An Eco-Village Survives as a Haven for Deep Ecology in Mexico’s Central Mountains
June 02, 2015
Letter from Mexico
An Eco-Village Survives as a Haven for Deep Ecology in Mexico’s Central Mountains
by CHRISTY RODGERS
About an hour south of Mexico City, nestled in an extraordinary range of mountains called the Sierra del Tepozteco, whose fantastical rock formations studded with forest resemble those in ancient Chinese painted scrolls, an experiment in alternative living has been unfolding for more than 30 years now. The self-described “ecovillage” of Huehuecoyotl, where a group of itinerant artists from Mexico and elsewhere came to rest after traveling the world together for fifteen years, has become a kind of seedbed for visionary and transformative projects, particularly ecological ones. The multitude of such efforts, their persistence and success, is one of the stories buried under the avalanche of horror that characterizes the mainstream news from Mexico.
Huehuecoyotl (pronounced “way-way-KOY-ott”) is a Nahuatl word that means the Very Old Coyote, patron deity of creativity and sensuality to the pre-Hispanic Mexica people. Its story begins with two radical students, Alberto Ruz Buenfil (son of a prominent Mexican archaeologist) and Andres King Cobos, fleeing impending repression of the Mexican student movement in 1968. They went to Europe to pay their respects to the Danish Situationist Jørgen Nash, and ended up collecting an eclectic group of followers (including one of the Situationist’s daughters, who became Cobos’ first wife). Together they formed a street performance troupe, traveling Europe, Asia, and North America in the 1970s as a kind of rainbow tribe, without passports, with only the money they could raise dancing, drumming, miming in the streets of cities and remote villages, having children, switching partners, attending or participating in many of the radical social experiments of the time on three continents.
At the end of the decade the two Mexican founders felt the call to return to their home country. A group of 26 accompanied them, including Europeans, US Americans and other Mexicans, most parents with growing children now. They began to travel to different parts of Mexico, looking to be “called” by some place in particular. The place they found in the Sierra del Tepozteco in 1982 became their final and enduring home as a group.
They spent the early years living rustically on the undeveloped land in the brightly painted school buses and vans in which they had traveled the roads of North America at the end of the ‘70s. For their own children and the locals, they started an alternative low-cost primary school in Tepoztlán, the nearest major town. It was collectively run, and lasted for 16 years, involving over a hundred children and their families.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/02/an-eco-village-survives-as-a-haven-for-deep-ecology-in-mexicos-central-mountains/
Environment & Energy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112786376
