically, social movements have arisen primarily because of injustice, inequalities, and corruption. Those woes remain legion, but a new condition exists that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease that is marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change. It crossed my mind that perhaps I was seeing something organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in the conventional sense, is it a collective response to threat?" 

Hawken has a lot more to say—let me highly recommend Blessed Unrest—but consider these:

"After spending years researching this phenomenon, including creating with my colleagues a global database of these organizations, I have come to these conclusions: [1] this is the largest social movement in all of history; [2] no one knows its scope; and [3] how it functions is more mysterious than what meets the eye. 

"What does meet the eye is compelling: tens of millions of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world."

Hawken concludes the Orion article with these prophetic words:

THERE IS FIERCENESS HERE. There is no other explanation for the raw courage and heart seen over and over again in the people who march, speak, create, resist, and build. It is the fierceness of what it means to know we are human and want to survive. 

This movement is relentless and unafraid. It cannot be mollified, pacified, or suppressed. There can be no Berlin Wall moment, no treaty-signing, no morning to awaken when the superpowers agree to stand down. The movement will continue to take myriad forms. It will not rest. There will be no Marx, Alexander, or Kennedy. No book can explain it, no person can represent it, no words can encompass it, because the movement is the breathing, sentient testament of the living world. 

And I believe it will prevail. I don’t mean defeat, conquer, or cause harm to someone else. And I don’t tender the claim in an oracular sense. I mean the thinking that informs the movement’s goal — to create a just society conducive to life on Earth — will reign. It will soon suffuse and permeate most institutions. But before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destruction. 

Inspiration is not garnered from litanies of what is flawed; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, recover, re-imagine, and reconsider. Healing the wounds of the Earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party. It is not a liberal or conservative activity. It is a sacred act. 

In Hawken's view, three intertwining roots make up this inchoate worldwide movement: the environmental and social justice movements, for sure, but — central to our interests — the resistance by indigenous cultures to globalization.

In Mexico, Miguel Concha, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) professor and a long-time, highly respected human rights advocate, lays out the challenges clearly and succinctly: "Mexico's Ordinary People Struggle for Life, Land, Water and Work". More specifically, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas probably enjoys the broadest international recognition, but other movements are just as far-reaching and important. To name just two: communal actions by the Yaqui Tribe in Sonora (against diversion of water from the Sonora River—in violation of indigenous water rights—for industrial purposes); and community actions taken in seemingly lesser places like Cherán, Michoacán (Purhépecha indigenous community successfully claimed its constitutional right self-government under traditional Uses and Customs and, hence, to defend its hereditary lands from illegal logging by organized crime).

Hawken's idea of grassroots activism isn't a new theme for Jenny's Journal. In 2010, we wrote a three-part series titled 'Green Shoots' (see below) that explored the notion of community that is at the very heart of indigenous cultures all over the world. But a healthy sense of community is by no means restricted to indigenous cultures.

Green Shoots 3 recaps highlights of Bill Moyers' conversation with Grace Lee Boggs, Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr and a civil rights activist in Detroit for more than fifty years. Ninety-one years-old when she spoke with Moyers (she died recently, October 5, 2015, at age 100), Boggs talked about the cultural revolution she saw brewing in our country at the grassroots level. When Moyers asked her what advice she had for young people, she replied,

"Do something local and specific—it doesn't matter what it is, just start."

Echos of Paul Hawken—actually, Hawken would probably say that what's happening in Detroit is yet another spontaneous human expression in response to the global environmental threat. If they're not already on it, Hawken would certainly add Detroit's grassroots community organizations to his ever-growing list—now conservatively estimated at 130,000—of organizations contributing to worldwide Blessed Unrest.

Still Curious?

• Highly recommended: Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest (2007); the book's website gives access to Video (5:45), where Hawken delivers the core message about this nearly invisible, but powerful worldwide movement.

• Green Shoots 1: Living Mesoamerican Community;

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

• Green Shoots 3: Nurturing and Living Community in the U.S.

Green Shoots 3: Living and Nurturing Community in the U.S.

This post is third in the Green Shoots series on community that I began after Reed and I had lived in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, for a little over a year. Our culture shock turned out to be the opposite of what we had anticipated!

We were both profoundly affected by the warm embrace we received from a community that surrounded us from our arrival. Specifically, we have in mind the director and teachers at CELEP, our Spanish-language school in Pátzcuaro. Not only did they welcome us, but they guided us along that stretch of the never-ending path of cultural awareness that passes through Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. The Best Reads Page on this Blog is a list of many of the books that Reed and I read and discussed in Spanish and Englishe.

The work of 'de-professionalized intellectual' and activist Gustavo Esteva—Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the soil of cultures—has had a profound impact on how I think about Mexico, her indigenous peoples and Mesoamerican culture. The first Green Shoots post introduces Esteva's work: Green Shoots: Community in Mesoamerican Culture.

Next I discovered historian Robert R. Archibald's book, A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community. To my amazement, there is a remarkable—even an eerie—congruence between Archibald's approach and key components of Mesoamerican culture as Esteva describes it. The second Green Shoots post introduces Archibald's work and compares it to Esteva's discussion of Mesoamerican culture:  Green Shoots: Finding Community on Both Sides of Our Shared Border.

After reading Esteva and Archibald, I happened upon interviews that Bill Moyers conducted with two remarkable, powerful women—each of whom not only understands but lives the meaning of community. The first conversation (April 9, 2010) is with writer/novelist and human being Louise Erdrich. As the proud daughter of a Native American (Ojibwe) mother and German father, Erdrich brings cultural richness to her work. I found her observations about community, place, language and memory to be important and hopeful—precisely what I had in mind when I began this series on Green Shoots.

In one exchange, Bill Moyers observed that although she is very close to her German father, Jean Erdrich has deliberately chosen to identify culturally with her Ojibwe heritage. Here is Jean Erdrich's reply:

"I think it has to do with the belongingness and the sense of peace that I feel among other native people, this sense of community, you're in the comfort of a very funny, grounded people, who are related to everything that's around them, who don't feel this estrangement that people feel so often."

Erdrich's comments bring to mind Gustavo Esteva's description of key Mesoamerican cultural characteristics: sense of community and oneness with the natural world.

Next, Bill Moyers had an insightful, important conversation (June 5, 2007) with Grace Lee Boggs, who at the time of the interview was 91-years old. A Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr, Dr. Boggs has been a civil rights activist for more than fifty years. During her conversation with Bill Moyers, she discusses the cultural revolution she sees brewing in our country at the grassroots level. When Bill Moyers asked her what advice she has for young people, she replied,

"Do something local and specific—it doesn't matter what it is, just start."

Dr. Boggs wrapped up their conversation by paraphrasing Alice Walker's famous line "We're the [leaders] we've been waiting for."

I can't resist sharing with you some of Grace Lee Boggs' latest activities:

• Grace Lee Boggs, published on September 10, 2011: Anniversary Questions    
• Grace Lee Boggs Democracy Now! (April 2, 2010):  "The Only Way to Survive is by Taking Care of One Another"
• James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.

So there it is: At the center of each of these four viewpoints is a remarkably congruent sense of community offered by people from seemingly diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

I don't know about you, but I believe we're discovering 'Green Shoots' of community along and across both sides of our shared border—and to me that's a very hopeful sign.  My hope is that it is for you as well.

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

Green Shoots 1: Living Mesoamerican Community

Sometimes it's tough to remain optimistic in the face of what feels at times to be an unrelenting drumbeat of disheartening news. To my surprise, I began discovering astonishing evidence of life's irrepressible capacity to regenerate itself and even flourish in small communities both in the U.S. and in Mexico.

As many of you know, Reed and I lived for three years in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, México. Pátzcuaro is a small city—a Pueblo Mágico ("Magic Pueblo") on Mexico's Eje Volcánico (Volcanic Axis) at 7,000 ft. about 250 miles west of Mexico City. We treasure the generous hospitality extended to us by this historic Mexican community. 

While there, we were introduced us to the work of Gustavo Esteva, activist and 'de-professionalized' intellectual living in Oaxaca, one of the southernmost and poorest of Mexican states. Esteva presents the practice of hospitality as a traditional Mesoamerican way of life:

"For thousands of years, peoples of this area of the world have been hospitable toward the 'other' as a way of being in this world. All their original cosmologies conceive the 'other' as the only way to define oneself: the other is not really an alien, a foreigner, but the other part of oneself. But for 500 years these peoples have been constantly invaded by inhospitable people.

"By extending hospitality to the Spaniards, the people were colonized. By hosting other gods, their own gods were destroyed. By hosting 'development,' their environment and livelihood were seriously damaged. It seems to be a miracle that after all such experiences they could still retain hospitality as a defining trait. They have done so because they know that [hospitality] is not only a condition for survival, but also the only way to live."

Learning Spanish is turning out to be a life-changing experience. For us it involves learning to see the world—to structure reality—in new ways. I've been surprised to learn a new word in class while thinking, "Hmmm, never heard that word before," only to be astonished to hear the word seemingly everywhere in the following hours and days. That's been my experience with the word 'community'.

At first, I thought 'community' was truly lived just here in Mexico, but in the last week or so I've been astonished to discover evidence of grassroots communities flourishing in the most unlikely places in the U.S. as well. This blog series titled 'Green Shoots' relates my journey of discovering community.

At the end of November 2009, I had knee replacement surgery. During convalescence and rehabilitation, I read a lot. To my surprise, the novels I had chosen shared a common theme: namely, the power of community among poor and marginal people based on a web of caring rooted in dignity, respect, and a sense of mutual obligation.

Here's what I read—all in English: La Maravilla by Alfredo Véa, El Milagro [Miracle] Beanfield War by John Nichols, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (most poignantly, the chapters set in the shantytowns of Moombai-Bombay, India).

I also read Gustavo Esteva's powerful, thought-provoking, Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the soil of cultures. Esteva comes from a proud Mexican family with both Spanish (paternal) and indigenous (maternal) roots. As Esteva tells it, he benefited from educational opportunities made available to people in 'underdeveloped' countries—the quotes are Esteva's to indicate he never felt 'underdeveloped'.

After completing his government-sponsored education, Esteva began professional life as a Human Resource Manager first for IBM, then for Procter-Gamble. He subsequently left corporate life to work at the highest policy levels in the development arena for the Mexican government. It is important to note that 40% of Mexico's economy is informal; that is, it is a cash economy outside the formal, developed economy. Update: Recent government statistics, revised to include domestic workers, farmworkers and low-level employees working (illegally) on a cash basis in corporations, indicate that 60% of Mexico's workers labor in the informal sector.

Disillusioned by the potential of the neoliberal model to provide full employment, Esteva moved to Oaxaca. From Oaxaca he has worked with activist movements all over Mexico, most notably with the Zapatista movement in Chiapas. Esteva is recognized as a leading global critic of the development model.

In Grassroots Post-Modernism, Esteva argues powerfully against the Global [Development] Project championed by first world nations. He argues that the Global Project will never be able to provide work for all the peoples of the earth, then concludes that it is necessary to find spaces for the subsistence economies of marginal people to continue alongside, but separate from, the formal Developing-Developed global economy.

"We know very well that things can be operated at the human scale, at a scale of real people who know each other and can take decisions. Of course, we recognize that there are areas in the cities in which they are so individualized [that is, a system based on individual rights, rather than on communal mutual obligations] that they cannot take decisions together.

"Also, we know that many people in the cities ... want representatives, and they want to be governed by others. [They say:] 'I pay him. I elect him. I want honest people and professional people to deal with all these problems. I want to take care of my own business and other people will do the government'.

"What we see as our real challenge is how we can have the harmonious coexistence of the two different systems. Let them have their representatives. Let them have their administrators. For them, not for us. Let's share some spaces, but basically have different ways of doing things.

"This is not imperialism in reverse. It is not saying that we want to impose on them our own way. The people in the communities [indigenous villages where land is owned and worked collectively], the people in the barrios [urban neighborhoods] have a way, and we want to keep that way going. We will respect other people who want another way. And the other way can be something like elections for representatives. Something like representative democracy."

At the heart of Gustavo Esteva's thinking are two core ideas: hospitality and community.

"A community ... is a group of people linked by obligation, by mutual obligations, not by rights. ...this is the original meaning of the word community in Latin, in Rome ...the very modern Western idea of individual rights [has been superimposed] on the notion of real community; that is, a community of people [linked by] obligations. And that is for two hundred years only. In two hundred years, with the creation of the nation-state, with the creation of the possessive individual, with homo economicus, we have created this idea of individual rights as the stuff and foundation of the society.

"Again, radical democracy is basically a language of freedom, and freedom includes respect for the 'other'; it includes looking for harmony."

Esteva advocates striving to replace tolerance with hospitality:

"...we are trying to go from tolerance to hospitality. This is something that I have been writing about for the last twenty years. To be tolerant implies that I am assuming that the other is not the right way. The color of his skin, or his religion, or whatever, are not the right way. But I am so generous that I am tolerating him, tolerating his presence. The dictionary says that 'tolerance' is 'to suffer with patience' and sometimes the people who tolerate lose their patience and stop being tolerant. Of course, it is better to be tolerant than intolerant, but still tolerance is only the most civilized form of intolerance.

"We are saying that we are talking about hospitality, in which to be hospitable towards the other does not imply that you follow the other, that you admire the other, that you like or dislike the other, but [it means] that you accept profoundly that he has the same right that you have to be here on the planet. You open your arms, and your life, your heart to the other being very different, to his/her 'otherness'.

"What I am trying to say is, when you are talking about hospitable society, radical democracy means for us a society in which different people, people who are fundamentally different, can co-exist in harmony through a hospitable attitude about the other. In our view, that means the Western tradition is basically a tradition of inhospitality. A Westerner may or may not tolerate the other but he cannot hospitably accept him. He tries to transform the other into someone like him, to create something that can be described as one world, with whatever kind of cross or sword, with many different purposes.

"What the Zapatistas are saying, that is our belief now, is that we want a world in which many worlds can be embraced. Radical democracy implies how we can have a kind of intercultural dialogue with the others and co-exist in harmony. The society of the different. How can we organize this harmonious coexistence of the different? All that is radical democracy for me."

So there you have it at the grassroots level—sights and sounds of traditional Mesoamerican community seeding Green Shoots in our post-modern world. 

Still Curious?

There is a lot more to Esteva's work than could be covered in a single post. If you're up to having your fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human challenged, Grassroots Post-Modernism is for you (available used from Amazon.com).

Poking around on the Internet for more about Gustavo Esteva, I discovered an interview with him on the web site of In Motion Magazine. Titled "The Society of the Different," this excellent four-part interview quotes at length and verbatim from Grassroots Post-Modernism.  Web address: http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/gest_int_2.html.  More accessible than Esteva's book, one eye-opening segment reviews the history of maís (corn) in the traditional, Mesoamerican culture and the indigenous cosmovisión (worldview).