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.
