A summary of the interview I did with Raul of the Mexico City TierraViva project. I met him and talked to him at the Schindler Houses where Belgiay artist Koby Mattys was hosting a serries known as Lobby-in-the-Rear.
errorWhen the audience attending the lecture noted Raul’s punk style, someone asked how he squares punk’s nihilism with the vision of a sustainable city. “Punk screams that there is no future.” Raul answered in Spanish “Yes, there is no future if we keep on acting this way. And yes, there is no future, but there is a present.”
Raul was visiting from Mexico City and arrived with the Zapatista Support Network to the Schindler House, an Austrian Artist Residency Program on the Westside. Kobe, a Belgian Artist, had been organizing informal discussions on a variety of topics in the architecturally historic house’s garage. Raul was there to talk about a project he is involved with in Mexico City, the Communidad Ecologico-Social Tierra Viva.
Presently, Tierra Viva finds its home in Hueltuecoyolt, one of the myriad suburb/slums on the outer ring of Mexico City- the world’s most populous city. The Group, in their own words (from www.laneta.apc.org/tierraviva) “is a project working to create a model of sustainability and to share alternative techniques with communities who seek being self sustaining within the urban zones. Carried out by youth and having as a base the constructive force and solidarity of youth collectives committed to nature. Tierra Viva is a project whose intention is the improvement of our own, distinctly urban habitat, bringing together diverse ecological and social techniques to be applied in the city.”
Raul noted the horrible ills given birth by urbanization and modernization, homelessness, psychological dislocation from centuries old traditions. By looking at the air of Mexico City, it is so obvious. Yet along side this knowledge, he also sees the wonder that the confluence of people and culture that a city has to offer as an amazing thing. Biting this hope is the somber knowledge that globalization can both further kill the planet and leave Mexico ever more dependent on corrupt and distant corporate powers.
For these reasons then, it is inimical to the project that the land is within the city. They are not into retreating “back to the land.” The Tierra Viva project aims to create a viable alternative in the heart of the Mexico City- the present capital of Mexico and the former capital of the Aztec Empire. The group, reportedly comprised of 40 active participants from across all classes has begun to organize in the first phase of making a functioning green city. In this city that grows like cancer, many of the outlying areas of Mexico City are first claimed through squatting rights. The group is searching for site within the city that they can squat on then go through the legal process of outright purchasing.
The TierraViva collective is modeled after the Zapatistas and imagines that the institutional structures they build will both work from the old indigenous knowledge of the pre-Columbian peoples of Mexico and provide a social structure that accounts for the diversity of modern life. Raul recounted with how close to possible their dream is just in the very fact that so many residents of Mexico City have a direct memory of agricultural life. And that so many people from all classes dream of returning to the countryside from whence they came. The radical shift that the TierraViva group makes is that they boldly say that this dream can be realized in cities.
Therefore, TierraViva is more then a scheme to by a plot of land, They see ecological thought to have both an economic bent and a social bent- in the United States, the term is Social Ecology. Raul highlighted Social Ecology ideas like the dual need for both autonomy of individual and groups and the communitarian need for peoples assemblies to work out community problems. Embracing Social Ecologies community the group challenges itself to go beyond Raul’s punk looks. They have already set up agronomy classes for street kids. And in a great conundrum- thought they call the TierraViva project a youth project, they seem count on the knowledge of elder members who remember the rural farming practices of their youth.
With a long term vision (they have been together for 4 years) the project has a lot of relevancy to Los Angeles. The cities are similar faceless sprawls. Many Angelinos have memories of when the city was more orchard and farm then concrete and tar. While speaking, Raul passed around a photo-album of the TierraViva project. Like a lot of DIY stuff I’d seen, the book was cut and colored, full of youthful poses. This project feels like so much of the really good anarcho-stuff I’ve seen in the US, all-age show spaces- squatted houses, slug and lettuce gardens. What trips me out so much about it is the layering on top of all this style the indigenista approach that also feels so right to LA.
Raul can be reached by e-mail at raulsenk@yahoo.com. TierraViva can be reached at cestierraviva@yahoo.com. They are looking for funds to by land. Donations are being sought.