The weekend before last there was a forum on appropriate technology in the city center of Oaxaca.  There were solar ovens and bike machine blenders and planters made of old water bottles, and even a crew constructing a little house out of compacted mud.  I saw the future as a more recent version of the past, and it was clear that the linear way that we often think about history and progress is leading us far astray.  How can we make efforts towards building permanent, self-perpetuating systems?  It is telling that people come from a place of hope when they spend their days tinkering in workshops to construct new/old machines to help decrease dependencies on the government and international trade. "All of our protests are about demanding government services" one speaker noted, advocating that a more worthwhile and effective alternative would be to construct, literally, their autonomy.  

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit a small permaculture project a short ways away from the city, in the middle of the mountainous desert of the central valley of Oaxaca.  From the road you can barely see the place, it blends in so well with its surroundings that only the glint of the metal wind compass gives it away.  There live a couple who have the mystery of the desert in their eyes and manner.  Beneath this seemingly parched earth lies a grand expanse of water which they pump up and use to bring to life their gardens and the fields of alfalfa they use to feed the cows.   It is so loud with the wind ricocheting off the mountains.  I remember the first time I was in the southwest and was shocked by how loud it was.  So far from human noises the wind takes over.  My friend figured out a how to play music using cacti spines.  In this place they hope to offer courses in various techniques- green building, dry toilets, farming etc and so many young people I met were studying agroecology or learning to build houses out of cob.  Its like they are preparing themselves with skills they know will be necessary.

And it is that sense of necessity that compels them towards these things, not some kind of escapist fantasy, and for that reason these technologies and skills are imbued with a sense of power.  They could mean very little in and off themselves, but when used with intentions towards the self-determination of communities they become tools for constructing a new reality.  

The flip side of this are communities who have maintained their traditional practices but also out of necessity begin to package what they are doing in order to better compete within the capitalist model.  Speaking to coffee growers who are going the route of FairTrade certification or commuting six hours each way on a weekly basis to sell at niche urban farmers markets, it is clear that these programs are not long term solutions to the instable economic life of a small producer.  As Wendell Berry says: a good solution solves a pattern and like a healthy organ is a part of the overall health of the body.

On the way home from one coffee cooperative in the Mixteca where they "sell the best and drink the worst" I had the privilege of speaking at length with Juan, the driver of the van who spent many years as a migrant farmworker in the U.S. and incredibly enough was a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in its early days.  He supplements his van driving work by keeping fish and tends to them in the afternoons by tossing stale bits of tortilla into the water.  After proposing teaching all the kids in his community English as a way of mitigating the exploitation of immigrant labor in the States, he then proposed augmenting fish production and grafting more fruit trees as another way of stabilizing the community.  The forces in the world that put each of us in our set of circumstances can seem so baffling and arbitrary at times, its difficult to know how to respond.  Juan's take, "They're even buying pieces of the moon!  Me, I don't have anything but looking at the stars."

Speaking of stars...while visiting some classes at a friend's school, a group of precocious 10 year girls, after learning I was from New York, asked me if I knew any.  I said, not the ones in the sky!  So, here I am again, in the starless apple...enjoying the rain and chill very much, and stomping out the steps I learned in zapoteado class at inappropriate moments.