MILPA: From Seed to Salsa/Ancient Ingredients for a Sustainable Future

Chef Susana Trilling

MILPA: From Seed to Salsa.  Our sub-title pretty much says it all:  Ancient Ingredients for a Sustainable Future.

We've been hard at work trying to complete the final edits in two languages for the book we've been working on for so long now ~ tweaking the actual book design and layout, getting the proper images edited for each essay and recipe, making sure the flow is right, and that it all looks as great as we feel it should. Self-publishing is a really daunting experience, especially if you:   1. care about your subject  2. feel a responsibility to the people you are working with, and 3. want the images you see on the computer screen to match what the reader will see in the final book! Never having done book packaging before, it was a huge learning curve for us, but I  think it's finally finished. We are very proud of it. And so, off to the printer!!!

We have received such kind financial contributions along the way, both in the US and in Oaxaca, and are so very grateful to everyone...we are mostly volunteers doing this in our 'spare time' of which there seems to be very little these days. Thank you so much for your patience!

Here you have a glimpse of Susana proofing the book  a couple of weeks ago.....in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We attended the International Folk Art Fair to support the Oaxacan artisans who were selling their pottery and textiles.....

 We are hoping to have the final copies to sell to the public by the middle to end of September.....the book will be nearly 300 pages long, many stimulating essays, tasty recipes, and some nice images to top it off. Regular retail is $40 US, but pre-orders are 10% off!  In Oaxaca in September you will be able to purchase the book at Amate Bookstore, at Seasons of my Heart Cooking School with Susana Trilling, and here in the U.S. from both Judith Cooper Haden in Santa Fe/Seattle/Portland, and Phil Dahl-Bredine in Oaxaca and Silver City, New Mexico. Jesus Leon Santos will have books for the CEDICAM vounteers and members.

Jesus Leon Santos

Judith Cooper Haden

Phil Dahl-Bredine

For questions please contact Judith Haden, haden.judith(at)gmail.com

Energy Reforms and Effects on Indigenous Lands in Mexico

         September 15 was independence day for our adopted country. In the tiny plaza above our house the music and fireworks continued until midnight that night as our poor dog, Ita, cowered under the kitchen table. The independence Mexico achieved in 1810, though, did not benefit the indigenous people so much as those of the class of Spanish and mixed descent. These last, following a European mindset, ushered in a “liberal” attack on indigenous lands, culture, and languages in the name of progress and nation-building. 

          “Independence” has become a chimera for us all in our days as the “new liberalism” (neoliberalism) has  chained us to binding free trade and austerity policies that have set us on the freeway to planetary and societal catastrophe with no exit signs in sight. Modern globalization has meant commitment to an impossible growth in consumption and contamination, while austerity policies enforce our domination by the super wealthy. 

And here in the indigenous communities of Oaxaca, the assault by these forces has become critical. As Naomi  Klein points out in her newly published book, This Changes Everything, “ many of the biggest pools of untapped carbon are on lands controlled by some of the poorest people on the planet,” i.e. indigenous peoples. And so the newly “liberal” Mexican government has found a way to open those lands to the international petroleum cabal.  Under pressure from its previous commitments with NAFTA, (and no doubt from Barak Obama who has convinced Mexican private and public leaders to warmly embrace fracking, the conservative Mexican president and congress have ramrodded through “Energy Reforms” written in the U.S. under the Alliance for Prosperity and Security. The reforms proclaim that the priority use of any Mexican lands is the extraction of petroleum and natural gas. Applicable to previously protected indigenous communal and ejido farmlands, these unconstitutional  laws give national and international petroleum and gas conglomerates the right to require indigenous communities to negotiate terms for the use of any land where petroleum or gas are likely to be found.  If the communities decide not to accept the terms of negotiation, the “reforms” give the federal government the right to expropriate those lands in the name of the private industries.

              The fight has begun, and it is the same fight as the tar sands in Canada and the XL pipeline and anti-fracking fight in the U.S. And as Naomi  Klein points out, this gives us the opportunity to unite the struggle for a sustainable planet with the fight for a democracy that is more inclusive of the poor and open to alternative indigenous  visions for our future world.

              Our years in this small indigenous village have taught us a great deal. We have begun to feel at home in a different culture, a different civilization. And we have come to enjoy and value a different sense of what life is about.  Life here is a “convivio”, a living together while striving for harmony with the life-forms that surround us. We are learning how to live in community in a new way, and we hope to share what we learn and defend the culture that we are learning, in the small ways that are possible for us. But because of this, defending this civilization from  the violent attacks of an international financial and business community bent on extracting wealth at whatever cost, has become personal for us.

            It may well turn out to be that it is the vision of civilization of this small, indigenous community and the indigenous communities around the world, striking in their similarities,that will save the human family from the deviate civilization of greed and growth.

             Our new book, Milpa! From Seed to Salsa: Ancient Ingredients for a Sustainable Future from the Center for Integral Campesino Development of the Mixteca (CEDICAM) with whom we work tries to tell a bit of this civilizational story from within. It represents one of the very little things we can do to defend what we have come to love.

  If you would like to reserve a copy for when it comes out in December or January, send us a note and a check for $30.00 to cover the book and shipping (Instituto Paz, 2645 Mountain View Rd., Silver City, NM, 88061). Many thanks to those of you who donated toward the printing of the book! Of course we’ll send your free copy as soon as it comes out. 

© Phil and Kathy Dahl-Bredine 2014

Photography © Judith Cooper Haden 

HERE’S AN UPDATE ON OUR PROJECTS in the MIXTECA

July-August 2014

We often talk about what living here in the ancient indigenous village of Yucuyoco has taught us about the “good life”.  Recently we have discovered that the pre-hispanic codices tell the fascinating story of Yucuyoco back to the 2^nd century A.D.  The ancient symbol for Yucuyoco clearly indicates the “Hill of the Wasp”. But another ancient symbol for Yucuyoco found in the codices is puzzling. It seems to indicate the “hill or plain that opens”. To date we have found no one who has an explanation for this symbol.

But though Yucuyoco was a prominent village some 1800 years ago, today like many indigenous villages, it struggles economically for a number of historical and current reasons. So the projects that many of you have helped to fund are a welcome addition to village life. Now instead of hauling drinking water from the springs by burro, spring water arrives at each home twice a week through our new water system. The cisterns, pump, and transformers were paid for by your donations! This year we had to replace a transformer and import a new one from the U.S. to keep the system running. This, too, was due to your generosity. We will continue a small nursery project to increase cash income to participating families again this year. Next week we will be ordering the cuttings of Nochebuenas  (poinsettias) to begin preparing for sale during the Christmas season.

Our young neighbor, Daniel, one of the youth Phil has trained, has persevered with the carpentry work and has become quite good at windows, doors, tables, and beehives, and supplies the people in surrounding villages. Since he has no mode of transportation except a burro, Phil buys supplies and transports lumber from the nearest large town to help Daniel with the work. Tomorrow he will finish installing a new pair of windows in Tía Nacha’s small adobe house down the hill.  Until Daniel can afford another form of transportation, your donations help him get his supplies.

As you have gathered from previous letters, in spite of the poverty of the villages of the Mixteca where we live and work, they have much to teach us and share with us about ways of living in community. They also share a rich heritage of seeds and agricultural knowledge, as well as great ancient wisdom about a healthy diet. But contact with the TV culture sometime sows doubts, and CEDICAM is now publishing the beautiful book you have heard about, Milpa: From Seed to Salsa to reinforce the culture locally and share it with the English-speaking world. Thanks in part to your contributions, we are only a few thousand dollars short of printing costs for this beautiful book of gorgeous photos and recipes. The book on the future of an ancient culture, agriculture, and cuisine should come out later this fall.

Of course, the great seed heritage that the indigenous villages of Oaxaca share and serve as guardians for is threatened by new seed laws and genetically modified crops. So we also work with the Collective for the Defense of the Territories of Indigenous Pueblos of Oaxaca, who are organizing to promote and defend native corn varieties in this center of origin of corn. Your generosity has helped sponsor international events of campesinos (the Permanent People’s Tribunal), as well as fliers and visits to rural campesino communities to meet with communal authorities about these  threats to indigenous culture and biodiversity.  Recently we participated in a local radio program to spread needed information on the dangers of genetically modified seeds.

This past year CEDICAM has begun a process to establish “farmers market” type centers in the villages of Tilantongo and Nochixtlán.  A generous foundation grant helped stimulate production and set-up of market sites. We still struggle to match supply to the potential demand in the local market  in Tilantongo. Your donations have supplemented the foundation grant and will help us stimulate more vegetable production for marketing to increase village family income.

Recently the new conservative president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, has been pushing through a momentous group of reforms, many clearly contradicting the Mexican constitution of 1917. One of the most potentially devastating is a provision in a new energy law which gives the government the right to expropriate indigenous communal lands if transnational corporations find evidence of gas or petroleum deposits there.  With the help of your donations, we are bringing in legal and political experts to help inform ourselves and the Oaxacan people about the details, limitations and potential reach of this battery of new laws.

We thank you for your letters, your prayers, and your donations, which continue to help make this work possible. Our principle aim for these letters is to share our view from this little corner of the planet. But if you wish to contribute to this work, you can send a much-appreciated tax-deductible donation to: Instituto Paz en las Americas, 2645 Mountain View Rd., Silver City, NM 88061. Please write on the memo of the check: “for Dahl-Bredine projects”.

What Is To Be Done?

What a complicated and fascinating world we live in today! Here, as our neighbors struggle to rescue crops and seeds from two consecutive years of excessive rains and early frosts, the issue of seeds has become symbolic of the national and international fight to block the efforts of business and governmental elites to control the world’s commons to feed their collective greed. From Wall Street to Yucuyoco normal people who have a more realistic understanding of our place on the planet and among the community of living things are standing up against blind avarice.

Of course one of the most ingenious tools of avarice ever developed is the genetically modified seed whose genes float silently on the wind making corporate property of every plant with which they interbreed. Recently, a number of efforts to protect the rich wealth of native corn seeds from this tool of greed in this center of origin of the world´s most important grain have resulted in proposed and actual state laws declaring transgenic free zones. But indigenous groups who have analyzed the laws conclude that, in the context of Mexican federal laws and the national economic and political climate, such laws will only serve the interest of the corporate and political conglomerates and validate their  right to decide the future of the indigenous seeds that our communities consider a patrimony of humanity. Indigenous communities here, since the Zapatista uprising of 1994, have realized what angry protesters from Greece to Wall Street have also understood, that supposed democratic laws and legal and economic  structures cease to serve the common good when controlled by political and corporate money, by political and corporate greed. A democracy controlled by professional politicians beholden to unlimited corporate money is no longer a democracy.

 Leo Tolstoy once wrote a revealing and entertaining short treatise on poverty entitled “What is to be Done?”.  Today, faced with a greed that is not only undermining the common good but the sustainability of life on the planet, that is our question, too. Here CEDICAM, the Mixtec organization with which we work, is developing strategies to turn to the local democratic structures that still exist in the indigenous communal villages to protect it´s native seed heritage.  Here, where the exaggerated greed of the western political and economic reality is less dominant, we are working to develop legal processes that can exclude GMO´s from indigenous territories. These processes can find legal support in the international treaties to which Mexico is bound and which dictate indigenous rights over resources found in indigenous territories. If no where else, here in democratic indigenous communities Monsanto can be stopped!

Fortunately, there are other places in the world, primarily in Latin America, where today indigenous majorities are making democracy work for the common good.  Newly freed from control by international financial institutions that promote the agenda of avarice that has increased the wealth of the 1% by 275% in the past 30 years, countries like Bolivia, and Ecuador are once again prioritizing the common good and  national visions based on an indigenous understanding of the world.

What is to be done? Surely the creativity that the anger of the world is generating in indigenous communities and in urban streets across the globe will yield strategies. Study how Argentina has created a healthy economy by refusing to pay international loans and escaping from the straitjacket of trade and financial liberalization. Try to understand why Bolivian indigenous scholars think that the principles of the indigenous Vivir Bien, living well, provide answers to the crises of our times. Meditate on the vital importance of the indigenous  understanding that the Mother Earth is a living being, generous but demanding respect.  Question “development”, financialization of the economy, patents, and privatization of what we hold in common and of our common needs, the Market!

There are growing cracks in the edifice of avarice to take advantage of.

SACRED CORN and the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL in OAXACA

As the struggle heightened across the U.S. to require labeling of genetically modified foods, with victories in Connecticut and Main, French researchers found cancerous tumors in rats fed GM corn, while Japan and Russia shut the door on U.S. rice and wheat imports after discovering GM contamination. Here the native peoples of Mexico rallied in Oaxaca to protest GM contamination of their native corns. With your help, we of the Collective for the Defense of Indigenous Territories and 10 other organizations sponsored the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal here in Oaxaca. The People’s Tribunal is a world-wide organization begun by Bertrand Russell, which hears the protests of peoples who are the victims of governmental and corporate abuse of power.

Native corn seeds, saved from year to year.

Almost 600 campesinos from across Mexico, representing most of the indigenous peoples of the country, gathered with international figures such as Drs. Ignacio Chapela and Vandana Shiva to demand redress for contamination of their native corn varieties before a panel of international and local “judges”. The two day event in late April began with colorful processions led by a village brass band, indigenous women in traditional dress, and a Mayan priestess who led a special rite of blessing of the four directions and of an altar prepared on the ground of the myriad colors of native corn arranged in a
special pattern in the center of the gathering. Sacredness and fiesta illustrated how deep the culture of corn, of community, and of celebration is embedded in the indigenous pueblos, even in time of struggle and protest.

Declaring that “it is the sacred corn that takes care of our communities and is the one who has permitted us to live and resist during thousands of years”, speaker after speaker, all campesino women and men, denounced the efforts of governments to reduce corn to a thing, into merchandise, an object which is merely bought and sold to the highest bidder. They recounted how patented genes of GM corn have caused deformations in their native corn varieties and how these corns threatened not only to destroy the biodiversity represented by native corn, but to displace native corn from the market.

Pedro and Catalina at the CEDICAM experimental
 gardens, Nochixtlan, Oaxaca 

Scientists such as Chapela and Elena Alvarez-Buylla recounted how their research into the effects of genetically modified crops led to funding cuts, academic censorship, and threats to their academic careers. Meanwhile Indian physicist Vandana Shiva recounted how Monsanto in coordination with the origin of cotton, occasioning, in the process, the suicides of 100,00 small farmers of India. Though this court has no legal standing, the moral authority of its decisions has been part of what has delayed the Mexican government’s approval for planting of millions of acres of genetically modified corn in the northern states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, the distribution points for most commercial Mexican corn. 

Your financial assistance fed most of these 600 people during the two days of the tribunal.

Augustin, planting heritage corn in Tilantongo, Oaxaca.

PHOTOS: © Judith Cooper Haden

TEXT: © Phil and Kathy Dahl-Bredine

If you wish to contribute to this work, you can send a much-appreciated tax-deductible donation to:Instituto Paz en las Americas, 2645 Mountain View Rd. Silver City, NM 88061. Please write onthe memo of the check: “for Dahl-Bredine projects”.

MONSANTO IN LA MIXTECA ALTA, MEXICO

© Phil Dahl-Bredine

A few months ago my friend Pedro called me over to his computer to see a video. To my surprise I saw Mixtec campesino farmers thanking a regional foundation and the “Fundacion Monsanto” for gifts of vegetable seeds, dip irrigation systems and chickens. As the video extolled the work of these foundations in assisting poor indigenous farmers, it displayed signs from the Monsanto Foundation in the background and at the end of the video simply the well known “Monsanto” logo.

I have spent the last 11 years working with Pedro and an organization of Mixtec campesinos on sustainable agriculture projects, the promotion and protection of the vast native seed heritage of this center of origin of corn, and the revival and promotion of traditional Mixtec farming techniques such as the Milpa. I found the video surprising given the rather isolated character of the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico where we work. But in the busyness of more pressing work I passed over the disturbing character of the video until a neighbor in our small village announced one day that she had found a foundation willing to help villagers with vegetable growing and small animal production. Indeed, it was the foundation in the video.

“What would have attracted the largest seed and agricultural chemical company of the world to the isolated mountains of the Mixteca Alta and to our little village? And what did they have in mind by being here?”, I wondered. I remembered the recent scandal caused by the revelation that the Walmart Corporation, now with one of every five of its international stores in Mexico, had bribed officials throughout the country to get permits and environmental impact studies. Even more striking for me were its techniques of bribing local community leaders to undercut community opposition to new stores in environmentally, historically or commercially sensitive sites.

A few months ago the Mexican government approved planting of genetically modified corn varieties on a pre-marketing basis on thousands of acres in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. Part of the process that led up to these approvals after years of moratoria on GE corn in this center of origin of the world´s most popular grain involved a scientific mapping of the areas in the country that still possessed native corn varieties. In these areas planting of GE corn would be “restricted”.  Oddly enough, the mapping claimed that two small areas of this state of Oaxaca no longer used native corn. Friends from these communities expressed great surprise that the studies inaccurately claimed they no longer planted native varieties.

Not known for its philanthropic concerns, the Monsanto Corporation has reaped large profits from collecting on crops contaminated by its modified genes and even by the “illegal” introduction of its modified seeds across the Americas. The illegal or “unintended” spread of its genes has become both a marketing and a patent revenue strategy in places like Brazil and Paraguay. Could the open doors of the Oaxacan communities Mexican government studies claim no longer use native corn varieties be part of a contamination strategy? Recent discoveries of ancient corn remains indicate that the state of Oaxaca is the center of origin of corn. Hundreds of native corn varieties resistant to drought, flooding, wind, insect pests and poor soils still flourish in the communities of the Mixteca Alta. Is Monsanto looking for such rich biodiversity to modify and patent , a practice for which the government of India is presently suing the company?

And is the company buying friends, a la Walmart, in the campesino communities of the Mixteca Alta so that when the contamination and/or biopiracy of native varieties becomes a scandal it can divide and undermine the opposition?

Here in the village we asked ourselves what we could do in the face of much needed free handouts given by a corporation whose expressed aim is nothing less than to control the agricultural systems of the world for its corporate profit. We speeded up our own non-profit efforts to create small, integrated, diverse, sustainable, family farms to head off the Monsanto attraction in our small village. But we can only do that on a very limited scale. And what is at stake is vast.

According to U.N. special rapportuer, Oliver De Schutter, there are still 1.6 billion people on the planet who live by being subsistence farmers producing, above all, the majority of their own food needs. Here in Oaxaca most of our subsistence farmers own most of their input needs to keep farming. They use animal traction, make their own plows, access natural fertilizers from animal manure, collectively own a richly biodiverse native seed heritage, and possess an agricultural tradition and collective know-how that serves them well. Enterprising international and national businesses such as Monsanto naturally long to replace these independent tools and techniques owned by indigenous farming communities with commodities that they can supply at a profit. Where possible they would also like to create new “necessities” for this subsistent farmer sector; new machines, new pest control products…new patented genetically modified seeds that can only be planted once before having to be purchased once again. In short, they would like to turn all of these collective needs into commodities which farmers would need to buy to continue planting.

But here in the Mixteca Alta and around the world 1.6 billion subsistence farmers succeed because they practice a low-input farming which needs very little cash input to yield food for the family. “Commodify” this subsistence sector and you will unleash, among other drastic results, a wave of migration as we have never before witnessed.

Doing this with genetically modified seeds here in the center of origin of corn will, in addition, threaten the future existence of corn for us all.

That´s why a few weeks ago 300 campesino men and women from across Oaxaca met in the beautiful  ethno-botanical gardens of Oaxaca city to strategize about promoting and defending the incredibly rich biodiversity of native corn varieties in this state where more than 36 of the original 56-60 land races of native corn are still planted along with hundreds of varieties of each race, each adapted to the challenges of the growing conditions of its specific region. With this incredible biodiversity and these rich genetic resistances we hold the future of corn on the planet in our hands.

In addition to developing plans to promote the planting and improvement of native seeds and to strengthen the custom of planting in milpa in Oaxacan communities, these 300 farmers put together a defense plan with coordinating committees in the various regions of the state. Educational “brigades” will bring information to indigenous communities and coordinate the use of traditional governance structures and appropriate formats to assist agrarian communities and cooperative landholding ejidos to declare themselves GMO free territories and pueblos independently of the federal processes that favor corporations such as Monsanto.

Meanwhile, what do we say to our neighboring communities about the Fundacion Monsanto? Perhaps, pragmatically, “Accept the gift, but don’t for a minute trust the giver?”

Fiesta Month in Oaxaca!

December is a month of fiesta in Oaxaca.  Traveling by bus recently I saw several groups of young people on bicycles traveling with a flower-bedecked truck, on bike pilgrimages to the various shrines, Guadalupe or Juquila.  Yesterday we took part in a pilgrimage from our village to the town center of Tilantongo for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Some walked down into the deep valley and up the other mountain side cross-country, while we drove our old pick-up truck for those who weren’t able to do the walk.  Then we all met outside Tilantongo and made the rest of the way all together on foot to the church, taking turns carrying the banners of our village, San Isidro, and the Virgin of Guadalupe.  There we were met by other groups arriving in pilgrimage from other, even more distant, villages across the mountains.

This Sunday will mark the beginning of the Posadas, the nine days before Christmas, with a gathering each night to reenact the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.  Families will assemble and walk with candles, singing the traditional songs as they journey each night to a different house up and down the mountainside.  Outside each house, according to custom, a group sings the verses requesting lodging for the night, then to be answered by a group inside whose song turns them away, until finally they agree to let them in, at which time all gather inside the house for prayers and then refreshments and a social time.  We will host the posada for one of the nights; other families on other nights, and on Christmas Eve, the final posada will end at the dirt-floor chapel, which will be decorated for the fiesta, with colorful streamers, balloons, plenty of fireworks, food and drink. 

These customs are an expression of faith and the joy of celebration in community, with all members young and old.  Also participating will be those extended family members who have migrated out to Mexico City or other urban centers and always love to return to their villages of origin and to the community life which is still important to them. Presents are generally not a part of the Christmas celebrations, but since most families in the village live without television, they don’t seem to feel they are missing anything.

There is much in the indigenous rural life and the values of a non-money based economy that we admire here and believe can provide some guideposts for our U.S. culture, now seemingly based on extreme consumerism. Yet at the same time there are many basic necessities here that we have been able to help with, through the generosity of many of you who have contributed to these efforts. 

We are happy to be able to report the success – finally – of the great water project which has taken nearly two years to complete.  All the labor has been done by local residents, and it has been enormous, but we now have water piped to every house in the village.  For the first time in the history of San Isidro, people will not have to make the trek with their donkeys to the spring – or some simply having to carry the heavy containers on their backs - to fill their water jugs.  Our oldest resident, 95 year-old Maria, who lives with her 94 year-old husband, Florentino, at the top of the mountain, joked recently, “Well, when are you going to get that water?  You know I don’t have much time left!”  So Maria was the first to get her water tap.

One of the needs in these communities is for some small, cooperative projects to create a modest income, needed for some of the things that people can’t grow or produce themselves.  One such project is the new nursery, started earlier this year, which will produce organic fruit trees and ornamentals.  To produce some start-up income, the participants decided to do a poinsettia project, with the first plants ready to sell for Christmas.  Poinsettias, which originated in Mexico, are always an important part of the Christmas celebrations here.  Everyone is excited that the first plants are now ready and will be on sale in the Tilantongo market this weekend! 

Another interesting project has been the carpentry training.  Some time ago, Phil started teaching one of the older boys in the neighborhood some basic carpentry skills, with his table saw and some basic tools.  That effort has now resulted in 3 older teenage boys who can make doors, tables, beds, cupboards, and book shelves, as well as complete bee boxes for starting honey projects, and the composting toilets that we’ve introduced here.  These three boys: Angel, Daniel, and Pedro are now launching into their own business, taking orders and delivering their finished projects on foot here in the village and the surrounding area.  Phil is helping them to get their own power saw and other equipment soon, so that they will be completely independent with this.  We are also making the contact with a couple of master woodworker friends in Oaxaca City, who will give some training at higher levels as well.

Our Democratic Commission of Communal Goods

AUGUST 2012.....

In the 18th century Jean Jacques Rousseau decried the chicanery of those who would stake out the

“commons” of Europe protected for use of all by the Charter of the Forest, and claim, “This is mine!”

He called on the people of his time not to be duped by the “imposters” of privatization.

Yet a few decades ago, by accepting the self-serving concept of the “tragedy of the commons”, invented

to support the radical privatization agenda of the Reagan/Clinton/Bush free market politics, it seems we

have let ourselves be duped once again. The fictitious “tragedy of the commons” (if it doesn’t belong to somebody, it will get trashed) does not exist. What does exist is the tragedy of an unmanaged and unregulated “commons” (our air, water, oceans and biodiversity) innan era that prizes unlimited individual and corporate greed.

Here in Santiago Tilantongo, Oaxaca, we have the privilege of taking part in one of the relatively few managed commons that the followers of Rousseau’s “imposters” have not yet been able to enclose. And it is instructive to see how well it works.

As in most indigenous communities of Oaxaca, here there are two parallel governments, the municipal and the Commission of “Bienes Comunales”, or communal goods. As the name indicates, it is the responsibility of the Commission of Communal Goods to regulate the use of the forests, grazing lands, and, when appropriate, agricultural lands that families have abandoned, in the name of the community. All of this is the commons of Tilantongo. The Director and Vigilance Committee of bienes comunales are democratically elected in town meetings of the entire pueblo of Tilantongo, including its 17 different communities. For any major decisions the entire pueblo needs to be convoked to approve or disapprove. Meanwhile, it is the task of the director and bienes comunales committee to regulate and manage the common resources of the village, approving permits for harvesting trees for building and firewood, and medicinal plants, for use of gravel and sand, water, and minerals, as well as for fining abuses. Although the serious deforestation that marks the post-conquest history of Tilantongo is testimony to lapses and abuses of the trust placed in the commission of common goods, the system has and continues to successfully govern the commons of Tilantongo and hundreds of other indigenous communities of the state of Oaxaca.

Nevertheless, Rousseau’s “imposters” have not given up. Mexican government free market advocates

promote programs to privatize common lands and revoke constitutional provisions that protected them

from sale or use as collateral. Foreign corporations are anxious to patent indigenous biodiversity and

reduce the rich commons of indigenous native seeds to dependency on imported genetically modified

seeds.

And now, in the name of conservation of the planet’s resources, contaminated and made scarce by the excesses of the Global North, international environmental groups and commercial corporations wish to take control of indigenous resources – the indigenous commons – by putting a monetary value on the forests, biodiversity, water, and even the wildlife of theindigenous South. Through contracts for “environmental services”, and investments in commodified biodiversity, water, and biological resources, they intend to effectively transfer control of the commons of the South to private corporations and speculators, using tools such as bio-reserves and carbon sequestration projects that exclude indigenous peoples from access to their own lands. In essence they propose to solve the problems that attachment to money (greed) has created, with more money. Are we naïve enough to be duped once again by the new form of enclosure of the commons proposed by the radical privatization politics of Rousseau’s 21st century “imposters”? Or are we ready to learn something about the management of the commons of the planet from the indigenous communities of Oaxaca?

Blessings,

©Kathy and Phil Dahl Bredine, Tilantongo, Oaxaca August 2012

(P.S. We just finished learning even more from our local contributing industrious Mixtecan chefs this August, how to make a Dried Shrimp Mole, and Amaranth Seed Cookies.......all while chatting, weaving and cooking in our instant kitchen! ) 

©Judith Cooper Haden Photography