Beloved Mexican writer Laura Esquivel, of “Like Water for Chocolate” fame, described it as “a type of Macondo, a magical place that belongs to all of us, that enriches all of us, that represents all of us.”

Mexico’s first ecovillage has just turned 30, and celebrated with the release of a beautiful book of memories, “Huehuecoyotl: Raices al Viento” (Roots to the Wind)” and a festival that took the magical spirit of the place into the heart of the city.

Esquivel, as a collaborator and friend of Huehuecoyotl, was a contributor to the book and one of the presenters at the recent book launch celebration in Coyoacán. Her words capture my own feelings about the place, whose work and inhabitants have had an impact far beyond the green valley where they live.

“…Huehuecoyotl is more than an ecovillage,” she said. “It’s the certainty that not everything is bad, that not everyone is asleep, that not all the civilizing efforts have failed, nor that the ideal of community, common-unity, is a utopia. In Huehuecoyotl, utopia is real; it breathes, it sings, it eats, it kisses, it dances, it dreams.”

I share her wistfulness at not having been there as the vision unfolded. “But do you know what?” she countered. “Thinking about it more, I’m convinced that I was. I was in the temezcal, in the theatrical performances, in the rainy nights and the sunrises, at the births, at the funerals, at the sacred ceremonies, in the silences… in this time out of time where we dream that a world like this is possible… the tribe of Huehue is my tribe.”

Huehuecoyotl is more than a Macondo, it is a real community built with love and cradled in the mountains of Tepotzlán, about an hour and a half outside of Mexico City. And the stories of its inhabitants and visitors, chronicled by more than 40 collaborators, are the stories of the potent currents of change that have moved through this planet, alternately unperceived, misunderstood and repressed by the powers that be.

Huehuecoyotl is like the giant amate tree that stands at the heart of the community, whose seeds have been spread throughout the planet thanks to its inhabitants’ various cultural and educational adventures, beginning in the 1960s with the Hathi Babas in India and the Middle East, and tracing its way through the Americas in the epic Rainbow Peace Caravan, 1996-2009. Look for its current manifestation in the periodic international Consejo de Visiones, or Vision Council.

The writers are dreamers and doers, cultural, spiritual, artistic and ecological activists from Mexico and the United States, from Sweden and Italy and Spain, to name just a few of the nationalities of this global tribe. To page through this collection of essays and the colorful photography of Jan Svante Vanbart and others is to be swept along those currents through four decades of change. These are voices that will not be silenced, but will be raised time and again in song, lifting into the skies like the smoke of the sacred copal.

As Huehue cofounder, author, visionary and teacher “Coyote” Alberto Ruz Buenfil said, “Those who do not dare to live their dreams, or who for fear betray them, the only thing they achieve is to end their existence in the middle of a great nightmare.”

For those willing to take that dare, “Huehuecoyotl: Raices al Viento” is more than an inspiration; it’s a call to action.

Available (in Spanish only, at this time) through Alberto Ruz Buenfil, subcoyotealberto@yahoo.com.

Here are some images from the book launch celebration, April 20 at Casa de Cultura Reyes Heroles, and the Festival de Jade, April 21 in the nearby Plaza Coyocan, bringing the spirit of Huehue to the heart of Mexico City’s most authentic colonia.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

CHALMITA, Mexico State, Mexico – Long before the sun appears over the towering white cliffs all around us, this temporary village comes to life. The guardians of the ceremonial fire are stoking the flames for the temezcal; the kitchen crew is chopping and peeling and stirring; smoke is rising from the women’s tipi. Suddenly the resonant call of the conch rings out over the valley, calling us to the salutation of the sun, and the cry of an eagle pierces the air like a blessing.

We are gathered in this enchanted valley for the Call of the Eagle, the tenth intercontinental gathering of a group of dreamers and doers who are quietly changing the world from the inside out: the Consejo de Visiones – Guardianes de la Tierra (Vision Council – Guardians of the Earth).

Some 500 visitors from as far as Australia and as near as neighboring Chalmita – filmmakers and farmers, psychologists and shamans, artists and teachers, spiky-haired punks and lyrical poets – are learning to live together under the blue skies and bright stars of an itinerant ecovillage conceived more than a decade ago under the banner of the Rainbow Caravan for Peace and the Mexican Bioregional Movement. By the end of the week, this event will have touched the lives of more than 1,000.

This tenth gathering is a very special event for many reasons, chief among them that it is seen as the fulfillment of an Inca prophecy. When the Eagle and the Condor fly together, according to the prophecy, this will signal the dawn of a new era – the Eagle representing the North, and the Condor representing the South. Here in this sacred valley, lying in the shadow of an ancient pyramid amid the fertile Bosque de Agua, a high-energy group of visionaries, artists, and activists from North and South has come full circle.

Fourteen years ago, a now legendary group of them, led by among others Alberto Ruz Buenfil, otherwise known as the Subcoyote – cousin of Fidel Castro and son of the archaeologist who discovered Palenque’s fantastic hidden treasures – set off from this region for an epic journey that was to create the foundation for an intercontinental environmental, spiritual and social movement. After holding the first intercontinental congress of the Vision Council, they headed off in a bus painted like an ear of corn through the Zapatista territory of Chiapas, through the volcanic highlands of Central America and the tropical lowlands of Amazonia all the way to the tip of the continent in Patagonia. Using theater and the arts to plant seeds of hope, peace and sustainability in conflict zones, indigenous villages and crime-ridden barrios, they connected and nurtured social movements throughout the continent.

Their second international event, the Call of the Condor in 2002, brought some 1,300 activists and artists to the Sacred Valley of Machu Picchu in Peru to begin the work of consolidating a vision for a transition to a new age. The third, Call of the Hummingbird, was held in Brazil in 2005 and drew more than 1,500.

Now, after 13 years, that caravan has finally come back to its roots, and the seeds they planted here in Mexico and across the continent have come full bloom in an astounding event that is awakening even the most cynical and reserved among us. Tears flow freely in the circles of dance, in the darkness of the temezcal, in the embraces of long-lost friends who have only just met.

But this is far from a feel-good encounter group. In fact, it’s far from anything I’ve experienced. These folks are facing the future with their eyes wide open, painfully aware of the resource and climate crises that loom on the horizon. It’s also not a hand-wringing session. No one here is waiting for government to resolve these pending crises, although government leaders are here to participate in the forums, workshops and demonstrations in areas encompassing ecology, health, spirituality, appropriate technology, and education among many others. Local schoolchildren, too, are brought in to participate in panels teaching self-reliance; local youth participate in forums organizing political and social action preparing for turbulent times in a post-petroleum world. Gaia University is here, sharing a revolutionary model for participatory education, granting diplomas, bachelor’s and master’s degrees while its students are engaged in planetary transformation.

One team is building an oven from mud and bricks, while another is building a solar clock; another group is learning about native herbal healing techniques, while still another is raising the ceremonial tipi that will be the headquarters of a powerful women’s healing circle, and another is discussing strategies for protecting this valley, a strategic but highly vulnerable center for water conservation. Another initiative is gathering momentum to support the Huicholes in a struggle to save their most sacred site, Cerro Quemado in Real de Catorce or Wirikuta, from a transnational mining operation.

Sacred rituals from the world’s great traditions mingle with dance and creations of art and song to raise the energy throughout the week to a level I never thought possible. Activities run from sunup to 3 a.m., but sleep seems superfluous.

The culmination of the event comes after an all-night vigil to greet the dawn; a spectacularly feathered and painted group of Aztec dancers await us around a blazing fire, and a mandala of dance and rhythm and song erupts.

As I sit down to try and put this phenomenon to words, I recall those of Coyote Alberto as we stood together on the last day.

“It’s all so perfect,” I told him. “My only regret is that it’s just impossible to put into words.”

He laughed knowingly – the author of several books about the caravan and its Rainbow Warriors, and now involved in a project to bring the lessons of the caravan home in Mexico City, he has struggled with this problem daily.

“Nobody believes you when you try to explain it,” he said. “They say, ‘You’re just writing what you want it to be.’ There’s no way to explain – you just have to live it.”

Never has a human being lived his words more authentically, more powerfully, more beautifully than the man at the heart of this vision turned reality. I can do no better than to end with some of those words, which Alberto shared with us during the closing ceremony.

“Two hundred years ago these lands were the scene of bloody battles; much blood was shed among our grandfathers and grandmothers to make a step forward in the process of evolution, of growth, toward our liberty as individuals, as a people, and as a nation…. A hundred years ago, again in these lands, much blood was spilled once again among our people, with the same goal, to be able to walk with a bit more liberty, a bit more strength.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

By Tracy L. Barnett

SAN ISIDRO MAZATEPEC, Jalisco, Mexico – It was harvest season when I visited Teopantli Kalpulli, and the colorful native corn was spread out on the ground, drying in the sun. Children played in the grassy schoolyard as Levi Rios stopped from his rounds for a moment to watch them.

Not so many years ago, this young ecovillage leader was learning to read in this same schoolhouse; now a college graduate with several years’ experience in the city as a professional architect, he’s returned to his pastoral roots to help lead his community into a second generation.

Past, present and future meet at Teopantli Kalpulli, an intentional community/ecovillage about an hour south of Guadalajara. These families live close to the earth but still enjoy modern comforts. Conceived in the late 1970s by a small group that included Levi’s parents, Carlos Rios and Beatriz Cardenas, the community has grown to become Mexico’s largest intentional community of its kind.

Teopantli Kalpulli, a Nahuatl phrase which, loosely translated, means “sacred bioregional village,” was an outgrowth of the founders’ search for an earth-centered lifestyle that incorporated the sacred traditions of their ancestors. They were part of a network called the Universal Grand Brotherhood, practitioners of yoga, meditation and vegetarianism.

“They realized that the Americas had their own traditions that are as sacred as those of the East, so they decided to build their community on those traditions,” Levi explained.

The prehispanic kalpullis, he explained, were villages that shared a series of disciplines and cultural practices such as the traditional sowing of corn, the practice of sacred dance and the temezcal – the indigenous Mexican version of the sweat lodge ceremony. Teopantli, Levi said, was one of the first spaces in Mexico that opened its doors to the indigenous leaders to share their teachings, and those teachings were incorporated into the ecovillage structure.

Community members try to grow as much of their own organic food as possible, and they revere the corn and the Mother Earth as their ancestors did.

Teopantli is a paradise for the children, who have the run of the place. Twenty-one families make their homes on these 92 acres, concentrated on 17 acres of homes and common space. The rest of the land is used for cultivation of their traditional maize, for organic gardens and fruit trees, and forest.

The community is designed to hold 55 families, so the community is still accepting new members. Ownership of the land is collective, Levi explained, with members being granted permits to construct their housing.
“What we are doing here is assuring that the earth belongs to the community,” he explained. Another key goal of the community is to ensure that a healthy, cooperative, earth-based lifestyle can be accessible to people regardless of their income level.

The tour began at the center of the community, where a giant ceiba tree, sacred to the Maya and other prehispanic peoples, spreads its leafy branches over a ceremonial circle.

The community itself is laid out along the four cardinal directions, with sacred spaces in each of the four points: In the north, a small pyramid constructed in the way of their prehispanic ancestors; in the east, a sanctuary for yoga and meditation; in the south, a calihuey, the sacred temple of the Huichol ancestors, and in the west, a temezcal. In each of these four spaces, they hold different celebrations throughout the year.

“We learned from the Huichol people to link the planting of the corn with a calendar of activities throughout the year,” Levi said. The planning of activities in different parts of the community is important, he explained, as it “keeps the energy moving” throughout the community.

One of the top priorities as to community enters its next phase, he explained, is to expand the school to create different classrooms for the different age groups. Currently the 14 children who belong to the community all study in a common classroom, but the group is continuing to grow, with an additional two families joining in the past year.

One change the village has seen over time is an increase in the educational level, Levi explained. His parents were fortunate to attend college, he said, but most of the founders did not, and it was always a struggle to earn enough money to support the community.

Part of that herculean effort involved rebuilding the soil, depleted from years of slash-and-burn agriculture and overgrazing, and reforesting what had become deforested pasture.

“If I showed you the photographs from this place when the community first bought the land, you wouldn’t believe it – there wasn’t a tree or a bush to be seen,” he said. “If you’ll notice, the land all around the community is pasture.”

It’s true, I realized – we had entered a lush oasis of hardwood forest and abundant garden spaces.

Nowadays, as the community enters its second generation, Levi was explaining, more members of the community have gone to college and have brought to the community a variety of skills. Nowadays, 90 percent of the residents are able to earn their living from businesses based in the community; 10 percent of them commute to town to do other jobs.

Next was a tour of the prolific permaculture garden. Nine hectares (20 acres) are plowed with the antique tractor and planted as a traditional milpa – corn, beans and squash – in the traditional way of the ancestors.
Levi exchanges vegetables from his garden with other families who produce whole-grain baked goods, honey, soymilk, tofu and a variety of other items.

“Barter is something that’s come about naturally,” he said. “The people have workshops in their homes, and we just exchange.”

On the edges of the common areas are the homes, built by each of the owners themselves. All are built with materials available in the local area; some with adobe, others of brick. We pass one that has been abandoned and the owner has put it up for sale.

“It’s just that life is not easy here,” Levi explained. “You have to be able to make the economy work for you; you have to be able to live isolated from the economic system. If you can develop a professional activity isolated from the city, you can make it work – but it’s not for everybody.”

Few communities like this one have survived for this long, he said. “There are about five like this one in Mexico, but none of them with as many people as we have now in Kalpulli.”

The tour commenced to a comfortably spacious community dining area, where Beatriz and her two children, Yuma and Maya, were enjoying the sun on the patio. Beatriz is Swiss and her husband is Mexican; they are one of the new families in the community.

Maya and Yuma are hard at work coloring, and Levi stops to admire their handiwork – and also that of Beatriz, who, Levi informs me, designed and knitted the beautiful sweater she is wearing, which is made of organic linen.
Beatriz has made a business of selling these sweaters. This one, she says, took about 80 hours to make, and will sell for 700 pesos – a little over $50.

We continue on our way, meeting Celia Rubalcava, who has a soymilk business in her home, and Isaac, who is using a hand-powered mill to shuck the dried corn. His children are playing at his feet, making what looks like elaborate meals from mud.

“Aurima, what are you doing? Making little balls?” Levi queries. Aurima proudly displays her creations.
At the next house, I meet Jose Luis and Angelita Gutierez, who operate a small whole-grain bakery and tofu factory in their home. They showed me around and shared with me a little pinole de maiz – a powder made of cinnamon, brown sugar and toasted ground corn, eaten as a snack or mixed with hot water for a delicious drink.
Next we went on to the temezcal area, where small, domed structures awaited the next sweat lodge ceremony. Some of these ceremonies are open to the public, and others are just for the community.

Finally Levi takes me to his home, a cool brick-and-adobe house with simple, clean lines, a front porch with a hammock and a beautiful altar looking out onto the fields.

He shared with me a bit about his decision to return to the community after eight years in Guadalajara, four years at ITESO, a Jesuit university, and four more working with local architectural firms and construction companies.

“I believe all people have a mission in life – or if they don’t have one, they should! – but for me, growing up in a community has marked me with a special vision of community,” he said. “I wanted to go to the university precisely to broaden this concept of community.”

So begins Albert Bates in his introduction to permaculture – a design system whose name originated from the idea of “permanent agriculture” and evolved into a system promoting permanence in the human culture itself.

“Solastalgia is what happens when we find that we are one of the only animals that soils its own nest, and then lives in it. Then we get sad and depressed,” he says. “We ask ourselves, ‘Can we survive?’”

Bates, a founder of the Global Ecovillage Network and a prolific author and public speaker, has made his way through miles of Mayan villages and tropical forest to Maya Mountain Research Farm in southern Belize, as he does every March. It’s part of a hectic schedule that has him traveling all over the globe, from Estonia to the Holy Lands and beyond, preparing willing participants for what he calls The Great Change: a transition to a world less dependent on petroleum and other carbon-based fuels, and more in harmony with the Earth.

An integral part of his lesson plan is permaculture. Developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, permaculture has grown into a global movement, an approach to sustainable development that strives to work with nature instead of at cross purposes with it. Today, he and Mexican permaculture leader Maria Ros are giving us an intro to the principles of the system. But first, Bates administers a little shock therapy – a collection of seemingly random facts that all add up to a wakeup call for a hypnotized nation.
In 2008, he tells us, “USAnians” – he refuses to submit to the convention that has expropriated the name of the whole New World for the sole use of one country – purchased 68 million vehicles, 85 million refrigerators and 1.2 billion mobile phones. The average European consumes 43 kilograms of resources per person, while the average American consumes 88.

“If we used as much energy per capita as Europeans, we’d be an oil-exporting nation,” he tells us. At this point, the richest 7% – most of whom live in the US – produce 50% of the carbon.

It might not matter, he says, except that our acquisitive ways are driving the planet to the brink of destruction.
One-third of the world’s largest rivers are losing water 2½ times faster than they gain it; they are drying up. 150 villages in Northern Syria have been abandoned due to drought. The same thing is beginning to happen in Mexico, Africa and southern Spain.

“Whole villages are having to pack up and leave. Where are they going to go?”

Desertification, increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes, disappearing water supplies and rising sea levels are expected to produce an estimated 1 billion environmental refugees by 2050.

“We’re in a cycle we created half a century ago that’s still unfolding,” he said. “The carbon from muscle cars of the ‘50s and the industrial plants of the ‘60s and ‘70s are still making their way into the atmosphere, going through chemical changes.

“We need a shift in human design.”

Permaculture strives to use “more observation, less perspiration” by studying the lay of the land and the patterns of nature and working with them to create a harmonious design. The objective, he says, is to make oneself obsolete; in a good design, “the designer becomes the recliner.”

That’s why the hammock is an essential part of a good permaculture design, he maintains – although with his busy schedule, I’m having a hard time imagining him doing much hammock reclining.

“We have to ask ourselves: Can nature do it for us? Can we go with the flow? What is the flow?”

The three key principles, he says, are Earth care, people care and surplus share. That last part caught my attention. “If you don’t share the surplus, it becomes pollution,” he said, using as an example the fruit from an apple tree. Shared, it becomes a resource; left to spoil on the ground, it becomes a mess. The same holds true for any surplus production, he says. I imagine how different the world would be if sharing surplus were to become a part of the general ethic.

In fact, before the invention of money some 500 to 1,000 years ago, that was the case, he says. Early tribal people like the Cahokians created great trading centers that stretched from Nova Scotia and Alaska to the tropics, but trade was based on a friendly exchange, and hoarding wasn’t a useful behavior.

Alternative and local currencies have been developed in recent years, giving greater emphasis to the trust-building component of building a local economy. One recent example is the Totnes Pound, created in Devon, England, as a part of the first Transition Town, a movement that is now gaining ground throughout the world.

Bates talked of many things: the process of personal change, the first step in social change; the principles of permaculture, which draws on concepts like biomimicry and stacking functions; and Peace Through Permaculture, a program that has brought together Israelis and Palestinians in innovative initiatives like the Marda Permaculture Project, despite pressure from the Israeli government.

“This is where we became a permaculture army that doesn’t have boundaries,” said Bates. “We’re not fighting for a nation, we’re fighting for a planet.”

The afternoon brought some graphic demonstrations of permaculture principles by Maria Ros, an amazing woman in her own right, who left a successful career as a professional dancer and university instructor to learn and teach permaculture and build an ecovillage in Quintana Roo.

Maria and Hector Reyes gave a session on designing for catastrophe, a subject they know well, living as they do in the hurricane zone of the Yucatan. Hurricane Wilma destroyed much of the work she had done on her permaculture farm for the past four years.

She remembers her house shuddering in the howling winds, fearing for her walls and roof as she looked out a window at the thatch-roofed Maya house next door. The palm fronds lifted and fell with the winds, emerging unscathed.

The experience was a traumatic one, but she learned an important lesson: The more we observe nature, and the more we incorporate those observations into our designs, the more sustainable our designs will be.
“The Maya design their homes with thatched roofs, so they are not only strong but they let the wild energy move through instead of blocking it,” she said. “In my house, the walls were crying against the wind.”

Bates chimed in with a dramatic illustration of the concept that I will always take with me.
He drew two circles on the chalkboard – one the size of a quarter, and several feet across.

“This is the earthquake in Haiti,” he said, “and this is the earthquake in Chile.”

Then he drew a corresponding quarter-sized circle inside Chile and a large circle around Haiti, representing the number of people who had died in each quake – slightly over 100 in the case of Chile, and thousands in the case of Haiti.

“That’s the result of design,” he said emphatically.

More on this concept can be found on his blog, The Great Change, which is well worth the read.

The day passed with many more lessons, and this was just the beginning. Tomorrow, we’ll get a look at Maya Mountain Research Farm, with a tour by founder Christopher Nesbitt, who bought it from a cattle rancher in 1988 and converted it from a depleted, eroded and relatively unproductive tract to a richly diverse forest.

Here’s a quick glimpse into my first amazing day at Maya Mountain. Stay tuned for the farm tour tomorrow, what Bates refers to as “one of the best examples I’ve seen of permaculture in action.”

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Outside in the darkness, up in the hills not far from here, a chorus of coyotes is greeting the coming of the dawn. How appropriate, I think with a smile. Here in Huehuecoyotl, place of the old, old coyote, I’ve just bid farewell to the greatest coyote of all, Subcoyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil, who is letting me use his home as a base for a few days. Now it’s his time to head into Mexico City, where he is taking the lessons of the Rainbow Caravan for Peace into the barrios of that other place of coyotes, Coyoacán.

I’ve come to Huehuecoyotl to meet his family and some of the people who form this core group of world-changers. I’ve come to break bread, share stories, and glean advice for the journey ahead. Alberto has been in a whirlwind of activity since I arrived – he’s playing a lead role in a film about Fellini’s spiritual journey through Mexico, and the ghost-spirit of the great Italian filmmaker was just here to supervise from another dimension the shooting of some scenes; longtime friend Jose Arguelles, author and visionary, just spent some time here. During my two days here he’s just finished another book and sent it out to the reviewers, underwent a root canal and many hours of community meetings and obligations, and bid farewell to his daughter who is on her way back to Spain; now he’s preparing for a thousand-drum salute and fundraiser for the people of Haiti and a visit from Bolivian President Evo Morales, but still he took time to show me around, orient me to the solar shower and the composting toilet, share photos and reminisce about the incredible 13-year nomadic ecovillage whose trail I now follow, from Mexico to Patagonia.

***

An old legend tells of a time when the Earth is in crisis, and life itself is in danger. In these times, the legend goes, a new type of warrior will arise: a tribe of all races, creeds and nationalities who will be known by the universal symbol of the rainbow, and driven by love, their mission will be to save the planet from extinction.

So writes Alberto in his book, “Los Guerreros del Arcoiris.” (Rainbow Nation Without Borders-Bear & Company publishers)-Alberto has dedicated his life to nurturing this tribe, leading the Rainbow Caravan of Peace on an epic journey through Mexico, Central and South America. This nomadic ecovillage traveled from country to country, led by Alberto’s old schoolbus, La Mazorca, colorfully painted to resemble the iconic ear of corn. The ever-changing tribe sought to connect groups active in resistance to the destructive corporate model. They set up camp in jungles and mountains, in indigenous villages and urban ghettos, sharing music, theater and seeds of practical eco-wisdom: green building techniques, simple alternative technologies, natural healing techniques and more. At the same time, they gathered up bits of local lore and wisdom and connected the disparate groups into a hemispheric network. In August of 2009, the tribe finally disbanded, each dispersing to different parts of the continent to continue the consuming work of social change.

Alberto returned to Huehuecoyotl, the picturesque ecovillage established in 1982 in the mountains near Tepoztlan by Alberto and his community of rainbow warriors. He is letting me use his home as a base for a few days as I organize myself for the next phase of my journey. The beautiful adobe-brick home is filled with light from the arching windows that look out upon the grassy valley below; out the front door, past a tall green row of fragrant hoja santa plants, limestone cliffs tower protectively beyond the beautiful home of his son Odin, a musician and one of Mexico’s leading permaculture practitioners.

I will see Alberto once again before I go, when he hosts Bolivian President Evo Morales for a brief visit to the city on Sunday. Meanwhile, here is a short interview I did with him recently, at his office in the Casa de Cultura Reyes Heroles in Coyoacán. His warning comes as a coyote howl in the fading moonlight.

“Like the Mayan Zapatistas said, we have had a long time to dream. Now is the time to wake up. Because any dream we don’t manifest becomes a nightmare, made by somebody else.”

This week I finally got a chance to go and see it for myself, and to meet some of its inhabitants. It was as beautiful as I’d imagined; constructed in the early 1980s by artists, green architects and permaculturists, the community is infused with a colorful yet gentle aesthetic that pleases the spirit as well as the eye.

Many of the residents, like “Subcoyote” Alberto Ruz Buenfil, divide their time between Huehue (as it’s known for short, pronounced ‘Wayway,”) and various other spots around the globe, where they teach, play music, act in films or otherwise engage in another aspect of their lives, generally related to promoting social change in one way or another.

The community was formed in 1982 when its founders, most of them belonging to a troupe of itinerant actors called the Illuminated Elephants, decided to put down some roots. Ecology ranked high in the group’s values, so the community became Mexico’s first Ecovillage, a concept based on ecological design principles. “It’s a very low-impact community, utilizing every type of alternative technology we can,” said Giovanni Ciarlo, one of the residents I spoke with during my stay. “Our biggest capital is our tight social network, and also the fact that it’s integrated into nature and has an artisitic sensibility.”

Giovanni and his partner Kathleen are musicians and teachers, migrating back and forth between here and Waterford, Conn. Giovanni and Kathy are the founders of Sirius Coyote Music, an innovative Latin America-inspired musical group that incorporates environmental education and community building into their work. They perform on more than 30 different instruments from a variety of cultures, some of which they’ve crafted themselves. As if that’s not enough, Giovanni also serves as board president for the Global Ecovillage Network.

That tight social network includes Liora Adler and Andrew Langford, who just returned home after several months of teaching in the U.S. Virgin Islands and traveling in Andrew’s native England and Liora’s native U.S. to visit with family and meet new grandchildren. Now hard at work fully reintegrating into the work of running the revolutionary Gaia University, they took time for tea and an interview, which I’ll be publishing here shortly.

It also includes Alberto’s son Odin, a world-class musician and permaculture designer who shared with me many tracks of his globally influenced compositions, and his partner Sadie, a teacher and author, together with their winsome toddler Nayeli.

You can meet Giovanni and Kathy, Alberto and Odin, Liora and Andy and take a little virtual tour of the beautiful community of Huehuecoyotl here, on the Flickr slide show I’ve created. Click “show info” for captions.

Currently the community is accepting visitors on retreat with advance notice, and periodically organizes workshops on a variety of topics. For more information, contact Giovanni at sircoyote@aol.com, and see the Huehuecoyotl web page.

To learn more about ecovillages, see the Global Ecovillage Network homepage.

To learn more about permaculture, an ecological design system that is making waves throughout the world, see the Permaculture Institute page. To learn more about permaculture efforts throughout Latin America, see Permacultura America Latina.

To read about them, please visit Guerreros de Guadalajara, a bilingual entry in my Flickr account.

La Minerva, warrior woman of old and symbol of modern-day Guadalajara, photo courtesy of TheLittleTx, Flickr Creative Commons.

Alberto Ruz Buenfil, otherwise known as Subcoyote Alberto, would be the first to say he didn’t do it alone – there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of collaborators along the way, and I hope to meet many of them in my coming travels. But there is no doubt that in a lifetime dedicated to social change, and in the 13 years he dedicated to the Rainbow Caravan for Peace, he inspired a generation of writers, artists, gardeners and activists dedicated to a more sustainable future – including yours truly.

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Alberto grew up surrounded by the Mayan mysteries of Palenque, where his father, the internationally known archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, discovered the most important ceremonial structure in the ancient city, the subterreanean tomb of Pakal the Great. The younger Alberto went on to study everything from chemical engineering to economics, political science and finally theater, first at the Autonomous University of Mexico and then in Cuba.

The Vietnam War shifted his life into a different focus when he joined the anti-war movement and traveled to the United States, spending time with Chicano leaders and the Black Panthers, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopians and all manner of social change currents erupting at the time. He settled into the life of a nomad, traveling in Africa, India and the Far East, studying intentional communities from Sweden’s Bauhaus to Israel’s kibbutzim to the ashrams of India. It was in India that he launched his first nomadic theater tribe, the Hathi Babas, and later The Illuminated Elephants, which traveled throughout the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala performing, entertaining and spreading seeds of a different way of life, one based on peace, sustainability and mutual respect.

In 1982 he finally decided to take a break from the nomadic life and plant his roots, returning to Mexico with members of his tribe to form Huehuecoyotl. The community was built on sustainable design principles, making it the country’s first Ecovillage. It was here that he took the name Coyote, based on the name of his new community. Huehuecoyotl means “old, old coyote,” and he began a series of communiques with the name “Viejo Coyote.”

The call of the road never left him, however, and in 1996, he formed the Rainbow Peace Caravan, taking the lessons of the ecovillage with him. One of the group’s first stops was in Chiapas, where they participated in a council with the Zapatistas.

“I had always identified with the Mayans,” Alberto explained. From his conversations with Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos, his new moniker evolved: Subcoyote Alberto Ruz. “I was leaving the community and it was time for someone else to take charge,” he pointed out. “So I became Sub-Coyote.”

The title is a fitting one for a person whose lifelong commitment is expressed with a touch of whimsey; the seriousness of the lessons taught by the nomadic tribe was always leavened and livened with theater and the arts, storytelling and dance, and a sense of good fun.

(Galeria Tarso Sarraf/Flickr)

Hundreds of people from all walks of life joined the caravan at different points along the way, particularly at the international gathering in Cuzco, Peru, “The Call of the Condor” in 2003. That was when I became aware of this traveling phenomenon, because my sister Tami joined them for awhile. Her story of the experience left an indelible impression that was to tug at me for seven years until I finally succumbed. Now, in a strange way, I’m following the Coyote’s trail, and my sister will join me along the way.

The caravan continued all the way to Tierra del Fuego, and at this point the Subcoyote had planned to end it – “unless there was a miracle,” as he recalls it.

Indeed, there was a miracle. Brazil’s then-Minister of Culture, the famed musician Gilberto Gil, invited the caravan to come and travel through the country giving workshops on sustainable living. The caravan rolled northward and through the deepest Amazon, spending four years in some of the poorest regions of the country.

Finally, in August of 2009, Alberto has returned home to Huehuecoyotl. But not to rest on his laurels. At the age of 65, when most people might assume they’ve earned a peaceful retirement, he’s begun a new project, at the behest of Mexican bestselling author Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate): he’s joined the staff at the Casa de Cultura Jesús Reyes Heroles in Coyoacán, Mexico City’s beautiful historic neighborhood, to look for ways to share the lessons of the Rainbow Peace Caravan with the at-risk youth of the district.

I caught up with the Subcoyote just as he was beginning to settle into his new job, and we shared coffee and stories. There’s much more to share than I have room to tell in a blog entry, but watch this spot for selected cuts from the two hours of video I shot with him.

Next month, we’ll pick up the conversation where we left off when I visit him at his weekend home in Huehuecoyotl and meet his extended family.