By Subcoyote Alberto Ruz Buenfil
Farol do Cerrado, Brasília
December 25th. 2005

Back in July 1996, when the Caravana Arcoíris por la Paz first left the ecovillage Huehuecoyotl, up in the mountains of Central Mexico, our first goal was to serve as messengers and minstrels of good news, and to contribute in the expansion and networking among the different alternative groups and movements from Central and South America.

A few years later, in 2000, the Caravan was fully recognized by consensus at our annual meeting of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas, organized and held in Colombia, as a “living and training center” and as new model of “mobile ecovillage.” We were appointed as focalizers for the various nomadic projects growing in the South, and one of our main tasks was to call for bioregional and international gatherings, pow wows or Vision Councils, as a way to bring together local organizations with the wider spectrum of alternative movements in the world.

Since then, we held a first bioregional gathering of Venezuela, in the Grand Savannah, two gatherings in Colombia, a first bioregional one at a location near Titiribi, department of Antioquia, and the annual meeting of ENA (Ecovillage Network of the Americas) at Sasardi, a 10 years ecovillage in the jungles of the Darien, right in the middle of the ongoing civil war between guerrilla and paramilitary armies.

In 2002 we held a “Peace Village” for women, bringing together for a one week experience, 144 leaders from the different bioregions from Ecuador, to strengthen both their national network and to give them a first introduction into subjects such as the use of consensus and facilitation for their meetings, permacultural and ecovillage designing, and bioregionalism and communitarian history up in the North.

One year later, we held in the sacred valley of Urubamba and Machu Picchu in Peru an international Vision Council, known as The Call of the Condor, bringing together more than 800 representatives from many different organizations and alternative networks from 34 nations. A large contingent of bioregional activists from Canada, the US and Mexico were present, and the full representation of both ENA and GEN (Global Ecovillage Network) focalizers, who also held their respective annual meetings in conjunction to “The Call.”

At this historical event, another bulky and enthusiastic delegation came, this time from Brazil, and offered to organize another international Vision Council in their country. The plenary consensed the proposal and a date was agreed for the coming together of the tribes, sometime in the year 2005.

After the Vision Council in Peru, the Caravan spent a long season in Chile, and at the end of 2004, we organized a Vision Council in the hearth of Santiago de Chile, “The Call of the Rainbow,” which was not a rainbow gathering, but a reunion at a Peace Village, of the different movements from that country, under some very different bases than the traditional “rainbows.”

Early in 2005, we held another bioregional event, creating a temporary Peace Village at a botanical park in Viña del Mar, The Call of the Aconcagua, a name in respect to the biggest mountain and guardian of South America, bringing this time together more than 500 representatives from the different bioregions of Chile.

After this event, the Caravan began a long journey to traverse the north of Chile and the high Andes; Argentina from west to east, and south all the way to Tierra del Fuego, the uttermost end of the inhabited hemisphere. From there we crossed Uruguay and a large part of the Brazilian territory, to reach in time the central state of Goias, where the Call of the Beijaflor was planned to happen in the month of September.

We had huge expectations about this international Vision Council in Brazil, being aware that the communitarian movement in this country is way ahead than all the rest of Latin America, including Mexico, and that there is a Brazilian history of 28 years of annual gatherings called ENCA´s.

ENCA stands for National Encounters of either Alternative, Anarchistic or Arcoiris (rainbow) Communities, and this movement began in 1978, as a way to bring together people from the back to the land rural communities, for a couple of weeks every year, to share experiences, celebrate life and strengthen their organic loose network across the country.

These informal, free gatherings have met in many different states from Brazil, and they contribute to unite people interested in debating and learning on subjects such as ecological agriculture, intentional communities, holistic health therapies and education, solar energy, clean technologies, environment, trade and sustainable economies, etc.

ENCA is part of ABRASCA, the Brazilian Association of Alternative Communities, which has included in this almost three decades of existence, not only rural intentional communities, but also weaves together with several urban collectives and living cooperatives in various cities of Brazil.

Besides ABRASCA, another sets of alternative communitarian networks exist that identify: One more with ENA and GEN, another more with the various Institutes of Permaculture, a third one with the World Peace Movement for Change of the Calendar and their “Peace gardens,” and a fourth one, which includes a large variety of religious and spiritual communes or ashrams. From followers to Osho´s teachings, to devotes of the Santo Daime who use the sacred medicine plant of ayahuasca, to Trigerinho´s brotherhoods or planetary centers for a “new humanity.”

In 1998, disciples from Bill Mollison , Ali Sharif, André and Fernando Soares Carlos Miller, João Rockett and Lucy Legan among others, created and began publishing the magazine Permacultura Brasil, with the support of the International Permaculture Research Institute in Australia, and also from GEN. The emphasis from the beginning was to offer some important tools of change to the communitarian network, and to help bridge among the historical ENCA and the more recently introduced ENA to Brazil.

The Rede Brasileira de Permacultura originated from this effort, and several Institutes were born from this initiative: IPA Instituto de Permacultura da Amazonia, IPEC, Instituto de Permacultura e Ecovilas do Cerrado, IPAB, Instituto de Permacultura Austro Brasileiro, IPEP, Instituto de Permacultura e Ecovilas da Pampa, IPOEMA , Instituto de Permacultura, Ecovilas e Meio Ambiente, IPERS. Instituto de Permacultura e Ecovilas do Rio do Sul, among others.

Arriving to Alto Paraíso, the nearest town to the site of the Chamado do Beijaflor, we got even more encouraged as that whole area became the Mecca from many alternative groups since the seventies, when the first groups of city hippies, environmental activists and spiritual seekers left their hometowns to create their centers, ashrams and intentional communities in this privileged bioregion do Cerrado.

The organizing committee of the gathering was formed by the Caravan, la Rede Ahimsa BusOm Ganesh- another nomadic group doing events in behalf of the 13th Moon World Peace Movement in Brazil, and people from La Flor de Ouro, our hosts, members from a local ecovillage in the afro Brazilian town of Muinho, to which were added the people from IPOEMA and IPERS. In early September, not more than 40 committed people, we got together, uniting our resources, ready to set a temporary Peace Village for more than a thousand artivists from all over the planet.

The challenge was difficult, due to weather extreme conditions, heavy epidemics of diarrhea and skin infections, invasions of flies and other local insects, but especially because of the lack of previous experiences of this kind of events in Brazil. Raves, rainbow gatherings, both national and international, Social Forums in Porto Alegre and ENCA´s were the only precedents, and our Vision Council proposals were not clearly exposed in the invitation.

Hundreds of mostly young people and street craft vendors filled the camping grounds, expecting it to be just another big, two weeks fiesta in the middle of Mother Earth, but most were not prepared for the kind of event we had envisioned. Not many expected to contribute, either with money, food or voluntary work, but instead had great pretensions to be fed, diverted, taught, and taken care, without giving anything in exchange.

In spite of all of it, nearly 1000 got inscribed, and probably 200 or more came trough the inexistent gates, and profited from the full agenda we had anyway going on, day and night for 13 days at the end of September. Plenaries, ceremonies, workshops, vision councils, multicultural and educational activities went on, mostly as planned, with some necessary changes due to three days of heavy tropical storms, to which we were not at all prepared, but helped to clean the scene and dissipate egos, as it by the arts of a supreme magician: Mother Nature.

Representatives from hundreds of organizations from 36 different nations took part of this “living and learning” temporary ceremonial village, and had their first taste of what it is to deal with collective decision making in the plenary, having access to first hand practical workshops on the use consensus to facilitate any kind of meetings. The event was a great school to learn how to deal with sickness using alternative healing practices, as long as it became possible; with lack of participation in communal chores and shared self-responsibility, to try “other” economical models when dealing with local merchants and producers.

The fact that the Chamado took place, is in itself another success story on the Caravan, but also the fact that many people who takes part of Rede Brasileira de Permacultura, ENA Brazil, ABRASCA, the all South American 13 Moons Peace Movement, the Vision Councils from Mexico and Spain, the Amazonian bioregional network, the Santo Daime, the Krishna, the Rastafarian and Osho´s communities, among others, were part of the event. Stronger networks were born there, new alliances, and mostly, the realization that the more diversity we enjoy in our gatherings, the merrier and richer they can be in results. It takes some time to learn to live together with “others”, but those lessons are very necessary at a time when the Matrix is destroying our inner programs of “community” in behalf of pure individualism and materialism.

The Chamado do Beijaflor, which means in Portuguese the call of the hummingbird, has different possible translations in Spanish. Pica Flor can stand for “flower pecker,” Chupa Flor, for “flower sucker,” and Besa Flor, for “flower kisser.” Someway, symbolically I feel that at these in many ways marvelous and unique gathering, we had people who came to peck, those who came to suck, and finally those who came to kiss the flowers that grow in the Cerrado fields, mounts, waterfalls and crystal paths of the Chapada dos Veadeiros.

This reflects our different attitudes in confronting both Nature, and human relationships. Some of us raise our prodding rods and relate to “the other” on the defensive, always ready to attack or to defend ourselves, thus creating an ambience of war and competitiveness around us most of our lives.

Some others of us are eternal suckers, and we assume that “the other” is there just to provide for us and satisfy our needs or desires, without having to give nothing back in exchange. We create therefore around us a society of dependent arrogant parasites that end up devouring our communal resources without thinking in either tomorrow or the next generations.

And -unfortunately,- just a few of us, we go around kissing each other, gently kissing leaves or trees, birds and pets; kissing sunsets, deserts, high peaks and waterfalls with our senses, our emotions and our actions. Caring and nurturing life, spreading love, faith, hope, respect and service for each other. Building a better tomorrow for all life forms based in cooperation and service.

The Vision Councils held at the temporary Peace Villages are a reflection of some of our best and worst attitudes, and a great scenario or mirror hall where we can reflect on each other, and learn to become better or worst human beings. A living school, and the ground from which we can harvest the seeds of change we need, to take along to our communities, working places, schools, the streets, the institutions or our homes.

The Caravan has for almost ten years now, been an experimental space for many volunteers from all over the planet to learn how lo live more gently on the surface of the Earth and to become better equipped keepers of the future. Right now, as I write this, we have presented the National Ministry of Culture of Brazil a project to take our experience as an international “Nomadic Point of Culture” for an official tour, visiting several dozens of local cultural centers, sharing our values and learning from the variety of manifestations that offer this magnificent country.

By the time this note will be published in the next issue of Communities, if this project is accepted we will have the support of an official institution to do what we have been doing on our own, for the first time in a decade. It is a giant leap, because it implies not only that we will get their recognition, but that other mobile projects could do the same, here and in other countries as well.

Part of our long effort in this journey across sixteen countries in the Americas, has been to change some of the prejudices from which usually “nomadic people” suffer from the hands and laws not only from institutions, but from the same alternative movement as a whole.

In a world changing at faster and faster speed, new forms of mobile artivism, taken to the furthermost communities, urban favelas, rural, intentional and indigenous traditional communities, seem to be not only a realistic proposal, but one to be more developed, supported and sustained at large. We encourage you all there to think about it and share with us your ideas, experiences and own suggestions. Good roads to you all, from the hearth of Brazil. Always, el Subcoyote Alberto