With the Western arrival to Indian lands of the new continent, the spaces for the exercise of harmony were in good part undermined and eliminated. Nevertheless, the resistance of our towns permitted the secret conservation of these forms which at the present time point to a profile of more developed possibilities to achieve our well-being and happiness.

      In the face of the Spanish conquest, our communities developed a strong resistance-adaptation system that allowed them, in every decade, to draw a new image, changing where the positive values of both cultures were linking new realities. To our good fortune, in this process the basic values or forms that favored the possibility of harmony remained in spite of the prevailing economic interests in the colonizing mentality. The permanent adaptation of our towns has allowed us to coexist with forms of social organization different to ours, and as such to participate in a wide and diverse plural society, a society generally authoritarian and one in which our position is the more disadvantaged, and extremely poor. In spite of that, we have continued reproducing and developing the culture of relationships that guide us toward democracy, and each time more systemized and with more clarity.

      Communality is the ideology which at present we Indian towns of the south of Mexico support, the ideology that we have been able to export to the big cities through our siblings who experienced the necessity, and had the interest in emigrating, and carried the ideology out. It is not strange that in cities as big as the City of Mexico and Los Angeles, California, our communality is expressed in all its color and essence, in spite of the adversity that urban spaces offer.

      It's interesting how we have been able to reproduce an ideology in the face of a prevailing authoritarian atmosphere. It is explained by the characteristics which relationships of man to nature have, as well as the characteristics of our mountain territory and the virtue of our social organization. It is not for nothing that the pattern of our community organization is being planted as a model of action in the whole country via the National Program of Solidarity, and neither is it for no reason that the indigenous communities have achieved a better model for the conservation of nature. Everything has been achieved banding ourselves together in communality, an ideology which at the present time we can offer as another new and renovated alternative, against authoritarianism and in favor of a real democracy.

      This geography made us stronger and more independent; nevertheless, for many it became a tomb. The grandparents began to systematize the knowledge of nature; they discovered and they developed with her a horizontal relationship, a harmonious relationship of great respect.

      That was how this environment became one component more of our existence. The Mixes never were conquered by arms. Hidden in this kind of territory, the Huicholes still survive, protected.

      Where the plantation regime arrived (coffee, tobacco, etc.) there also arrived discord, envy, and avarice; where individuality did not arrive, equality, dialogue, and the collective were preserved.

      The process of defense of these lands describes in a physical way how a natural collectivism allowed the defense of broad territories that today are pointed out as reservations of the biosphere, in them still survive the widest variety of living beings; animals and plants that cohabit with man in a true unity. All this may sound like romanticism, but it is only necessary to review the scientific information about natural resources found in Latin America to demonstrate what we are affirming as true.

      But nothing has been easy, the role of the state in the countries of America continues being the same since the arrival of the Spaniards: the guardian of greedy interests, protective of the grand dreams of man over nature, regulator of the relationships between the weak and the powerful, always in alliance with the latter. For that reason, we believe that those states are digging their own tomb. With ethnocide, they permit the future death of their children. With our death, the little that remains alive on the continent comes to an end. Authoritarianism and an essential lack of democracy is what characterizes the relationship that maintains the state with all its ethnic groups; in spite of it, we remain convinced of having perhaps one of the only alternatives possible for social coexistence, and fundamentally a very old and harmonious relationship with nature.

      For all of the above-mentioned, we consider that communality, which is our way of thinking, originates in the history of spoils, in the obligatory relationship that we have maintained with the lands and the exaggerated exploitation of the earth which the conquest left to us. That is to say, communality is also the fruit of colonial history.

      We should not forget that vast, initially indigenous territories have been usurped and now may be transformed into deserts. In spite of that, it is well known that barbarism continues as the natural tonic of the world's economic development. The results of the Summit of the Earth in Rio de Janeiro ratified it, and with that was shown the logical anti-nature of a world that now should stop its crazy career, and take a while to meditate on the effects of its possessiveness.

      We no longer wish to remember the dramatic chapters of the conquest and what continues happening in Guatemala, in Bolivia. This geography of horror makes even worthier the alternatives that Indian society offers to the West – a culture that always looked with scorn at our survival and our moral wealth.

      The communal is a type of holding that certainly the settlers granted to our towns, but in many ways it was already a natural demonstration of what the earth meant for our ancestors.

      After the conquest this holding rule continued to receive many attacks. Native eminent persons, formed in the Creole independent schools of those years, made felt their disagreement. At the present time, the Mexican state continues to see in the communal holding an obstacle for development, a barrier to making efficient use of the earth, a true reef for economic development which contributes more utilities, generates more employment and guarantees a bigger economic spillover in benefit to the inhabitants of each nation. In spite of that, the resistance of our towns doesn't stop. Recently the Nahuas achieved a wide mobilization to prevent their lands being flooded by the water of a hydroelectric company. The Zapotecos eradicated the system of concessions for the exploitation of the forest. Broad Mixe territories go on being defended at the cost of their own lives. The resistance continues understanding that the earth is not only a good economist, but also the mother who gives us everything. A mother with whom we want to have an equitable relationship of deep respect.

      In these territories it seems that time hasn't passed. Offerings before beginning the cultivation are still seen, fiestas at harvest times, ceremonies to guarantee the falling rain. Is it that we remain an ignorant people? Is it that we are very stubborn and that we don't want to change? Just the opposite, we always change, but we also always find in respect for the earth the only principle that guarantees us well-being, the principle that heals our hearts and with which we assure our tomorrow. It is certain these principles no longer offer us total clarity, precisely because we go on changing. At the present time we already exploit the forest as we never thought to do, and we extract wealth although we still don’t know what to do with it as a sure science. Now we recognize that coffee became, like other crops, a rope around the neck. We have come to the devastation of broad areas in the sowing of corn to assure food for our families. We should accept that we have lost some values in our relationship with the earth, but we are sure that we will rescue ourselves through our own organization. An example of this is the new communal mining. These mines were always taken advantage of by the usurpers. Centuries of learning had to pass before these mines might be a possible source of income for our families. The same thing is happening in those fields where we no longer harvested the corn serenely. We have found in history abandoned technologies that now are working to our benefit. The communality of our territory opens the possibility to find solutions, to search for alternatives. We are sure that this communal holding rule never arrived from the west and was never discussed. It is a reality knitted by the centuries and by the sacrifice of dozens and more generations. Communality is the strength of the community and the space that re-creates it. It is the ground where our future grows, it is the cradle of our natural thought and after all is said and done, it is the opportunity to think of a different future world closer to us, but also closer and more necessary for the world.

      It's enough to underline that communality made of our social organization a fabric of greater harmonic possibilities, not exempt from contradictions, not exempt from stratifications, but closer to dialogue, closer to consensus, to collective reflection and to horizontal decision making. The communal marks the rhythm of production and opens innovative spaces for the education of our children. The communal, after all, is for us a fundamental element for understanding our new potentialities.

      The assembly is always directed by the executive authority that chooses itself, temporary representatives who have one, two or three years to demonstrate their capacities for the exercise of communal power. The assembly is not only an opportunity for participation, but something more, a civic obligation. An obligation for the exercise of social power. Nothing is decided outside of it, except for more limited aspects that don't merit it. Speaking a lot in an assembly is a symbol of prepotency, or of the appropriate capacity to direct the town, because each word spoken should be ratified with its practice in the collective work. Whoever doesn't act their words is diminished in prestige, taken as talkative, and the town will never turn its eyes to him for the exercise of power.

      The assembly in those bigger and more urbanized communities is used by the formal political forces, that is to say, the political parties. Commonly, in these one observes the creation of groups almost always well-identified with sectors of economic or political power. In general, for us to participate in the political wars is a sign of debasement, although one might have the assurance that only through a political party can a benefit for the community be obtained. The existence of the assembly has been used by the Mexican state in a very intelligent way. The official party has found in it an excellent space to negotiate the vote. The promises of works or struggles sustained by the community are knowingly negotiated to achieve the vote that favors the official party. It is also not strange that in a conscious way, and in some cases by the very executives named by the assembly, the community takes charge openly of making electoral fraud happen. There are communities that take charge only of filling out all the ballots to benefit a single party. With this, the community negotiates their relative degree of independence; and it guarantees their internal autonomy with democratic appointment of their representatives.

      In other words, we can affirm that the community cedes external political power to be guaranteed the internal. It is preferable for us to vote for a deputy that we don't even know, than for a political party which interferes in the appointment of our authorities. All the above-mentioned has been cooked up by means of the registration of our community representatives into the party in power. In some cases the opposite can happen, that is to say, they may be enrolled in other parties. When this latter happens, the community finds itself facing immense pressures. Many of these cases you know perfectly.

      Lastly, it is necessary to add that the assembly life allows counting on an arena where the government pressures can be contained, in order to discuss the validity or the favorability of proposals for development. In these discussions one confronts the permanent intention of the state to drive our development, to guide our road. It is the assembly that always allows us to defend our ideas. This defense is not always openly spoken; in many cases it is a true proposal of the silent. That is to say, almost always the proposals of the state are responded to with strong silences that are resolved in our own languages with a collective and significant discussion, at the end of which it will be known if the proposal is accepted or not.

      The effects of those relationships have led to true trials that end in a tragic way, as well as in violent assaults by the police or army; it's not excessive to say that when the initiatives under discussion define clearly identified interests, and when they affect the interests of powerful groups within the community, the common reply of the state is to use the police or the army or the detention or murder of our leaders.

      Seen from any angle the existence of our assembly is a basic, beyond just reproducing our community behavior and countersigning our communality.

      From adolescence, the youths begin to show individualities: their greater interest in physical work, or their inclination for the intellectual. In both cases, training in political exercise has to also be captured in work and in participation. In this process the citizen is selected and located along the two mentioned lines, but requiring ratification by himself. After age sixteen one can ascend to auxiliary positions in the city council or in the municipal agency, and as was said, his behavior makes the community assign one or another task according to personal inclinations. An important reality is that no citizen seeks representativeness for itself, rather the logical thing is to refuse it, that is to say, to be opposed to carrying out these positions. The opposite is symbolic of wanting to climb, or having a political appetite, a dangerous quest for a campesino. Politics is better explained as a function of militancy in political parties, and being a deputy does not in fact mean having prestige, rather it’s like being a Martian with many weapons to point at the community.

      México has approximately two thousand municipalities and an enormous number of municipal agencias, or villages. Not having intermediate authority between the municipality and the governor of the state means that having the municipality is a brilliant opportunity for political sovereignty, but also a risky exercise of power if one responds to the logic of the political parties. In the entire country most of the indigenous communities are municipal agencias, that is to say, they depend on larger municipalities, nevertheless, a curious fact jumps into view in a state of the republic called Oaxaca: in Oaxaca there exists approximately 25% of all the municipalities of the country. Oaxaca, with 570 municipalities, can demonstrate why the ideas explained above have flourished here with more force.

      In Oaxaca, municipalities exist of less than a thousand inhabitants. This implies an enormous possibility for the reproduction of communality. In this state, a city council normally is composed of not more than seven officials: the mayor who is the oldest person and guide of the town council; the president who is the executive; the elected representative who is the agent of the ministry, and three town councilors. There are few cases of a community with more than five town councilors, a team that is named by the assembly to exercise power during one to three years. As much as the mayor and the elected representative, the elders or the assistants, who here are known as topiles, generally come from the line of active citizens, skillful in physical work, but with real participation. The councilors and the president usually represent the line of intellectuals but they are forced to demonstrate their aptitudes in basic jobs.

      The community representativeness should be understood as the exercise of representation. No member of the town council receives any remuneration, and in a general way they function as a team of employees in the service of the town. Everyone should do everything, that is to say, participate in all type of tasks: management, administration, coordination, execution, etc. Nowadays, demanding the division of areas or of specialties would be an unacceptable attitude, let's say "modernized", and contrary to custom.

      The exercise of power is addressed strongly by custom: the daily way of reaching agreements that stands out by its ritual, or of events established centuries ago in which the whole population participates according to the division of social sectors: peasants, artisans, musicians, teachers, etc.

      One cannot have prestige in a community if we don't respect the sum of traditions and customs and if we don't participate horizontally in representation. Although the taking of decisions is understood in a vertical way, the permanent consultation, chat and consensus, demonstrate to us a horizontality in taking decisions, the reality of political action that emanates from communality.

      We wouldn’t want to leave the idea that within this structure contradictions don't exist, or setbacks, even conflicts that bring the community problems for decades; I remember a case that arose in town called Yalalag; a Zapotec community in the Sierra where the town was divided by economic and political problems. The conflict dragged the community through a fight of more than fifty years, until the social forces were re-composed and the consensus of the majority was re-established. At the present time this community suffers from population reduction, but it is standing, and with new and more innovative projects encouraged by their communality which was hidden for a long time.

      The internal divisions in an indigenous community in most cases are related to the existence of caciques, characters allied to groups of central or state political power who seek, and in many cases are able to usurp, the wealth of the community (earth, production, etc.). This phenomenon, already much analyzed in the rural Mexican environment, has been slowly disappearing, I believe. Many communities after bloody confrontations have re-made their consensus and returned to the customs.

      In spite of everything, representativeness is the result of an assembly and it is the political value of most importance which we, the autochthonous communities of the Ibero-American and world society, want to inherit.

      The advice of old men is integrated according to the decision of most of the population, but in a specific way, by later decision of the town council. In this decision, the town council adds its preferences for whoever must be the one who collects the necessary advice for making decisions. The elders are not called on for everything. They are taken advantage of when the questions to be decided are complicated; for example, to define the borders with another community, to solve cases of murder, to overcome difficulties, to put aside or to adopt a tradition, for the most significant rituals - in short for those matters in which the town council feels that it needs aid.

      The advice of old men has solved vital problems not only for the community life but also for the region. A consultant is supposed to have abnormal vision, to have more than general knowledge; a consultant is the ultimate depository of communality, and the faithful defender of the principles of social coexistence and the most important resolutions. Thanks to that, consensus maintains the norm of work as pedagogy, and rituals as a show of spirituality.

      This example, as in all processes, is not exempt from difficulties and errors. However it is the ancestral form of exercising good government and at the same time it means a true guarantee for community democracy. At some moment a governor called this advise "The senate of the community". We think that he can relate to the term, but the experience differs, from how you end up a senator in an anti-democratic and authoritarian society, to one which is defined by work and daily behavior. After all, we could say that here a small size offers us the possibility of social representation nearer to democracy, which unfortunately is not frequent in the big urban societies.

      The tequio is the task that each citizen donates, depending on the facilities, once or twice a month. It is work that allows the completion of publiv service works: beautification works and utilitarian works such as schools, health clinics, water supply, etc. The tequio is programmed by the town council or the municipal authority and is carried out coordinated by the municipal elected representatives. All the parents of families, single mothers, and widows attend. The first do the hardest tasks, and the women do activities of another order: to prepare water and food, including in many cases participating in planting as well as the harvest.

      Tequio is the institution that maintains from the beginning an account of the citizen's behavior. If he didn't assist he has to pay a fine or do the work another day. In some cases an individual who didn't assist is imprisoned. It is necessary to point out that this labor is punished by the general constitution of the nation, but it is used in spite of everything.

      The negative aspects of tequio have been pointed out mainly by people without community (descomunalizadas) because it is considered an authoritarian, even antidemocratic, practice. They are forced by the town to fulfill the tequio although the constitution prohibits it. However, our conception is different.

      One should point out that diversity and cultural plurality are far from being respected by the national states. This is seen not only in Mexico; in Guatemala and in Bolivia the cases of disrespect are extreme. However, it is a paradoxical and somehow encouraging fact that in Mexico the assembly and representative experience, joined to the practice of tequio, has become these last years a new work model for regions of extreme poverty.

      Let's look at this question piece by piece. On one hand, the Ibero-American national states have as a characteristic the imposition of models of individual managerial behavior, of efficiency and of high mercantile content. On the other hand, the traditional societies reinforce their collective traditional models: respect for diversity, for the earth and usage more than anything else balanced by its potential. Obtaining economic and technological benefits are limited to the simple and necessary. From this perspective, one cannot hope for more from nation states that impose decisions which violate the basic principles in our communities. That explains why the constitutions respect neither customs nor cultural diversity; nor do they reinforce its reproduction, or the values that subvert its intentions toward what they call necessities.

      On the other hand we find the practices like tequio, that seem to western eyes to be antidemocratic, turn out to be the only factors that have allowed our own societies, communitarian or Indian, to resolve old necessities. Tequio for these micro societies represents the alternative for development and well-being. This latter the Mexican state is discovering in recent years and it is beginning a labor of recognition of diversity and cultural plurality. The modification made to Article Four of the constitution arrived for us like the first fruit of a more diverse state, maybe more democratic or more intelligent.

      The Mexican state has before itself the challenge of overcoming the enormous backwardness in the majority of its society, principally in those regions where a lot of extreme poverty is evident, and it finds in our micro-societies our own mechanisms for self development. It is then when tequio becomes the magic twig, and why tequio is for now, and everything said here which is communality, begins to go forth, even without knowing in any depth our own ways and innovations for developing them.

      Currents of thought exist which consider that using tequio like the flag of development of our own towns is to sterilize its own effectiveness and benefit the state, instead of stopping actions detrimental to the indigenous communities. What we are sure of is that our own siblings, pressed to emigrate, have been the carriers of this communality and they are reproducing it in urban nuclei of considerable importance. It is not strange to find oneself in the city confronting many committees of solidarity, of emigrated indigenous carrying out actions by means of an organization learned in their home communities; neither it is strange to have seen, facing the earthquake of '85, many indigenous and mestizos giving themselves tasks because of behavior emanating from this kind of community culture.

      Another solidarity aspect that we find among our communities is the support between community and community. This is given mainly in putting on festivals or in the face of some not very common tragedy. Solidarity, or the gozona in the festival mean that the band and their authority assists the others and offers their services happily and with that, its work. In this way fiestas are filled with color and music, filled with solidarity; maybe the community event that concentrates the significance of their action and communitarian institutionalism or the communality, is the festival. This is the result of the agricultural work or commercial and productive artisan work of a year. The festival and the rituals each one develops. We cannot compete in a commercial way, nor think of who sends what to whom; on the contrary we find in everyone the necessity of surviving, as human beings who are different and nearby, and what remains clear to everyone is how the impact of Western thought affects us. The intent to globalize also affects us by giving to Indian thought the idea that we don't want what they are imposing on us, and even less so with Western models already very worn out.

      We didn't understand, in this nor in the past century, that we inherited communalism before Christ's arrival. Since then arose the establishing of this necessity for harmony, which modern societies have broken in a dramatic way. Which are the values that unite us and can we put them into action respecting the historical process of each of us? This is what at the present time worries us about the original society. We don't seek to create thought models that again are imposed on other societies. "If we are in Guatemala we don't want to make Guatemala worse."

      Communality surely is the ideology that has allowed us to face and to solve an infinite number of challenges and problems that history has handed us; however, communality also has meant localism, nationalism in miniature, or rather say, micro. Communality has taken us to face development possibilities in the community, but each town is almost a nation. For all that, we face the regional, and this indeed is a true problem. Through communality little by little we solve the local problems, but those that we have to face regionally are in the hands of those who have always oppressed us. An example of this is explicitly in the exploitation of the forests. Each community has been able to be a forest company but we all face the market problem, also the problems of roads, etc.; it is not possible to confront greater enemies from the local area. We need a bigger union and a definition of the future with greater clarity.

      Another problem that comes from above every three or six years is the regional political representative. This continues to be decided from outside. Here indeed government authoritarianism has divided us in a permanent way; we don't have regional leaders because our customs hinder it, but neither have we had greed represent the culminating moment of work that includes everything: family work, group work, municipal work, and above all the performance of all the rituals having to do with the Christian religion and also with the pre-Hispanic one; the same acts celebrate the saints as the sun, the earth or the moon.

      The festival is part of the community identity, it is the reflection of the spirit of all. We all work for it. The same in sowing as in coordinating activities, the accumulation of one year is cast forth for the enjoyment of all. The organization of the year is shown in the festival. The abilities built through the years delight in the festival. One might say that our festivals are the key to what identifies us, and they reflect the respect and the solidarity that our attitude has sown in the communities that surround us.

      The festival is the significance of work, for enjoyment; so we underline that work is the significance of the community in all its dimensions; only in the festival do we find in one place the same solidarity that communality embodies.

      A plain example of what we want to explain is using the diversity of languages to show the great existent complexity. This current has arrived to such a degree that it is thought that only someone who speaks his own language is indigenous; the others are mestizo or they are copies of indigenous or of the autochthonous. We consider that beneath the particular values such as language, gear, music, dances, etc., underlie values which are common, that we, the true indigenous, have to order. To the Zapotecos of Oaxaca nothing separates us from our companion Cree of Canada, Zuni of New Mexico, Mayan from Guatemala, Mapuches of Chile or the Kariña of Venezuela. We have diverse languages and different ritual practices or gear or dances of different coloring, but it comes to all of us: the necessity to claim our relationship with the earth, the defense of our territories, facing the authoritarianism of our oppressors, or the impositions of a fatuous modernity that refuses to understand the value of our philosophy. Consensus makes us all one - dialogue, the spirit and the reality of the horizontal; being in power fills us; nevertheless it is the great challenge for all our communities. The national leaders will always be caricatures because our people still have not defined how the autochthonous should do politics.

      The state simply usurps our integrity with models born of our reality but in the end we don't find a way out. This is a challenge for democracy and for the defeat of authoritarianism.

      Another problem is how to face the voracity of the capitalist rationality, that is to say, how to protect our resources and at the same time maintain our logic facing nature. Plus now when capital threatens to swallow us in a very boastful way, when the treaties of free trade press the possibility of extinguishing us, now that the democracies embody more economic symbolism than anything else.

      Another of the serious problems that we are not able to solve is the tragic education that invades us through the means of communication. In this we have done something now that we have some spaces and radio transmitters but we still are not able to confront and win over the tastes of our own brothers alienated by commercial radio.

      We know that this it is a time of reflection, of exchanges, and of investigation.

      We believe we are on the threshold of proposing, whenever the pores of the West open up, and the necessity is given up of imposing models that have already drawn the enthusiasm of the general population to our possibilities of survival. However it is necessary to work more in the systematizing of these hopes.

      We can have authoritarianism just below the surface from here to there and vice versa, but it is necessary first to open the possibilities of exchanging experience and of facing with more force the instruments that lacerate our imagination and the principle of our towns.

      Ways have been practiced and I believe that we should continue doing it, but now with our own possibilities seeing us from inside toward the world, that one day we think to overcome and even to abandon. We indigenous are convinced that the defense of our geography will continue being the base for the development of new dreams, like the defense of our territory; the possibility of real existence for our families. The assembly life enlarges the possibility of making our convictions a consensus, even our emotions, and to find in it new forms that might have a relationship with democracy. The respect for our elders is not understood as respect for the simple tradition but also for the accumulation of knowledge that we all have the right to achieve.

      We consider that the physical work alongside the intellectual opens new perspectives of imagination among beings who are different. The non-demonizing and overvaluing of our superficial differences, and in classification of what we all are, could come down again as the most appropriate way for not stigmatizing ourselves, and indeed for finding common broad ways in those that permit themselves plurality and democracy. For the rest, I hope that what has been expressed here may be useful for everyone present.

Jaime Martínez Luna
Fundación Comunalidad
Domicilio conocido
Guelatao de Juárez, C.P. 68770, Oax., México
      tel: 951-553-6026