The last golden rays of 2011 slipped away gloriously yesterday, lingering across the chalky face of the Pinnacles, an ancient towering limestone formation in the north of Boone County, Missouri – one of the places on this planet I will always call home.
The unseasonable warmth had us removing layers as we scrambled up to catch a glimpse of the world from on high. Another climatic oddity in a year that was full of them. Change is in the air, for those with eyes to see: We are closing the book on a year that saw vast swaths of the American Southwest go up in smoke, millions of dollars of hurricane damage in Vermont, a monster tornado that erased big chunks of Joplin, massive flooding in Australia, the Phillippines and Southeast Asia and record-breaking heat waves in Europe and much of the United States.
My mother’s garden in the Missouri countryside was cooked before it could be harvested. Where I live, in Mexico, widespread crop failure due to extended drought pushed more subsistence farmers to leave the land for the traffic-choked cities or for a desperate, life-threatening dash for El Norte, the forbidden promise of employment across the northern border. But today, on this balmy December day, global warming seems a welcome respite from the bone-chilling cold that usually accompanies us at this time of year. So I won’t complain.
Much has been written about this turning of the ages; and no place on Earth is more fascinated with the Mayan prophecies than Mexico, birthplace of the Mayan calendar that ends this year. To me, it’s impossible not to link this prophecy with the profound changes we are facing as a civilization. I’m not speaking of Armageddon – rather, a time of reckoning as we end a cycle of industrial excess. The Mayan people I have spoken with are laughing at the notion that the end of the calendar means the end of the world. It’s simply the end of a cycle, and the beginning of a new one, they reassure anyone who asks. But in more serious conversations, they shared with me their hope, as fervent as my own, that a long-awaited shift is pending, and in fact has already begun.
“After five centuries of oppression, we’re ready for a change,” Rony, a Mayan permaculturist friend from Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, told me. “It’s the only hope we have.”
We entered Costa Rica about two weeks ago and have kept busy with various activities including many seed exchanges, events and visits to various projects. But all that will come in the next post …
This post is to share a little from the month we spent in Nicaragua, where we found really nice people and visited some interesting projects.
Nicaragua is a beautiful country with extensive coastline on both the Pacific and the Caribbean, many lakes and volcanoes. It’s a country that historically faced a strong dictatorship and had to fight a brutal civil war to end the dictatorship through the revolutionary Sandinista movement. Over the years the country has tried to recover, but poverty remains widespread, and Nicaragua today is the second poorest country in the continent, surpassed only by Haiti.
Even with a grave economic situation and violent history, we found Nicaragua’s population really open and friendly, with clear and strong political opinions and self-esteem. This year is an election year, and we saw many young people marching through the streets and holding political events and demonstrations. Lots of energy in the country …
We found this political rally in Nandaime, Nicaragua
During our visit, we visited three sustainability projects. Two on Ometepe Island, an island formed by two volcanoes in the middle of stunning Lake Nicaragua, the largest tropical lake in the world.
Panoramic view of the Island
On Omatepe we visited the Project Inan Itah, a spiritual development center with various permaculture practices and a volunteer program. While visiting for a few days we actively participated in community activities and became great friends in this beautiful project.
Another interesting project is the ecological hostel El Zopilote, which was designed using permaculture principles. The hostel’s natural buildings and organic food production make for a cool food-forest jungle experience, and is a center for backpackers to a have a relaxed and more conscious visit to the island.
During our visit to El Zopilote we had an exciting moment with their bees. On the farm they have a cross between Italian bees (very quiet, friendly) and African bees (aggressive, hardy). That is, the bees are warriors, but not brutal. We were talking to Danielle who takes care of the bees, real close to the boxes, taking pictures and talking… and suddenly we realized that the bees started flying at us! There were so many! And then someone says RUUUUUUUN!! And we run down the ravine, up the hill, around the bend, and away…. It was crazy to have that ringing in the ears, unable to look back and have to keep running! Ryan got bitten twice including once on his lip, and Danielle about 8 times. In the end we learned that we can not abuse the bees patience and we should better respect the space of our dear friends the bees who make such rich food for us, and yet struggle to survive in the jungle.
The bees, calm, as we began to observe…
Here the bees are started to get agitated…
We also participated in a community event in the town of Santa Cruz on Omatepe, where we played music and shared a little about Común Tierra…
The organizers offered some free organic seeds for the local people, and some resources on how to grow organically, natural medicine, etc…
On Nicaragua’s Pacific coast we visited Finca Las Nubes, a place where residents are trying to build a totally self-suffcient ranch and community, using various integrated practices, with the hopes of leaving a legacy for future generations.
For now we say goodbye as we head out to organize our seeds… we will be trading and offering seeds tomorrow in the Feria Verde (organic market) in San Jose, capital city of Costa Rica.
She was a corporate lawyer from Brussels; he was a sociologist from New York. Neither of them was happy with their chosen profession, and after a great deal of soul searching, they decided to do what many dream of but few actually do: They quit their jobs, studied permaculture, bought bicycles and headed off across Africa, pedaling and working their way through 12 countries, 12,000 kilometers and 16 months from organic farm to organic farm, sharing what they’d learned along the way.
Now they’ve landed in Mexico and are launching a Phase 2 of their journey, but with a difference. This time they’re bringing a video camera and sound equipment, and documenting the stories of people working on solutions to the many environmental problems they have learned about in their travels. Their goal is to make it to the Earth Summit in Rio in June 2012. And this time they’re going by bus, instead of bike, to give them time to do reporting, writing and producing for their blog.
I was inspired by their story and by their plan, since in some ways it parallels my own – so we got together and shared stories. Here’s a little bit of theirs.
The cheery young couple quickly turn sober when they contemplate the ravaged landscape they encountered in Africa – not because of war and famine, the typical scenarios associated with Africa, but because of severe environmental degradation. Soil erosion, deforestation, desertification, invasive species taking over and killing out what’s left of the local ecosystems. “We were biking through all those problems for 16 months,” said Annabelle. “And yes, we have seen some amazing tropical forests, but you could be sure as soon as you left that little national park you would see not a single tree.”
Climate change was a big topic of conversation wherever they went: New York, Belgium, all throughout Africa, and now in Mexico. In Mozambique, they biked along a coast through miles and miles of former rice fields ruined by the saltwater that had flooded them during a tsunami. At Mount Kilimanjaro, they compared historic photos of the ice-capped mountain with its dwindling patch of white.
“How can we deny climate change is happening? People are talking about it everywhere,” said Anna. “They talk about how the rainy season hasn’t come and how its really weird because it’s too wet but not at the right time, and how things have changed.
“But people are acting on this, and that’s the good news.”
That’s how their project evolved to focus on sustainability efforts throughout the continent.
“I find myself much happier when I’m working with people who are working on solutions, rather than those who are saying we are all going to die,” said Annabelle. “To keep saying we’re going to die is not helping, it’s not moving people to action.”
Their families were not happy about their decision to take off across Africa on their bikes. Both mothers, independently of each other, notified them that when they were kidnapped – “not if, but when” – they would not be responsible for the ransom, Dave said. “They took a picture that was a profile of the ear so they could identify us when they found the corpse,” he laughs when he recalls the moment.
And then there was the reaction to Annabelle’s decision to leave her career as a successful lawyer. “It was like: You studied for six years and you have a practice and you’re going to throw it away for what? to go biking?”
There were some actual dangers – they were mock-chargd by a gorilla in Uganda and a hippo in Botswana. “Believe me, when you have that thing of 1.5 tons running toward you in the water, where it’s strongest, and you’e in a little plastic boat…. it’s quite humbling,” Anna recalls.
But the dangers were not at all what the family and friends were worried about. “The image of Africa in the West is just not fair and it’s racist in a lot of ways,” said Dave. Of course, he added, most Westerners haven’t been there, except for a handful who go on safaris, and given the conditions reported by most of the media coverage, it’s a pretty scary place. But the Permacyclists found Africa to be filled with people who were kind, caring and generous.
In Nairobi, he recalled – which has earned the moniker “Nairobbery” – the pair kept a low profile. “We were totally intimidated. We didn’t take a chance, didn’t try to meet local people.” On the last day, nervous at the prospect that they’d have to cross the scary shantytown area, they were surprised to see all the people smiling and waving as they cycled by.
“That same day we met a great guy who ran three kilometers across an open field to tell us we were going the wrong way,” he said. “People were looking out for us, and we didn’t even realize.”
Finally, after many months and many miles, the family came around.
“They saw that we were happy,” said Annabelle.
“And that we didn’t die,” said Dave.
“Let’s face it – some of it’s luck,” said Anna. “Bad things happen – I was a criminal lawyer, so I know. You can get robbed, but you can get robbed in Brussels, too, or New York. So let’s stop being scared. Let’s throw the TV out the window, and let’s get out and meet people. That’s where it’s happening.”
The pair’s second tour of duty started with a three-week natural building class in North Carolina. From there they headed to Houston, where they ran into the folks from Transition Houston, a dynamic part of the Transition Towns movement – who put them in touch with me. Their first video project was about that group and its projects. Here it is.
So far, they say, they’ve been blessed with enthusiastic support everywhere they’ve gone.
“It’s like we’ve stumbled across this underground world of people who are doing amazing things, and now here we are in Guadalajara and we have six interviews lined up and a place to sleep,” said Dave.
To Anna, that response serves to underscore a valuable lesson that their journeys have taught them.
“You know you’re nothing alone – but together, we’re something quite powerful. It’s about the power of groups, the power of community – you’re not alone in this world. Get out and do something, talk to people. It’s really magical.”
Follow the Permacyclists on their blog and on Facebook and Twitter. And check out the trailer for their upcoming movie!
Story and videos by Tracy L. Barnett
Photos by Juan Rojas
LA FLORIDA, El Salvador – “That’s one of the purposes of the Salvadoran state, to make us forget,” Juan Rojas explains to me as we bump down the rugged dirt road that leads to his homestead, just six kilometers from San Salvador, but a world apart.
Rojas is determined to remember, and to help others remember, as well. It is here, and in rural villages elsewhere in the country, that Rojas is quietly working with indigenous peoples to recover the Mayan roots of this country. A country where the name Izalco, for most young people, just means a volcano, a town, or a street in San Salvador; but for the elders, it’s the name of a massacre, and of the native people who were extinguished on that day.
A curious mixture of Salvadoran revolutionary, Australian permaculturist and Mayan spiritualist, I met Juan Rojas on my first visit to El Salvador. He was one of the founders of the Permaculture Institute of El Salvador, a group teaching ecological design and agriculture principles to campesinos throughout the country. Rojas had stepped back from the institute in recent years to pursue other projects. His comments on that visit about restoring indigenous heritage in El Salvador made me curious, and I contacted him upon my return to learn more.
The story of his involvement in the revolution, of the attempts on his life and his escape to Mexico, his eventual move to Australia and his friendship with permaculture founder Bill Mollison, and his return to his country to help rebuild it after the war using the techniques of permaculture are worthy of an eco-adventure novel in themselves. He shares that story in this video.
Now, however, he’s turned the page to a new chapter in his life, and I’m here to learn more about that.
Through his work with the permaculture institute, which spread sustainable agriculture techniques through the farmer-to-farmer movement, he became acquainted with subsistence farmers throughout Mesoamerica, some of whom still practiced the indigenous traditions of their ancestors. It was then that Juan began to realize that the principles of permaculture aren’t so different from the traditional teachings about agriculture.
“That’s one of the first things we learn in permaculture, and Bill Mollison explained this very well: to watch and see where does the air enter your land in different seasons of the year? How does the water enter, and how does it leave? The same for the sun, and for the earth: they are objects of study, of analysis, when you are going to design a piece of land,” he said. “But when we’re living in a zone like Mesoamerica, among the ancestral cultures there’s already been an elaborate thought system developed about these principles, the wind, the water, the earth, the sun.
“Unfortunately, we in El Salvador have lost our cosmology, our understanding of life, and that’s why we’re in such a difficult position, environmentally speaking, in terms of food sovereignty issues, criminal violence, all the things that are making El Salvador famous around the world,” he told me.
Juan shared his thoughts with me about the Mayan cosmovision and climate change, which I recorded in this video:
This has been an exciting year for him, as the slow process of recovering the historical and ancestral memory has begun to yield fruit. Working in indigenous communities in his native Sonsonate and in Morazan, he has been teaching permaculture principles and incorporating the Mayan cosmovision.
Along the way, as they study the Popol Vuh, the Mayan holy book, or discuss certain traditions in planting, the students will stop and get a sudden look of recognition on their faces, Juan said. “Oh! So that’s why my grandfather did that!” they will say. Or, “Oh, yes – I remember hearing about the virgin who gave birth to the twins who were the first humans – that’s like the Virgin Mary!”
At the same time, indigenous visibility has been rising in El Salvador, once thought to be a country devoid of indigenous people since the massacre of 1932 in Izalco that claimed the lives of an estimated 32,000.
In August, a gathering of indigenous peoples in Izalco made a public demand for official recognition and asked that the government be a signatory to Article 169 of the International Labor Organization, an international law guaranteeing the rights of indigenous peoples.
And in October, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes made a public apology to the country’s indigenous people for the government’s historic role in their repression, and responding to their request to recognize El Salvador as a “multiethnic and multicultural society.”
After my visit with Juan, he sent me the famous words of Chief Seattle, which he asked me to include in closing this article:
“One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover – our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for red man and the white. The Earth is precious to Him, and to harm the Earth is to heap contempt on its creator. The whites too shall pass, perhaps sooner than the other tribes.
But in your perishing, you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are slaughtered, the wild horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the Eagle? Gone. The end of living and the beginning of survival.”
For more information on the Salvadoran indigenous communities and efforts to recover ancestral memory and heritage, write to Juan Rojas at mesopermacultura@yahoo.es.
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador – A gentle breeze ruffles the thatched roof of the hilltop shelter here at the Permaculture Institute. An electric-blue morpho butterfly flits past, a sharp accent against the muted blue of Volcano Guazapa in the background. An incongruously peaceful backdrop for the violence, massacres, scorched earth and forced evacuation that razed this region less than two decades ago.
That mountain, the hideout for guerilla forces for miles around, was bombed daily and burned repeatedly; the town of Suchitoto itself became a battlefield. Hundred of tons of artillery, white phosphorus and napalm rained down on the once lush jungles of these lands, drying up even the springs where people once retrieved their water.
But the Earth has a way of healing herself, and her inhabitants, and this land and the people who work it are living proof of that reality.
The Permaculture Institute of El Salvador or IPES (pronounced EE-Pace), for its Spanish acronym, has staked its claim on a stony, hilly hectare in this region. In part because of the strong community organizations that formed before the war, Suchitoto has proven fertile ground for a new approach to community development pioneered by peasant farmers, ex-combatants and a British permaculturist with a stubborn streak.
Karen Inwood was a community development specialist looking for a different approach when she met Juan Rojas, a former Salvadoran dissident forced to flee his country at the height of the civil war. Rojas, by a twist of fate, had ended up in Australia, where he met Bill Mollison, founder of an innovative new system of ecological design known as permaculture.
Rojas was excited by the idea of the system as an approach to rebuilding his country after the war, and returned in 1993 after the peace accords were signed to see what he could do. Realizing that permacultural principles have much in common with ancestral agricultural practices, he began in the heavily impacted department of Morazan, which is also where the largest concentration of indigenous Salvadorans still live. He began working with local farmers to learn their traditional practices. Utilizing the farmer-to-farmer method, he began working to disseminate these ideas along with permaculture principles, and later began working with leaders in the departments of La Libertad and his native Sonsonate.
The first Mesoamerican permaculture design course was held in Perquín, Morazan, in 1998 with the participation of campesinos from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Guatemala. These first Mesoamerican permaculturists went on to form the base for what later became IPES in El Salvador and IMAP in Guatemala, among others.
In 2000 he made a trip to England to attend an Ecovillage Training Course at the Findhorn Foundation and Karen, whom he met there, was intrigued with his project.
She headed to El Salvador to help him build the Permaculture Institute, and arrived to find a country in desperate need for the lessons in self-sufficiency and sustainability that Juan and others were working to spread.
“I’d always thought of ecovillages as an alternative lifestyle for those with the resources to buy land and move out to the country and do their thing,” she says. “My interest was to use permaculture for social change rather than as a lifestyle choice, and I came to El Salvador to do just that.”
Permaculture, as Inwood explains it, can be applied in everything from agriculture to architecture to community design. Its main application here, at the moment, is in teaching sustainable agriculture and living practices to the subsistence farmers that struggle at the edge of survival throughout the Salvadoran countryside. In practice, it can mean the difference between malnutrition and misery, and a life of good health, dignity and autonomy. And in an era of climate change, when this tiny and densely populated Central American nation has been named among the world’s most vulnerable, food security is on everyone’s lips, and permaculture seems to be taking on a new and bigger life.
After a decade working in the obscurity of this rugged countryside, with a bare minimum of financial support, mostly from individual donors and foundations in England, Inwood is beginning to see the group’s efforts bear fruit. More than 1,000 families have adopted permaculture practices on their land and are growing organic produce for self-consumption and for sale. A team of promotores, or farmers turned permaculture teachers, is using the farmer-to-farmer method, working through the regional ecological networks, spreading permaculture principles throughout the villages.
And this rugged, typically hilly and not particularly fertile parcel has been converted into an educational center and demonstration site for the dissemination of a new approach to rural life here in El Salvador, an approach that promises to lift its practitioners out of poverty and into self-sufficiency, in harmony with each other and with nature.
It’s a rustic and simple site, with structures built mostly from natural materials found on the land, and with a vast diversity of crops worked by a simple yet passionate team of campesinos.
Other projects in the remote department of Morazán, one of the poorest regions of the country and one of the hardest hit by the war, have taken off and are blossoming; municipal governments are lending their support, and several hundred families are now practicing permaculture, with a team of promoters there beginning to branch out even further into the countryside.
Now, after years of trying to meet with and work with other community development organizations in the region and being repeatedly ignored, regional leaders are beginning to seek out the advice and input of IPES.
And most recently, representatives of the new leftist government of Mauricio Funes have expressed interest in applying permaculture principles to a national food security program aimed at strengthening the role of the family farm.
Inwood isn’t sure what has caused the sudden surge of interest, but speculates it has to do with the recent crises brought on by climate change: crops are failing due to intense flooding, followed by drought. A huge part of Central America’s bean crop has failed, and the price of what remains has gone sky-high; the price of the family basket has risen 300 percent in September and October.
Ironically, just at the moment when IPES has begun to break the ice with government agencies, and just as the group’s services are being widely sought, its funding sources have declined precipitously. The drop in the price of the pound has taken a toll, just as the financial crisis has left funders with less to share.
At the same time, the Funes government inherited the traditional patronage system of agricultural assistance, in which $33 million in agricultural “packages” consisting of hybrid seeds and agrochemicals are distributed throughout the country.
In the first year of its administration, before the young government had a chance to organize an alternative, the agricultural packages went out in the traditional way and there was an outcry among those who weren’t on the receiving end. The government realized the old system wasn’t working, and is now looking for new alternatives, Karen said. Permaculture is one of those alternatives.
“We’re excited but at the same time, it’s challenging,” she confesses, her expressive blue eyes widening. Those blue eyes, together with her gentle, sweet manner and her British-accented Spanish, have worked their magic with more than one hard-hearted bureaucrat, I imagined, watching her present her ideas to a pair of authorities from the United Nations Development Fund. The pair left impressed with what they saw, and were scheduled to attend another meeting with IPES the following week.
Contrasting with Karen’s feminine, British touch are the passionate and very Salvadoran approach of Agustin “Maclobio” Duran and Alejandro Martínez, two former Salvadoran guerillas who took the design course and ended up converts to the permaculture cause. Both see permaculture as a means to achieve the same goals they strove for in the revolution: a dignified life for their families.
After the war, an army of nongovernmental organizations descended on El Salvador, each with a different proposal for solving the country’s deeply entrenched problems. Like others from IPES, Agustin is critical of their approach. None that he has seen were ultimately viable, he said, and some were even deceptive; together, they left communities with a dependency mentality and in some ways, worse off than they were before. Permaculture, on the other hand, offers a different model, one that empowers people to take control of their own lives.
“I see it as a different kind of revolution, one that achieves just what we were fighting for – a dignified life for our people, healthy food and an education,” he said.
“From what I’ve seen since the war and in fact in my whole life, permaculture is what convinces me the most; it’s a more integral proposal. Of course it requires a lot of sacrifice, but if we were able to withstand all the risks and hardships of the war, we can do this, too.”
For Alejandro, the shift to this form of agriculture is urgently necessary, not just individually but at the community level.
“If we continue with the same agricultural practices we’ve inherited, we are going to suffer a great famine,” he said. “If we can spread the ideas of permaculture, we can all live well, and have a better system to pass on to the future generations.”
Agustin nodded his agreement. “That’s the challenge we face,” he said. “If we can successfully transmit these ideas, in 20 years things will be very different here, and maybe we can shift a little the destructive direction we’re headed in. We already have the effects of climate change upon us – but from this battle trench of IPES, we can minimize the impact, the consequences that we have already been suffering.
“We as campesinos, people who don’t have economic power, want to show the world that relying on solutions and alternatives so simple as learning from what surrounds us in nature, we can have multiple solutions to great problems, and we can solve them. It’s just a question of education and consciousness.”
For more information about the Permaculture Institute of El Salvador, to pay a visit or to sign on as a volunteer, see their website and/or their Facebook page.
My other Pato contact was Laura Montoya, an elusive sprite of a woman who only sporadically answered e-mail and telephone. Laura had temporarily inherited the leadership of eReciclaje, an urban permaculture group established by her partner, Felipe Rrague, upon his departure to study in the States.
I finally caught up with her at a presentation at a local university, and she was worth the wait.
Laura Montoya of the peacock-feather earring, the disarming smile and the passionate rapid-fire defense of the Pachamama, is a one-woman Earth revolution in action. Over coffee, she sized me up and apparently decided I was worth her time, and she invited me to her home and the new headquarters of eReciclaje in the marginal barrio of Belen, up in the hills on the outskirts of the city.
The trip itself was almost as memorable as the actual visit. Starting from the classic Hotel Nutibara, whose elegant neoclassic lines are meant for others with far greater budgets than mine, I climbed into a bus destined for the outskirts. After nearly half an hour of traffic through the modern world of esthetic salons and shopping malls and residential neighborhoods we began to climb up and up into another world, one in which houses begin with brick and end with sheet metal and black plastic, where women still carry water in jugs and corn in tubs on their heads, where the smoke from cooking fires curls hangs in the air, where you or your neighbor may or may not have electricity or running water.
It was here that eReciclaje located its second project, the first one, an urban permaculture center in the rougher Barrio Triste neighborhood, having been undone by a devastating robbery.
Here, according to Laura, Felipe started over again, building terraces and irrigation ditches and working the land. Here is the regional headquarters for A Limpiar el Mundo or Clean Up The World, an international group working to organize mass cleanup projects, and here the plastic detritus of the neighborhood becomes eco-bricks of the sort David had demonstrated to me earlier.
But first, I had to find it. The neighborhood was a network of streets without names, and a misunderstanding led me to get off the bus in the wrong place. Finally, there she was, smiling, brilliant in her green hindu pants, big white sunglasses and peacock feather. We embraced, long-lost friends who had only met, and she led me up the hill to her “finca” next to the brick factory, where trucks rumbled up and down all day long, carrying away red bits of mountain in their cavernous beds.
Ironic, and someone poetic, that their little eco-brick workshop is right next to a brick factory of quite a different sort.
I thought of what David told me the other night in Sajonia as he tended his little fire. The Center for Ecological Arts is similarly situated in a truck-traffic zone near the cantera (quarry) and trucks rumble past all day long. Here, too, one can look out from this little mountain paradise and see the mountain across the valley being slowly eaten away.
“Some might see this as a negative thing, and sure, it’s sad to see the way they are altering the mountain – I wish they wouldn’t do it,” David had said, thoughtfully. “But this is exactly the mentality we are working to change – so it’s better that we are here, rather than isolating ourselves from it.”
Laura, it turned out, is not so different from me at 25, in love with an activist completely dedicated to his work, taking on the mantel of his cause as her own. Only hers had left the whole operation in her young hands. Suddenly I understood her reluctance to meet with me. She had been simply overwhelmed.
Still, her words flowed crisp and clear like the mountain stream outside the window. She spoke of dreams and visions, of tarot and shamans and sacred medicine, of greening and cleaning the world.
“Everything has a message, if we listen,” she told me.
SAJONIA, RIO NEGRO, Colombia – My main contact in Medellín, passed along by friends from the Rainbow Caravan in Mexico, is a mysterious leader in the environmental movement, café owner, attorney and permaculturist known to me only as Pato. Sadly for me, Pato was in Peru for the duration of my stay, but he put me in touch with a couple of his young compañeros, and I duly followed his leads.
The first one took me out to the countryside for a blessed respite from the city at the newly founded Centro de Artes Ecologicas. I’d been asked to collaborate on a book about permaculture projects throughout the world, and I was excited to see what these creative paisas had come up with. I’m not sure what I expected – ecological houses, fragrant gardens and a busy staff, perhaps – but it’s not what I got.
There to meet me at the bus stop on the gravel road in the one-bar town of Sajonia, Rio Negro, some 40 minutes from Medellin was David Rojas, a volunteer who was holding down the fort in Pato’s absence. He shouldered my heavy pack and together we headed down the road.
“Someday we plan to build buildings, but for now we just have the carro-casa“, he was telling me.
Sure enough, the Cento de Artes Ecologicas is currently based in a broken-down RV, donated by a German who used it to travel through Latin America. It seemed I’d be camping. “I hope you’re not disappointed,” David said.
I quickly recovered from my initial disillusionment and began to listen and look at what was around me. David was a soft-spoken, tousle-headed young man who seemed to weigh the value of each word against that of quietude. I soon found a wellspring of wisdom in that quietude and in the conversations we shared in this beautiful mountain retreat.
“Most people are so busy they don’t really take the time to even listen to themselves, much less to others or to the nature that surrounds us,” he told me. “I come here to do just that.”
He took me on a tour of the site, filled with insights about the innovative permaculture practices the group is employing as they develop the property into a training center for ecological design. The hectare of land that the group has chosen is enormously diverse, with habitats ranging from wetlands to hardwoods to pine forest to pasture, and it slopes upward to a spectacular view of the hills all around.
He gave me a demonstration of the eco-bricks technique being used throughout Latin America, in which plastic bottles are packed tight with trash and used as bricks to build water storage tanks, benches, roads and even houses.
As darkness fell, we built a fire and cooked a simple dinner of pasta and onions, tomatoes and cheese, served with aguapanela, a delicious drink typical in the region made of hot water and panela, an unrefined chunk of condensed sugar cane syrup.
I awoke to the patter of rain on the metal roof and felt an enormous sense of gratitude for the shelter of the carro-casa. I spent awhile listening to the rain, the birds, David’s quiet breathing in the bunk above the cab – and to myself.
The next day we traveled together to the nearby mountain town of Ceja, where I met his friend and colleague Andrés Correa, another energetic and charismatic young leader. The two of them are working on an ecological design project for an ecoresort in Cocorna, Tierra de Agua, and they took me on a tour of a new agroforestry project established by the YMCA where they conduct workshops with local youth.
Here we are in front of the center, as darkness is falling, on a bench made from eco-bricks by Andrés and his crew of youngsters.
Over coffee, Andres quizzed me about my travels. He was intrigued by the concept of my journey, and wanted to know what I had seen. More than anything, he wanted to know if I had found what I was looking for: Hope.
He and David are recent converts to the permaculture cause, and he sees a growing back-to-the-land movement in his country evolving because of the change that’s in the air – changes preached by politicians who do little but ultimately manifested by nature itself, by the pending scarcity of petroleum and other substances that our economy depends on, and by the prophecies in the Mayan calendar, which ends in 2012.
“Basically, we’re getting ready,” he said. “I’d like to be hopeful, but mainly, I think we need to be prepared.”
In many of my conversations here in the South, I ask people how they see the coming transition, and in front of the campfire, David had left me with an image that stays with me still. I recalled it that night over coffee, and we ended our conversation on a hopeful note.
Back at the campfire, David had responded to my question with a gesture at the mountains that surround us.
“I see a future where this mountain will be dotted with little fires like this one, and everywhere you see a little fire will be a family,” he said. “They’ll be cooking together, sharing aguapanela, talking to each other, just as we are.
“Right now, everywhere you see a light is a family – a family that is most likely seated around the television or the computer, but probably not talking to each other. I think that will change.”
I think so too – and for all the fear that change may generate, in the end, it may not be a bad thing at all.
MEDELLIN, Colombia – I arrived just after dawn after a nine-hour bus ride from Cali, but a fresh breeze from the mountains awakened my excitement at being here in this legendary city at last. Known as the City of Eternal Spring, its descent into war and drug-related violence earned it the sadly twisted moniker “City of Eternal Violence.”
Much has been written of Medellin’s unfortunate role as the headquarters of Pablo Escobar, the most ruthless of Colombia’s drug kingpins, and the references continue long after elite forces stormed his palatial home and shot him dead in 1993. Like Cali, a bloodbath of homicides and car-bombings held this city in its thrall for years.
Walking its peaceful, shady streets today, the nightmare of the ‘90s is just a faded memory, but its legacy lingers on – in the 4.5 million displaced by wars and narcotrafficking that live in shantytowns on the outskirts of cities like Medellin. The core of this city is a paragon of planning, with a Metro system that’s the envy of Latin America, an eye-catching collection of public art (most notably, a collection that native son Fernando Botero famously donated to the city) and an inclusive approach to development that seeks to break down the barriers between rich and poor with ample public spaces.
The wealth accumulated here is evident in the gleaming skyscrapers standing proud against the blue mountains that encircle the Valle de Aburrá, most of which have developed in the past decade.
Still, as my first day in this city made vividly clear, those barriers are far from breaking, with thousands in the colonias outside the city living without jobs, public services, education and hope.
Residents of Medellín and the mountainous department of Antioquía, who call themselves “paisas,” are known for their determination, their creativity and their forward-looking approach to life, described by the term “hecho p’adelante,” roughly translated as throwing themselves forward.
Those characteristics aren’t limited to the well-off, as I was soon to see. I found my hotel in the city center, took a shower and sat down with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, and was intrigued by the lead photo in El Colombiano: a group of youths dressed as Gandhi were making their way around the city, passing out little cards written with messages of peace.
On my way to the supermarket, I ran into one of them, a young man whose face still bore the wrinkled makeup from his morning’s event, and who invited me to the group’s next action in the Parque de las Luces (Park of Lights).
“We’re protesting the militarization of our country,” said one of the youths, referring to the obligatory military service for those without economic means, and the millions (mostly from the U.S. treasury) currently being spent on military bases and what former President Uribe called “democratic security,” placing military forces throughout the countryside. Those forces have been credited with quelling the violence, but have also been charged with countless human rights violations. The main concern expressed by the young men was the lack of economic alternatives that compel young people to choose a path of violence: either join the military, or take up a life of crime.
As we chatted, the noise of drums in the distance was growing louder, and soon we saw why. A demonstration was headed our way, and this was like no demonstration I’ve ever seen. Had it not been for the multicolored signs of protest, I’d have thought I was in the middle of a moving carnival. Children on stilts, their faces brilliantly painted, towered above clowns in rainbow-colored wigs and colorful tophats.
A storm was rolling in so I only got to read a few signs before the clouds opened upon us, dispersing the crowds. The main purpose of this group, from what I was able to discern, was to raise awareness about the desperate conditions among the city’s poor, the increase in cost of services like water and electricity, and an assortment of other issues.
I was struck by the colorfulness and the lively, almost joyful atmosphere of their protest, and I mentioned it to one of the Gandhis, a young man who makes his living by juggling, walking on stilts and occasionally performing in public theater events –like the one he was participating in, which, it turns out, was sponsored by the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation.
“We learned awhile back that people pay more attention to us if we approach them in a fun way, instead of being all angry,” he explained. “So we’ve had to be more creative.”
CERRO ROKE, Paraguay – The red school bus rattled its way down the red dirt road, cutting a path through the grey mist. The driver assured me we had not gone too far; my destination was the last stop on the line. Finally he lurched to a halt.
The bamboo gate was the only clue that I’d arrived at Takuara Renda, Paraguay’s permaculture center. Guillermo Gayo, the bio-architect at the heart of it all, was there to greet me, a welcoming South American double-kiss at the ready.
I learned about Takuara Renda at the Social Forum of the Americas in Asuncion, where Guillermo had transformed a corner of the intensely busy forum into a peaceful retreat with one of his bamboo houses.
It was there that I learned of his unique take on permaculture, built on a foundation of bamboo and his lifelong work as an architect devoted to the field of bioconstruction, a form of construction that emphasizes natural materials and sustainable technologies.
Takuara Rendá, his permaculture reference center, takes its name from the Paraguay’s native language, Guaraní, and means “home of the bamboo.” As an architect and a designer seeking to dignify peoples’ lives while lightening environmental impact, he had gravitated toward bamboo as a rapidly renewable and highly versatile construction material.
He invited me to come out to his permaculture center, about two hours outside of the city of Paraguarí, to see it for myself, and so I did.
What I found there in the lush green woods was something between a zen retreat, a woodsy inventor’s workshop and a hands-on learning center. Here a crew of Paraguayan, Argentine and Brazilian students were busy assembling bamboo creations, from doors to chairs to light fixtures.
What wasn’t as visible was the infinitely slower work of creating an agroforestry reserve from a depleted wasteland.
The restoration, the agroforestry, the garden and the bamboo workshop all work together to create an integrated way of life for Guillermo, who has earned his living teaching bioconstruction with bamboo all over the continent. Guillermo was teaching tools for planetary survival long before he discovered David Holmgren’s guide to permaculture, translated to Spanish, at the home of a Brazilian friend. But reading the book brought many aspects of his thought and practice into a sharper focus, and that focus eventually led him to get his training in permaculture design and to establish Takuara Rendá.
“If you had seen this place 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have believed it,” he was telling the guests from Asuncion who had arrived for a tour of the place. Overworked, overgrazed and burned over and over again, as was the agricultural practice in these parts, the land had reached a point where natural regeneration would be next to impossible. “It was like scar tissue,” he said. “We had to rebuild the soil, and that takes time.”
Looking around now at the lush and incredibly diverse growth – coconut palm and acacia, guayaba and papaya mixed with cactus and pineapple, interspersed with patches of moss and fern – it was hard to imagine.
The land here seems as if it could grow anything. But that was the result of years of clearing away thorny brush, building soil with compost, and nurturing the baby palms and guayabas and papayas with water and nutrients.
“We humans have a great capacity for destruction, but we also have a great capacity for recuperation,” he said.
Later Guillermo took me to harsher, more stubborn places on the land where he is gently coaxing native grasses from the earth, and another place where he is nurturing baby macadamia nut and mango trees amid vegetable plants. The idea is to plant for tomorrow while planting for ten years from now, he explained. The vegetables will feed them until the trees grow large enough to provide fruit and nuts.
But Guillermo the grower switches quickly into Guillermo the inventor as he explains to his students the law of aerodynamics and how it applies to a windmill they are building to pump water, or as they pore over plans for a pendulum-powered woodsaw.
And Guillermo the inventor can just as easily switch into Guillermo the architect, explaining the reason for the curving lines of the roof and walls that frame this building.
“We have to break with rectagonality – the way our structures are created in the city, they are designed to increase productivity. But nature is organized outside of linearity. What we’ve tried to do is create a habitat that is compatible with biology.”
As is typically the case with permaculturists, Guillermo’s own story is at least as interesting as that of his learning center. He was born in Argentina and came of age in the 1960s and ’70s. Like many of his generation, his involvement in social movements drew the attention of the repressive government and he was forced to run for his life or avoid meeting the fate of friends who had been tortured and killed.
He chose to head north into Paraguay. He lived for years in Asuncion, where he shifted to a more spiritual form of resistance – one in which he could continue to work for a more sustainable world, but without risking his life under a different dictatorship. He was teaching the Mayan calendar at a center for alternative thought when he and his friends began to reflect on the indigenous history of these lands, where the Guaraní still lived in harmony with the earth – marginalized and in extremely remote pockets of forest, but surviving in the way of their ancestors.
“The Guaraní didn’t leave huge monuments, but what they left behind was something better… an integrated environment.
“We’ve destroyed a total habitat, and it’s going to be very costly to fix it. But they left nothing out of place.”
After much discussion, Guillermo recalls, “We came to the conclusion we had to ask pardon – of the Earth, of the ancestors, of the indigenous people. To ask pardon you have to offer something – not just to say I’m sorry and that’s it.”
Guillermo’s offering was his practice as a teacher of bioconstruction, working with low-income and indigenous people to help them create comfortable, dignified living spaces; he worked with the Guaraní of Paraguay and with the Maya Kiché of Guatemala to create water reservoirs that would free the women and children from hours of backbreaking water-carrying from faraway water sources.
In 1999 he bought the Takuara Rendá, a demonstration center of sustainable living, where graceful bamboo structures scented of sweetgrass are scattered among the trees.
“We try to make the interior living space as small as possible, and it extends outward into the outdoors,” he explained. “We believe that with less you can live much better.”
My short time at Takuara Rendá seemed to confirm the truth of this statement. I slept in one of these bamboo houses on a bamboo-frame bed padded with a grass eco-mattress; washed dishes in a bamboo-sheltered outdoor sink, with water carefully portioned through a series of recycled plastic bottles in an ingenious conservation system; sat in a bamboo chair at a bamboo table, and drank mate from a bamboo matero with a bamboo straw. I used the clever spiral-shaped bamboo composting toilet, with no ill effects. Manoel, the Brazilian student, helped me fashion my own drinking cup from a section of bamboo.
I breathed in the fresh air; my eyes soaked in the green freshness; and I felt better than I’d felt in weeks.
I reflected on a question Guillermo had asked: “What is health – is it just physical, or is it spiritual? And by spiritual, I’m not talking about a religious system that keeps putting patches on a structure where everything is going wrong.”
My time with Guillermo, with his assistant Milciades and with the Argentine and Brazilian students was all too short. I wandered among the misty woods and strange rock formations, listening to the back-and-forth birdcalls. I ate delicious organic food prepared by the young men on a simple wood stove under a hand-painted sign with the words of Hippocrates that modern medicine seems to have forgotten: “Make your food your medicine, and your medicine your food.”
Back in the city now, I look out at a landscape of squares and straight lines, and I sigh. One day, I’d like to have my own Takuara Rendá. Until then, I have my bamboo drinking cup.
Takuara Rendá accepts volunteers for a minimum period of two weeks and a maximum of three months. During that time, you can learn by doing: principles and practice of bioconstruction, agroforestry, alternative technology and permaculture. For more information, click here.
Here’s a little photo tour of my misty September stay at Takuara Rendá.
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.”
The unseasonable warmth had us removing layers as we scrambled up to catch a glimpse of the world from on high. Another climatic oddity in a year that was full of them. Change is in the air, for those with eyes to see: We are closing the book on a year that saw vast swaths of the American Southwest go up in smoke, millions of dollars of hurricane damage in Vermont, a monster tornado that erased big chunks of Joplin, massive flooding in Australia, the Phillippines and Southeast Asia and record-breaking heat waves in Europe and much of the United States. 
