This essay was originally published by the good people at Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place and Nature in August 2026 for their 18th issue entitled ‘Belonging’. Follow Panorama for reportage from other diverse authors and upcoming collaborations with The End of Tourism. A deep bow to Adele for her editorial poise and guidance.

The year was 2016. I had just given up on a decade of wanderlust, uprooting my life in Toronto to ‘start over’ in Oaxaca City. Like many young foreigners arriving in foreign lands, I moved into a sharehouse — this one, a lime-green, four-story beast at the edge of the historic centre. My roommates worked days, so I took advantage of the quiet rooftop terrace as often as I could. One afternoon up there, I put down my book and gazed out over the city, the rugged sierras, and the blistered storm clouds rolling in from the east. I took a drag of my cigarette and wondered, Given all the places I could be in the world, what am I doing here? Will I stay? Will this last?

As a teenager in Toronto at the turn of our century, the child of immigrant parents, I watched as the city’s precarious economic trajectory and spiritual malaise grew alongside its popularity. My friends and I revelled in the last great years of the Queen West strip, with its independent clothing stores, music venues, tattoo parlours, and affordable, worldly eateries. One bright spring morning, strolling down the strip, I was shocked to see only one of the many alternative jewellery stands that, for years, had lined the sidewalk.

“What happened?” I asked the silversmith. She turned to me, looking properly pissed, as if forced to repeat the same lament yet again: “The city’s kicking us out. They’re culling the artisans from the block. Permanently. I’m the last one.” The bitterness was palpable if not contagious. For me, it was the nail in the culture’s coffin, housing the skeleton of the city I grew to love and eventually leave.

Despite the real and celebrated cosmopolitanism of the Big Smoke, it was the creeping cultural homelessness of the times that seared and settled into my bones. It was the lack of belonging that led me, in my twenties, to undertake a decade of wanderlust. Like any story of fools rushing in, there was frenzy, freedom, novelty and illusion. From destination to destination, I lived out a long honeymoon that morphed into routine, entitlement, eventual doubt, denial, and finally divorce. As the years and passport stamps piled on, the spiritual road rust swelled, and I found myself at the end of the line.

In early 2014, I was halfway through yet another solitary backpacking trip, this time my first foray into southern Mexico. As the searing sun of the day abated, I dragged myself up to the rooftop terrace of the hostel I was staying at in Oaxaca City. To the east, the face of the half-millennia-old church staring back; to the west, the Cerro del Fortin looming large. At the long communal table, I met a woman from the Netherlands, a fellow traveller, also circling thirty. Her wide white face and blonde hair were framed by the massive magenta bougainvillaea hovering over her. As the light of the stars stiffened, the screech of battered buses on the street below gave way to the familiar diatribe of wanderers wondering why they seek out other cultures, other worlds, and other ways of being, so far from home. We spoke of the glorious sights and peak experiences encountered abroad, contending with how, for most solo travellers, this means having no one with whom to share.

As the conversation drew to a close, she leaned in and asked, solemnly and sincerely, “Are you lonely?”

Stilled and unsettled, I sat silent. The question branched into countless others in my mind, and as it did, I tried everything in my power to avoid admitting the obvious: I was not sure, anymore, where I belonged. At that moment, I was not sure that I ever did.

After a decade on the road, the work-travel-repeat cycle had become a perpetual Groundhog Day: my seeking would never end. Recognising this dead end and knowing the pressure of survival in the big city was killing me, I decided to follow the route of my people before me, taking up the mantle of ‘migrant’. I spun the globe and pressed my finger down upon it — perhaps to make the world stop spinning so violently. It landed, as I did soon thereafter, in the Land of the Sun.

Recalling all of this years later on the rooftop terrace of what had become my new home, as the midday heat and haze hovered, I took another drag of my cigarette. In the mere months that my migration had granted me, my orbit slowed. My sight shifted to see what I couldn’t previously, to clarify what is often terminally out of focus when one is constantly on the move. Exhaling, I thought, I just need to be somewhere. Instead of anywhere, instead of everywhere. I need to stop imagining that the world revolves around my expectations of it. So I stayed put here, and the longer I did, the more the question of ‘where I belong’ expanded to encompass a notion of ‘where we belong’ and of ‘how we belong.’

About a year after that fateful afternoon, a group of friends and foreigners had gathered on that sharehouse rooftop, four stories above the tremor-bound ground, sipping mezcal and swigging beers. A few months earlier, the seemingly impossible had occurred: Donald Trump had been elected as head of state in El Gabacho, the country to the north. During the fiesta, an older man from California, unknown to me, had arrived in town. He was, not unlike me, a recent transplant.

At some point, the man was asked, as all such migrants typically are, what he was doing there. My ears perked, listening from a distance. He took a drink and said, “I’m getting as far away from home and the politics there as I can.” A hush fell over the terrace. Heads strayed, eyes evaded. Some ignored him altogether, partaking in the subtle snobbery established expats sometimes assume: he was new here, and that alone disqualified him. Others clearly sympathised, commenting on the extreme sociopolitical polarities, historical amnesia, institutional oppression, and illusions that have long pervaded the ‘land of opportunity’. At no point, however, did anyone mention how they had either arrived or stayed in Oaxaca for similar reasons, just as no one brought up the ways in which places suffer the consequences of out-migration. On that night, I was no exception.

Had anyone asked me during my wander years, I would have told them my desire to travel originated in the places I was going, not the place I was leaving. But sitting on that rooftop in the weeks after the Californian’s confession, I began to see that my years of part-time backpacking had been a subconscious attempt to stay lost — to avoid anchoring myself here and now. I had been searching for belonging in places where I didn’t belong, mostly to avoid reckoning with its absence at home. In Oaxaca — a place that draws many such escape artists — I finally turned the affliction into an inquiry: what is this crater in my soul where a sense of belonging ought to sit, and where did it come from?

*****

In the decades before my arrival, Oaxaca had quietly become a sanctuary for migrant retirees from the USA. By the 2010s, it wasn’t just older folk anymore. Younger people began arriving from other countries, working for NGOs, running tour groups, and setting up shop. As word got out, the city started popping up on top-ten travel lists, in National Geographic articles and Netflix specials. Sensing the consequences, I began to research the history of tourism. What I found revealed what few here were willing to acknowledge, that home, for Oaxacan people, was being transformed into a destination.

Following the emergence of the MAGA movement, conditions in the north grew harsher and more divisive. The pandemic only deepened the transnational question of belonging. As Mexico was one of only two countries to refuse travel restrictions on foreigners entering the country, we watched as the migratory floodgates opened to people of all political backgrounds, many echoing the sour sentiment our Californian guest had uttered years before. They came, demasked, and settled, as tens of thousands of people here remained sick and dying.

The faces of foreigners became a major spectacle in the centro histórico, not to mention a source of resentment for locals. Dreaming of dollar signs, Oaxacan landlords turned their homes into short-term rentals, while real estate agents, often in tandem with local governments, expropriated farms and common lands for housing developments. They were joined by an influx of foreign, petite-bourgeoisie investors and digital nomads who hoped to cash in on ‘a better life’. Unsurprisingly, this has produced rapid gentrification, the old haunts and houses of culture replaced by hipster-chic restaurants and cafes that local people can’t afford to step foot in.

As locals are uprooted from their neighbourhoods, they are uprooted, too, from the sense of belonging those neighbourhoods once produced. As landlords raise rents and prices climb, working people are pushed to the city’s peripheries — pushed to forsake decades-long relationships with neighbours, pushed to forge anew the quiet acts of belonging, of being and becoming-together, that barrio life demands. That is, assuming the displacement-driven dynamics don’t follow them there. But places that welcome ‘expats’ often find that the newcomers, without realising it, reproduce the very forces of displacement they were fleeing in the first place.

Such calamities are not unique to Oaxaca or Toronto. They are inseparable from the upheavals of modern migration and extractive tourism economies. Deep within the footprints of our contemporary movements, however, lies the question of locality, of home, of what it means to belong to a place, and what the lack or loss of belonging in a place does to a people. In our time, it unveils economic growth and passport privilege as factors driving the loss of belonging that marks the modern condition.

*****

Today, we use the term ‘belonging’ to refer to ‘a close or intimate relationship’, usually to a place or people. The verb ‘to belong’, however, means ‘to be suitable, appropriate, or advantageous’, in the way that a vegetable belongs in our vegetable crisper, or a car belongs in our garage. And yet, we also use the word ‘belong’ to describe ‘the property of a person or thing’. Among modern people who have long been subjected to private property, wage/rent slavery, and neoliberal capitalism, belonging typically implies possession or ownership.

For example, we might say, “I belong to a place or community.” And yet, this might be the only time in the English language in which a thing or person, belonging to another, is spoken of in this way. We might say, “the cat belongs to me”, but we never imagine the cat believing that it belongs to its owner. Unless we’re speaking of relationships of bondage, we rarely, if ever, say “I belong to another person.” This is because our language whispers that belonging, if achieved, can never be decided by the person seeking to belong. If we belong to a place or community, it is the place or community that decides whether we belong, usually after the fact, usually as a result of one’s degree of service. If ‘belonging’ has come to imply ownership, even slavery, is it possible then to reconcile the notion with something worthy of the worlds we wish to live in? Perhaps, there is something about belonging that indeed requires a sincere surrender to something beyond the individual and the histories that’ve planted each as the only honourable sites of discernment.

For many years, the doors of the Universidad de la Tierra (Unitierra), a space of learning, study, reflection, and action, were open to the public for its mythic Wednesday afternoon seminars. There, in 2016, I met Gustavo Esteva, the late Unitierra co-founder and deprofessionalized intellectual, a man who later became a dear friend and mentor. As a motley crew of mostly local activists, young and old, filed into the nondescript, two-story building, Gustavo spoke of how, in Oaxaca’s pueblos, belonging is often understood as the fulfilled, fertile consequence of comunalidad. This term, which loosely translates as ‘communality’, he explained, “is understood as a way of life that is bound to how a people constantly, consciously, and collectively weave anew their social fabric. This means that shared duties must be accomplished through communal organising.” In other words, belonging arises from a people’s willingness to understand their mutual lives and work within an ecological web of relations that connects them to the land they live on.

In the years following Gustavo’s talk, I’ve had the honour of working in many coffee-producing villages in Oaxaca. As we traversed the precipitous paths through the steep cloudforests, the coffee farmers, alongside my colleague, agronomist Salomón (whom everyone addressed respectfully as “Don Salomón”), spoke proudly of their communal governance and responsibilities. One day, after a long morning in the forest gardens, we sat down for a bowl of caldo de pollo and tortillas. Sipping his soup, Salomon summarised the situation for me: “In the pueblos, comunalidad entails making decisions democratically in participatory assemblies, taking on the tasks of the local administration without pay, what we call ‘servicio’, engaging in communal work parties or ‘tequios’, and participating in local fiestas, rites and ceremonies.” For the pueblos that practice comunalidad, belonging is not understood as an individual possession or achievement, but rather something that emerges from the enduring and reciprocal health and livelihood of comm-unity, lest it be compromised or corrupted.

In response, I explained that there was nothing remotely close to comunalidad practised in the neighbourhoods I knew in Canada. “Our sense of belonging is tied to the nation, to ideology, professions, family, or sports teams. ‘Community’ has become something that binds people together based on demographic similarities rather than the neighbourhoods they live in. The term,” I told him, “had come to describe what people are, rather than where they are, or how they are with others.” Rolling his tortilla and dipping it in his broth, he nodded and murmured in a way that only years later did I recognise as a subtle gesture of hospitality that acknowledges but refuses to evaluate the dilemmas of the other.

Back in the city, on very rare occasions, Gustavo’s friend, the Zapotec elder Jaime Martínez Luna, would make the trip from his mountain home to join the Unitierra seminars. As Don Jaime writes in his book, Eso que llaman comunalidad, comunalidad “originates in the history of dispossession; in the forced relationship we have maintained with the territories left to us by the conquest and the voracious exploitation of the land. In other words, comunalidad is also a product of resistance to colonial history.” Comunalidad, then, is not some prototypical, original attribute of indigenous people. Through emergent and diverse forms of democratic mutual aid, the constant renovation of home cradles the communal confrontation with legacies of displacement, rooting people in place together.

None of this precludes modern people from learning how to belong. Rather, taken up alongside the histories of exile that run through our ancestries — the ones that often mark us as descendants of both settler and unsettled — comunalidad can offer us an example of how things might be otherwise. It calls for a great remembering, an act of solidarity with people who share similar histories, and a path toward the ecological restoration and intercultural reconciliation deeply required in our times.

The concept and crucible of comunalidad hints that our lack of belonging is not a product of the individual but of the culture, or more acutely, the loss of culture. If belonging is dependent on communality, if community is crafted by the ability to belong together, and if modern people are both victims and vehicles of the historic and systematic subversion of community, then we can begin to understand where our work is to be done — in the acts of making kin, of making culture, and making community.

Paraphrasing the provocations that Don Gustavo and Don Jaime often laid at our feet, we could ask how an art of belonging might be reconvened, not as the basis for individual well-being, but as a skill of (re)making home in the presence of all we’ve lost by being thrust from ours, whether at present or ancestrally. What if belonging weren’t a feeling, but a function of serving a place long enough and well enough, such that communality replaces exile as the currency the culture traffics in? What if the ability to belong requires focusing our eyes and ears toward what is required of us in our time, and doing so with those we live alongside? Or, at the very least, creating the conditions through which such possibilities can be courted and conjured.

Over the years, I’ve often returned to those rooftop terrace revelations and the roommates that I held dear in those first couple of years here. A handful of them were present the night the older man from California made his confession. Some chose to return home independently, to places experiencing political turmoil. Each returned to work in service of the grassroots cultures, soils, and watersheds of the places they still recognised as home.

By going home, these friends understood what was needed of them in their time — not what they desired or deserved. Such a choice is rare. They have returned to work for their local communities, to practise what bell hooks called a ‘love ethic’: not only for home, but for all those who might come to inherit it. From time to time we reconvene and reminisce, and though we miss each other, I find myself humbled by their choice — by the way they are crafting belonging from longing, refusing to pass on to future generations what has already cost so much.

When we recall Timothy Leary’s famous line, “find the others,” prodding us towards our collective obligations, we can recognise in these young people about whom he was speaking. These friends, ones that I am blessed to have, are sitting with neighbours, young and old, forging the neighbourhood, perhaps wondering what happened to the ones who had to get away. Hearing such stories in their own circles, perhaps people like me would be less likely to escape, knowing that ‘the others’ are neighbours, working in solidarity with local movements and collective memory to strengthen the neighbourhood, and the communality and belonging that can arise from each.

The reality, however, is not so black-and-white. The ease with which foreigners arrive in places like Oaxaca is coupled with the ease with which they leave. Over the years, most of the friends I’ve made here have departed, returned home, just as countless Oaxacan comrades moved on to supposedly greener pastures. When we travel abroad to escape the crisis of belonging at home, the crisis isn’t magically mitigated. By virtue of our unwillingness or inability to root in a place and contend with the times, the crisis expands, often elsewhere. Despite the unprecedented spike in population and visitor numbers here, this place, like the one I grew up in, seems lonelier as a result.

*****

During my decade of wanderlust, I too became an escape artist. I joined the club. I was witness to a touring reality wherein fleeing what ails us doesn’t stop the thing from ailing, not at the wound, nor at the source. Tourism and migration are, sometimes, the names given to the soggy bandage of escapism that tries to cover up the gaping holes in the exilic culture back home. The modern myopia around the getaway means fewer people capable of learning the consequences and causes of their escapism. As a result of our lack of belonging, the care and comunalidad required for the places we live in is traded in for the illusion of a better life, while the real work — the homework — goes undone. Remedying the lack of belonging in modern life means looking inward — but only as a way into the larger question of community: what it has become, and what continues to dismantle it.

A decade into my migration, after bearing witness to its unfolding consequences, it’s become clear to me that we cannot belong to two places at once. Our presence in one inevitably means the other pays the price of our absence. This is a consequence that my migration has thrust upon both me and the families and friends in both Oaxaca and Toronto. And yet, the willingness to root, to live and love a place, can offer a foundation for our mutual belonging. Any element of our times that undermines this notion undermines the possibility of doing so, whether through tourism, migration, gentrification or landlordism.

Modern people inhabit exilic economies, inheriting vast histories of displacement. In that sense, we are all implicated in this shared loneliness, in this cultural homelessness that so often passes for freedom and autonomy. This can be understood either as affliction or as assignment — one that asks us to take up our shared responsibilities to the neighbourhood, to home in, find the others, to discover how it came to be this way, and work toward an art of belonging that seeds rather than subverts communality.

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This essay was originally published by the good people at Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place and Nature in August 2026 for their 18th issue entitled ‘Belonging’. Follow Panorama for reportage from other diverse authors and upcoming collaborations with The End of Tourism. A deep bow to Adele for her editorial poise and guidance.

On this episode, my guest is Lewis Winks, a researcher, writer and campaigner who specialises in nature connection, cultural and behavioural change, and has a background working in the environmental and outdoor education sector. He joins us on behalf of the Right to Roam campaign as well as the Stars Are For Everyone campaign, the latter which he helped spearhed to defend wild camping rights on Dartmoor.

Since 2021, Right to Roam has been organising peaceful trespasses into some of the vast areas of countryside from which the public are currently excluded. They follow the tried and tested access code which governs Scotland’s right of responsible access, respecting privacy, crops and nature – all while seeking to leave a positive trace and practising deep care for the natural world: a concept they call Wild Service. Their vision is of a future countryside in which people not only enjoy the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of nature but serve as its guardians too.

Show Notes

• Right to Roam’s origins (Guy Shrubsole & Nick Hayes)

• The Stars Are For Everyone (Dartmoor National Park)

• The right to wild camp in England

• The commons and the enclosures

• Taking back trespass

• The shadow places of fortress conservation

• Wild service

• Levellers and landlordism

• Deifying dispossession

• The community right to buy

• International solidarity

Homework

• Right to Roam UK - Website - Instagram - Twitter - BlueSky

• Wild Service (Book)

• The Book of Trespass

• Who Owns England?

• Val Plumwood

• Survival International

  • S3 #2 | Decolonizing Conservation in Africa & Beyond | Fiore Longo (Survival International)

  • S5 #5 | Fortress Conservation in the Congo w/ Martin Lena & Linda Poppe (Survival International)

• International Land Coalition

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Lewis, to the End of Tourism Podcast.

Lewis: Good to be here. Hello, Chris.

Chris: Yeah. I’d like to thank you for your willingness to join me today on behalf of your comrades and colleagues at Right to Roam, as well as those of The Stars Are For Everyone. And I’d like to begin by asking you where you’re tuning in from today and what the world looks like there for you.

Lewis: Well, I’m currently in South Devon, where I live in the southwest of England. And I live in a town called Totnes, which is just on the edge of Dartmoor National Park. But the town that I live in has grown up around a river - the River Dart. And so that’s a short walk from where I live.

And, yeah, obviously, the river’s shaped this place, from its headwaters up on Dartmoor, all the way down to the kind of rugged coast. So, I feel very lucky that, not far from where I live, there’s a whole range of [00:01:00] landscapes, but not without their challenges.

Chris: Yeah, certainly. I remember, not just a few years ago, I was there in Totnes, visiting for the first time, and I had the great honour of getting to explore Dartmoor as well, in a place not too far from where some of my old ones are from, in Devon, in Exeter.

Lewis: It’s a great place. I mean, Dartmoor is, on global standards, a very tiny national park, really, but I think for people like myself that live near it, to have this kind of expansive space to be able to walk for days sometimes in this sort of landscape, seemingly without boundaries, without walls, without fences, is amazing, in what feels like quite a contained landscape, a kind of patchwork of fields and enclosures. And so, a lot of people are drawn to Dartmoor because of its openness. But that also is an issue, I think. A lot of us here that live in this area are very much working on ecological [00:02:00] issues and challenges, and lots of those are found up in the national park.

Chris: Well, would we all be so lucky to have such spaces to walk and roam. On that point, I’d like to ask you if you’d be willing to offer our listeners a little bit about what your organisation, The Right to Roam (in the UK), does there and your role in the organisation.

Lewis: Sure, yeah. Well, the Right to Roam campaign, I mean, we’ve been established only for a few years in our current format, really. We were born out of the pandemic. We were formed principally by two of the co-founders of the campaign, Guy Shrubsole and Nick Hayes, who had both written books at the time and sat together around a kitchen table in 2020.

Nick had written a book called The Book of Trespass, which kind of brought into public conversation this kind [00:03:00] of idea that there are places we are not supposed to be and not allowed to go, and challenging the kind of “why,” asking that question of, “Why is this? What’s the historical context for our exclusion from landscapes? And through a series of adventures and walks into landscapes, he challenged that in his book. And it’s an amazing primer, really, I think, for something that a lot of us take as a given, which is that we live in the corridors, really, between these vast estates here in England and in Wales, and we’re excluded from much of the land. And so, it was quite a game-changing book, really, to sort of start to question that kind of assumption, that if you step off those narrow corridors, you are trespassing.

And then in the meantime, Guy had written a book called Who Owns England?, asking questions of, “ Who does the land belong to? Who owns the title deeds? And really, most of us don’t know. I mean, the government doesn’t even really know who owns lots of land. And so, Guy embarks on this project, which he’s been working on now [00:04:00] for the last decade or so, to try to find out and try to get more transparency, and really to bring about more democracy in how land is managed and how decisions are made, and really who has a stake in the land in England.

And so these were kind of natural collaborators, really. And they sat around this table, and they formed this campaign called Right to Roam, which was really just to ask a simple question, which is, “Why do we not have a right of access to land in England?” And to call for new legislation for greater rights of access so that people can feel they have a greater stake in the landscapes around us.

So we’re a small team. We’re a very much a grassroots campaign. We’re not backed by big funders. We don’t have any office space. We’re just distributed across England, Wales and Scotland. And then, there are just six of us in the kind of core team. But we also have a network of almost [00:05:00] 20 local groups of people who are doing just amazing active work on the ground within communities to push for access reform.

And we’re funded by about 650 of those supporters who just give a small amount every month. So we’re really just beholden to the people that are pushing for these kinds of changes. And we think we’re getting somewhere. The conversation is shifting, socially and politically. We’ve still got somewhere to go, but we’re hoping to bring about that change in law before too long.

Chris: Hmm. Thank you, Lewis. And what drew you personally to the organisation?

Lewis: Well, I live, as I said, down in Devon, and one of the things that happened back in 2022, was that one of the larger landowners in Dartmore National Park decided that he was gonna challenge this historic right that we have here, which is very unusual in England - the right to sleep out under the [00:06:00] stars, the right to wild camp, out in this kind of amazing landscape of Dartmoor.

So, this landowner, Alexander Darwall, took the national park to court, and I was one of a few people who got together in the early days of that court case and said, “Right, we need to campaign on this. We need to stand up for these historic customary rights that have existed here and that have given so many people, these beautiful life-shaping experiences over generations.” And he was trying to snub them out. And so we thought, “let’s campaign on this.”

We set up a campaign called “The Stars Are for Everyone,” to protect those rights, but also to kind of say, “ Well, isn’t it just mad that these rights only exist in this tiny corner of England? Shouldn’t they exist also elsewhere?”

Our intention right from the beginning of that campaign was to transform a court case that was about defending a set of rights into something which was really about taking a giant leap forward and putting in place something much [00:07:00] better for people in the future. And over the course of three years, that campaign was really dynamic, creative, and brought together loads of people.

We actually lost the right to wild camp in early 2023. The landowner was successful in overturning that right in the High Court. And just one week after that court decision, we got together with three and a half thousand people up on quite a remote part of Dartmoor, probably one of the biggest land rights protests that we’ve seen since the 1930s in England. And, the voices of those people were really just... I mean, the ripples went out far and wide. I mean, we were sort of met with international support and interest. And, politically, overnight, it changed the conversation on access in England.

And, really to fast forward to the present day after two more court cases, including it being escalated to the Supreme [00:08:00] Court, unanimously in the Supreme Court, the judges agreed that the case should never have been brought. And actually, then, we were able to reassert those rights as they had already existed.

And so, not only have we got those rights back, we are now in a much better position, we think, to call for those rights elsewhere. And so my campaigning with the Right to Roam campaign really was kind of came out of this campaign for wild camping, to sleep under the stars.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Wow. Wow, I remember, I think that was probably the thing that really drew me, for the first time, to the organisation and the work that you and your team are doing there in England, was through the social media awareness that the storyteller Martin Shaw was bringing to that campaign. Really amazing. And so, I wish nothing but blessings upon your feet and your work. It’s incredibly important, and perhaps, a kind of [00:09:00] pioneering way of bringing this kind of organising and this kind of awareness to other places in the world where such access is also needed.

But before we dig deeply into that work, I’d like to perhaps offer a little bit of context for our listeners in terms of the history of access in the UK to what is often referred to as “the commons.” And so, I’m wondering if you would be willing to offer a bit of historical background about what we mean when we talk about “the commons” in the English language and the history of the enclosures of the commons, that, for English people, is a kind of history that is all too well known, but for the rest of the world might be obscure.

Lewis: Hmm. Well, sure. I mean, the commons, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people in England, really, this is not part of our lexicon, and our understanding [00:10:00] of the land.

And, I think that demonstrates really just how effective the loss of commons has been here, is that there’s not a broad understanding of what they were or what they are. But the commons really are... I mean, we’re talking about a form of governance, a form of collective stewardship and governance for a place that transcends ownership. Commons are about how we relate to a place, and the rights that go with that place. And so, if we look at kind of property rights today, often those property rights exclude anybody who doesn’t have their name on the title deed of the property.

But yet, that’s not always been the case. And certainly, we can still see today in England, and elsewhere globally, systems that acknowledge rights of others, and not just humans, but also kind of more-than-human rights. So in England, if you’ve gone back to the 1500s, [00:11:00] half of England or thereabouts, (it’s difficult to be precise with this) would’ve had some form of common property understanding, or a kind of tapestry of rights that went with it. And that might have been rights to take firewood and fuel from land to dig peat, to graze animals, to put your pigs out to pannage for acorns. And these rites would’ve been particular to the landscapes that they were in. So, commoning rights were not the same everywhere. They were responsive to the wider kind of contexts, and today that figure is more like 3% of England. So, a diminishment of the commons in England has been part of our history here, and also part of the history which has affected almost the entire globe as well through colonial activities. But in England, really, this kind of experiment in sort of uprooting and unearthing cultures [00:12:00] that are deeply tied to the land was almost entirely effective at removing people’s stake in land and in shoring up the rights of property owners.

So, our commons, as they did exist, were fundamental to communities, were fundamental to how people sought to make a living, but also there were other things within that because commoning was about being on land that you didn’t own. So with that came other things, which perhaps were taken for granted, which today we might call “recreation,” “being idle under a tree, watching the sunset”, and having those kinds of experiences. Now, we’ve kind of partitioned them off and put them into national parks and kind of put them in our holiday time, and things we might do when we’re on vacation as tourists. But actually, for commoners, presumably, people were spending their time with the pigs out to pannage, thinking about other things, in conversation, meeting their neighbours under trees, doing things which were convivial.

And so, [00:13:00] the erasure of the commons in England, and the enclosure acts, which sort of set about to diminish the commons and put them more firmly into private ownership, was also about a loss of community and people’s stake in landscapes and also their ability to kind of relate to one another.

But I should say as well that this obviously was very intentional. This was about looking at landscape through a kind of lens, a particular form of extraction, to take money from the land. It was also about control. It was about taking people, who, through that particular lens of industrialisation, seemed to be kind of labourers, their worth was kind of in the factories, it was not out on the land. And through mechanisation, as well, obviously, this was accelerated.

In the early days of the enclosures, there were anti-enclosure acts in England that sought to try to prevent some of the steamrolling over of what felt like a kind of a deep-rooted culture. But by the [00:14:00] 1600s, those anti-enclosure acts were pretty much repealed, and with them, any kind of opportunity to get back those commons was lost.

Loads and loads of rebellions took place to try to prevent that. And it’s really interesting to look back in English history at the richness of rebellion and how it was kind of linked to how people relate to land. Looking at this today, it’s sort of fairly plain to see that there’s a disconnection between people and place. And I think that that kind of keenness to reconnect is a really vital ingredient for how we can kind of push back against some of the more damaging systems that we see around us.

But people were rioting against the loss of rights to be able to put pigs out amongst woods that were being enclosed for the private laws, hunting rights. And there were many, many rebellions which took place by poachers, by people that were kind of deemed to be [00:15:00] poachers, who were kind of subject to some of the most harsh laws against them. And actually, a lot of the way in which criminality is portrayed now in England comes directly from the fact that they were trying to clamp down on how property was being challenged by people that have been dispossessed from something that was seen as a common good.

Chris: Wow. There’s so much there in the way that traditional peoples in England previously would’ve stewarded the lands that they lived on, even though they didn’t own them, per se, and how the enclosure of those lands also led to this degree of, I would say anyways, historically, tourism wherein, the longing to gather as a community or as a group of people, in a place in order to, as you said, even just sit idle under a tree, to learn about the place that one lives in, or other places. That tourism largely took up that mantle [00:16:00] as an industry, as a way of commodifying that human longing toward being together in a place, largely outside of strict work hours. But even during them as well. And of course, the history of tourism is such that, through the enclosures, there was a schism, as you said, that brought people into the towns and cities to work as workers, essentially, rather than stewards of land.

And then their “leisure time” was also separated in order to find ways in which that longing could be fulfilled, but through the industrial means of bringing people in mass to the beach or to forests, to other lands.

And we’ll get to that in a moment, that notion of the kind of colonial and neo-colonial enclosures that today show up as national parks or reserves. But you did mention this rich [00:17:00] history of trespass in England. And on The Right to Roam website, it says that, “it’s fair to say that none of the limited access rights established in recent generations has been won without the willingness of ordinary people to cross the lines of property.”

And so, it seems to me that the work that Right to Roam is doing is picking up those anti-enclosure movements of previous centuries and bringing them into the contemporary milieu. And so, I’m curious how you imagine or how you think notions of trespass might be understood and utilised as forms of resistance to the enclosures or privatisation of common lands.

Lewis: Well, trespass in England is part of civil law, so if you trespass, it’s not criminal. It’s not a criminal act. So the police can’t be called, as long as you’re not causing damage. So, in fact, it’s just between you and the landowner.

And I think one of the first things that we try [00:18:00] to do as a campaign when we’re speaking to whether it’s new groups, or people that are kind of joining us, is to say, well, actually in custom and in history, we have this right. We have this right to be on land, and that it’s only really through a kind of spell that we’ve been put under this kind of narrative that we’ve been told that we don’t have a right to land. That we don’t go there. And so, one of the main forms of action that we take as a campaign is to trespass, is to cross those lines which feel like they’re kind of physical lines when you look at a map or where you see a barbed wire fence. But actually, as soon as you cross them, they become quite arbitrary, but also political.

And we try to politicise it as much as we can, because if we take it for a given that we’re excluded, then we will just remain excluded. So, it’s both empowering and also quite an undertaking really to trespass and to do that together is one of the most empowering things you can do as a group or as a community, to go to the places that we’re told we don’t [00:19:00] have a right to be, but yet when you go there, it suddenly doesn’t really make sense that you are excluded.

And actually, quite often, as a campaign, we’re able to go to places and to learn more about them and to learn more about our landscapes just outside of the towns and cities that we live in, to feel more connected to them. And, in a lot of cases actually do work for the betterment of places as well.

I mean, often we’re kind of reporting illegal rubbish dumps or seeing where damaging, invasive ecological species have taken hold and or reporting pollution in rivers. And I think it is part of the work of our campaign to help people feel that they can be a part of these places.

And as you’ve mentioned, this idea that tourism is this kind of leisure time activity that we do that feels quite extractive, actually. There’s something that we can do, which is about giving back as well, and giving back to our communities. And, [00:20:00] so yeah, it’s about crossing lines, and it’s about kind of challenging the politics that play there, but it’s also just simply about reclaiming something that has historically been a cement that’s held communities together.

And what we find, I think, is that across the political spectrum, in various sectors and quarters, people just see that as common sense. I mean, it’s interesting being part of a campaign that is at once radical as well as being, actually, just people get it, and they want to support it. And that has really helped us, I think, make headway and make progress, because we think we make quite a good argument for why we need better access to land and why we need laws to support that. And we are receiving a good amount of support from many quarters.

Chris: Thank you for illustrating that. I remember as a child in Toronto going into the valleys there and the [00:21:00] creeks, and there’s, thankfully, a large system of public lands, but of course, there was some areas where you would see signs, and it says “no trespassing,” and you would see this quite a bit, more so as you left the city. And there was this kind of subtle, imposed, instilled sense in me as a child that, like, “okay, obviously I can’t go here. But secondly, if I do, then I am not just a guest or a visitor, I’m a trespasser, I’m a criminal. Right?

And so to return to this question of the way that governments in the last centuries have taken common lands from people and kind of converted them into what we imagined to be better, pristine environments by virtue of there being no humans.

I’d like to broach this question with you because in our correspondence, you referred to, “the hidden damage done to landscapes, the displacement of damage [00:22:00] elsewhere in the name of conservation, creating pristine landscapes and how this plays out as a way to restrict land access as a rationale for exclusion, while we turn a blind eye to damage and exploitation.”

You write, “we can see this on a smaller scale with regard to estate and large farms or intensive agriculture in the UK, as well as on a global scale through supply chains and trace both back to a colonial mindset.”

And so, previously on the podcast, I’ve spoken with authors and activists in regard to conservation as a kind of neocolonization of land, both in Africa and in Asia, and we also see it in Scotland.

And so, I’m curious how this shows up in the UK and in the Right to Roam’s work. This notion that no humans means that somehow the ecologies of place are better off and that there seems to be hiding in these considerations, in these concepts, a kind of misanthropy, a kind of hatred [00:23:00] toward humans.

Lewis: Yeah, I mean, conservation I think has been doing amazing work, has also been doing some quite troubling work, I think, over the years. There’s no simple kind of response to this. Conservation by its very nature is about working in relationship with place, with people, and with the more-than-human world.

And I think like any relationships, those can be difficult and also fulfilling and beneficial and sometimes both. I think conservation as a movement, if you take a historical lens on this and obviously know, looking at it through a cultural perspective, taking in place, people, and history, and thinking about it as well, not just as a kind of a single place-based concern, but also kind of more broadly on a global scale, how conservation has evolved.

And it’s both evolved out of a kind of a controlling mindset, but also out of a kind of almost a palliative desire to sort of ease [00:24:00] the suffering of the natural world. And I think that that, when we look at it like that, there’s a kind of a deep trauma which conservation has been born from, which is that we’ve done such huge amounts of damage to other places, to other peoples, to our own homes, and our own landscapes here in England that our kind of desire to kind of remedy that is kind of caught up in a kind of traumatic relationship with place. And I think we’ve learned a lot and obviously come a long way from a kind of fortress conservation mindset, but I think that the kind of misanthropy, which has been present in conservation, still comes through sometimes.

I mean, we work as a campaign with so many amazing people working on the forefront of conservation, who are working very hard to try to transform and challenge the sector that they are working within. [00:25:00] But it’s kind of understandable that this history of exploitation and damage is kind of wrapped up with a desire to press the emergency button and say, “actually, we need to kind of take drastic measures here.” And for some people, that’s led them down the path of wanting a very exclusionary take on how we manage these places and these landscapes.

And I think that the other thing is that, what I was talking about in the correspondence that I sent to you, really, particularly inspired by the work of Val Plumwood, the amazing philosopher who took this kind of incredible view of conservation, linked it to what she called “shadow places.” The idea that actually, for every time that we create one of these kinds of islands of pristine habitat, whether it’s through exclusion or whether it’s through management, planning and whatever else, actually, there’s a whole world of things that we displace, and we neglect to see.

And we see that with our national [00:26:00] parks here in England. I think it’s interesting that Dartmoor, my nearest national park, is actually, historically, it is a very managed and very industrial landscape, yet it’s kind of like held up and revered as a place of ecological tranquillity.

I mean, it’s actually in quite a damaged state. But we see it more broadly, as well. We can see it through our supply chains in England and through food security, or what we might call food security, by basically exploiting other places, the minerals we use, the resources that we use.

So many of them come from landscapes that don’t have the same protections that we’re sort of overlaying onto landscapes here in England. So I think that it is a complex question. I think the fact that we are dealing with the kind of fallout of empire and the colonialization of other places and our exploitation of them leads us back to this sort of issue of actually “ how do we repair our relationship with land, with people? [00:27:00] How do we come to this through a lens of collaboration between people and place that’s not about, ‘this is for nature, this is for people’?”

And I think, one of the most concerning things I’ve seen happening in recent years, is this sort of resurgence of a neocapitalist economy in the countryside that’s sort of operating under the guise of wanting to protect, but actually is about excluding communities and excluding people. And some of the most amazing work that’s happening in England and Wales on Rewilding is about including people and ensuring that there is a joined-up approach between people, place, and ecology.

Chris: Thank you, Louis. Your professional background prior to working with Right to Roam was in outdoor and environmental education. And so I imagine that such work kind of flows fairly easily into raising awareness for public access to the commons. But it also seems to me that the [00:28:00] contemporary and commonplace relationships between people in the commons run through the government in the form of laws and regulations. And you write, “there are things you can do on public lands, and there are things you will get fined or arrested for.”

And so, a system based on allowances and punishment, a system of rights. But rights do not necessarily breed responsibility. And it can be argued that rights can undermine responsibility both on personal and collective levels. A central question that arises in the debate as to whether to repeal these prohibitions on access is that a people growing up in a culture of enclosure and hypermobility, such as most urban people do these days, tend to have no personal or peripheral example of what worthy stewardship looks like.

And so I’m curious, how does the Right to Roam team and perhaps other authors and activists you’ve come across contend with this notion? There’s a mention [00:29:00] on your website of the ability of people to offer “wild service,” and I’m curious what this means in the context of rights and responsibilities.

Lewis: Well, I don’t think that rights necessarily undermine responsibilities. I think badly designed rights can, but I think that, in a meaningful way, rights can give people a stake. They can really say to people, actually, “ this is something which belongs to you, and that’s worth defending.”

If people are only experiencing the countryside through prohibition, then clearly that’s gonna lead to a form of feelings of unwelcome. And I think that that kind of relationship with the countryside is damaging, and particularly, I think it damages the ideas of trust and our sense that we can actually learn to care for these places. And that’s deep set [00:30:00] within the culture, I think, that we’re part of. And one of the things, as you’ve highlighted, this challenge, which is also an opportunity, is for education. And not only do we have these very exclusionary laws, which prohibit us from accessing so much land. I mean, we’re talking about we only have access to 8% of England, and about 3% of our rivers. These places also only exist in particular parts of England and Wales. So there are vast parts of the country where the countryside might as well just be wallpaper.

And so, for so many people, access is a kind of an academic exercise. It’s this idea that you might be able to access it, or if you have a car, you can drive to a place. So I think there’s a lot of work to be done to give people the experiences that really build up that kind of culture of care, which I think... or “stewardship” is the word that you used.

Getting those laws in place, getting the right to roam legislation that we’re after, is the first step on the ladder. [00:31:00] And then the next step is maybe something like, “how do we put in place those systems of infrastructure and support, which we need to actually see more people in the countryside?” And some of those things might be about, “how do we get more school kids out?” I mean, even here near Dartmoor, the only place in England where you can sleep out under the stars, most of the kids in this area won’t have had that experience and probably will never have that experience. So how do we remedy things like that? How do we support schools to do more of that? How do we get more of our education systems, both formal and informal education systems, to embrace a culture of access?

In England, we can look north of the border to Scotland to see where such a system’s been in place since 2003, where the Scottish Land Reform Act was put in place, which gave people a default right of access to land and water in the country, which [with] sensible exceptions for things like privacy, wildlife, land with crops growing on it [00:32:00] and public safety, backed up by a code of responsibility. But that in itself is only just over 20 years old, as an act. So, culturally it’s still quite young, but it’s been a real success.

And then, we can look elsewhere. We can maybe look elsewhere in Europe, to Norway and to Sweden, for examples where, culturally, this is sort of something which is more deeply accepted. And there are many other examples, obviously from across Europe and globally, where there are different sets of rights that give people different sets of access and mobility within landscapes.

So I think all we’re trying to do really here in England is point to a way of being, which is about the structures of how we do that, but it’s also about our kind of mindset and how we relate to places.

And we can see that it’s entirely possible and preferable to the system that we have here today. So I think [00:33:00] that yes, rights in themselves are not the answer, but they are the kind of the bedrock on which we could build a whole world of possibility.

Chris: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Thank you, Lewis. I guess the question that I was trying to drive towards is this notion that’s come up quite a bit in the podcast, which is that tourism doesn’t necessarily begin once you get off a plane or a boat or a train. That tourism is a kind of lifestyle that seems to exist in the bedrock of the modern condition. And so how do we bring people into the possibility of something like “wild service” or stewardship when the vast kind of understanding of how we proceed towards quote “nature” or other communities is touristic in nature.

And so I’m curious, in the organising that you’ve done, when people have the opportunity to dig deeper into the histories of their lands, and the access to lands, and the [00:34:00] enclosure that access and the enclosure of the common lands in the UK, and when they start to see perhaps what’s possible by virtue of other people showing up, interested in the same research, in the possibility, the real possibility of things being otherwise, once people gathered together toward these possibilities, I’m curious what shows up for you among people who perhaps come from this more touristic sensibility.

Lewis: Yeah. Well, a couple of years ago, the campaign wrote a book, a collection of essays called “Wild Service,” which is sort of acts as a bit of a compass towards this kind of new narrative of beyond extractive tourism, beyond recreation even, towards something which we sort of playfully called “re-creation” sometimes, this sort of sense that, actually, there’s another way of doing this stuff. There’s another way of [00:35:00] being in new places and of experiencing nature places near to and beyond our home. And Wild Service really is about... the kind of the subtitle of the book is “Why Nature Needs You.” So it’s really kind of flipping this thing we were talking about earlier, which is that kind of a lot of conservation tends to focus in on, “ we desperately need nature, so we need to protect nature, and the way we do that is by excluding people.” And that’s not all of conservation, but that is a kind of prevailing mindset which has existed and is entrenched now.

So, wild service is trying to chart a different way, which is that we need to find this kind of peace, really. We are feeling that we can be active agents of benefit for the world around us. And there are some great examples. I mean, Paul Powlesland’s an amazing barrister activist, who lives in northeast London and is [00:36:00] guardian of the River Roding up there who kind of lives on the river in his boat, and is out on the river every day, normally waist-deep in the river, acting in service to clean that river up.

And it is in a mess. This river’s been a historic dumping ground for industry, and neglected by government and local authority over the years, and just trashed. And Paul is with a team of volunteers, working so hard to shine a light on that, but also just basically to clean it up, and to demonstrate how illegal rubbish dumps and illegal sewers are overflowing into it. And it’s become this flashpoint really for a wider conversation of concern.

And there are many other examples where, you know, on the River Wye, for example, on the border between Wales and England, which is one of the first rivers really to have its kind of legal rights asserted in England through the action of communities.

And we’re talking about wild swimmers and anglers and [00:37:00] kayakers and people who are kind of out on the river. And I think it’s no coincidence that the River Wye is also one of the only rivers in England where there is a legal right of access to swim and to connect with the river. And that people have seen it as a gift really, to then act on behalf of the river. And of course, then that’s playing out now.

The rights of nature are playing out globally. I mean Ecuador, being one of the kind of trailblazing, the constitution, embedding this. And I think acting as an inspiration for so many more communities to really take on board the rights of nature. And to see a kind of community activists stepping forward in wild service to do some of this work. And in cases like Paul, they often trespass whilst they’re doing it.

Chris: Yeah, I think there’s definitely this question of animism that comes into play, perhaps peripherally as well in these conversations, which is that, so many of our ancestors, at least at some point, [00:38:00] understood the more-than-human beings and worlds within their places as just as alive and deserving of a good life and dignity as humans are.

And that over the course of the last 500 years, at least, a degree of deanimation has occurred as a result of the enclosures. Certainly, you could get into the Cartesian philosophical questions, regarding who has a soul and who doesn’t. But I think there’s something deeply embedded there as well about the questions of, when we find ways to ensure that rivers, for example, or other aspects of the more-than-human world have rights, that we are trying to find a way back towards respecting the dignity that exists, and is [00:39:00] more or less, demanded, if not, seen or experienced a priori, within an animistic perspective.

Lewis: Yeah, I mean, absolutely the same logic that tore people from the Commons was also at play, of course, in the kind of instrumentalising and essentializing nature, and creating this sort of division between people and the rest of nature. And it is certainly there in the history of the British Isles.

You just don’t have to look even back that far to see that people had a much kind of closer relationship. And I think this isn’t about going back to anything. This is about finding a new path where, actually, this kind of experiment in driving a wedge between humans and the rest of nature has been wildly unsuccessful, and has caused great harm, and has precipitated, also, the harms done to people elsewhere.

And, part of our kind of job now, I think, is to look to other [00:40:00] ways of doing things. And I see really in the kind of richness of the work being done by communities and individuals, and increasingly, with work being done within governance, that actually rights of nature is not a panacea, but it does give us this sort of direction towards something, which is perhaps more unifying, and can be part of that future.

Chris: Hmm. Yeah. I’m reminded of a fairly famous quote, at least within the psychedelic culture, of a man named Terrence McKenna, who said that this work is not a return to the archaic. It’s a return of the archaic.

Lewis: Hmm.

Chris: And so perhaps there’s something in there that can give us pause to consider and reconsider how we are with more-than-human worlds.

Well, I’d like to take a, just a slight detour if we can, because there’s this question of [00:41:00] what the enclosures of the commons did, to people both in England and then abroad, later. And a lot of it has to do with the human relationship to nature, to more-than-human worlds. But I’m also curious about this relationship to home, and to housing even, and to what the enclosures kind of precipitated in the behaviour of human beings, what displacement and expulsion and enclosure do to human beings.

And so, I have a little quote here from a great book, called The War Against the Commons. And in that book, the author writes,

“The largest number of migrants left England entirely, mostly for North America or the Caribbean. [This is as a result of the enclosures.] Net emigration in the century before 1640 was close to [00:42:00] 600,000, and another 400,000 left by the end of that century, extraordinarily large numbers from a country whose mid-1600s population was barely 5 million people.

What’s more, those are net figures. More people left, but their numbers were partially offset by immigrants arriving in England from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and continental Europe. Most of the emigrants were young men, and about half paid for the dangerous ocean crossing by agreeing to be indentured servants for four or more years there, in the ‘New World.’ That was a high price, but hundreds of thousands of landless peasants were willing to pay it.

For some, it was not a choice. English courts frequently sentenced vagrants and other criminals to indentured servitude in the New World.”

And so, I don’t think it’s such a huge [00:43:00] stretch of the imagination to say that the chain reaction that began with the enclosures in England and later spread to most parts of the world had direct consequences for how the Americas, among other places, were colonised. I think it’s quite curious and telling that the sometimes brutal dispossession and dislocation that was unleashed on commoners in the UK was then later unleashed by those same commoners turned migrants or their descendants on the other side of the Atlantic. And so, given that one of the major issues of our time revolves around migration and borders, I’m curious if this history or this unauthorised history has come up at all in the conversations around migration in your part of the world.

Lewis: Yeah. Well, I think the harm that has been done to the landscapes here, clearly, the mindset and the exploitative mindset have been at play [00:44:00] elsewhere as we’ve discussed. You talked about how vagrants were treated. People are told they have no place on land that they don’t own. And then when they find themselves, suddenly without work and dispossessed and subject to new laws that were criminalising that kind of vagrancy, I think that’s such a strong kind of signal within a society that there’s this kind of way of being successful or a way of undertaking a life, and of doing business, whatever you wanna call it. And so as soon as people are given an opportunity to go off and set off for new shores... we were effectively training a whole population on how to other, and how to exploit. I mean, this was the kind of place in which that mindset was cultivated.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Lewis: And people, I think what I always come [00:45:00] back to in, whenever I’m reading about the enclosures and the commons, is that people were resisting, as well. And I think, the Levellers, the amazing campaigning done by the Levellers who took up arms and really knew resisted the kind of modern enclosures and the idea of landlordism, that only land landowners should have a broad set of rights, including the right to vote. The people were resisting this at every step of the way.

And I think that we see that obviously internationally, as well. Colonisation by Britain and by other colonising powers has always been resisted, and there are movements globally that are working to protect the rights of people and land against these kinds of damaging and exploitative practises.

But I think it comes back really, as somebody who lives here in England, that it might feel small to be a part of a campaign, which is about “I want [00:46:00] rights to be able to walk outta my door and walk into the nearby countryside, whilst there are these sort of incredibly awful, colonial practises going on in the name of progress, globally, in my name.”

This is also about how we cultivate that kind of awareness and resistance. Because what I see and what I’ve learned through being part of this campaign is that, something which is kind of meaningful for us here today, by learning our histories and how this has kind of evolved, really, and grown out of the land where I live, part of that journey is also about educating ourselves and taking action on things which are an injustice for us in our lives, and joining those injustices to others, which are taking place in the name of the same systems that exploited the world, the more direct world around us.

So, these are joined up. And, I think the other thing I wanna say is that like so many times in our campaigning we’ve come across the role of power and privilege and money in the countryside, [00:47:00] and how the larger states and the names that go with them that persist in the countryside today...

I mean, about a third of England is still in aristocratic hands. We’re unsure of the exact figure because so much of the land in England is not registered, but around about a third of England is still in the hands of... many of those people can trace their lineage right back to the Norman Conquest, to 1066, when William the Conqueror came over and handed out the land of his newly acquired domain to all of his mates. We’re still living with that legacy today.

And so, we see those power structures in the countryside. We see the money that’s behind them. And all of the new money, the corporate money as well, that’s being poured into the countryside around us. And there’s a direct link there to democracy, as well, to what we’re told about who belongs and who gets a say and who actually should feel welcome here. And when we look at the rise of the far-right here [00:48:00] in England, and I think, elsewhere, globally, the perpetuation of the narratives that go behind the rise of the far-right comes from that kind of land-owning, embedded power structure, the same power which has actually disconnected and dispossessed the majority of the population, the 99% of us, who don’t own half of England.

And that’s really shocking. And I think, when we see figures like Nigel Farage here in England, pointing to migrants as the problem, it doesn’t take much delving back into our history to see that this is a defence strategy, a way of deflecting blame from those who have acquired through exploitation, through murder and destruction, massive amounts of wealth and privilege and power.

And so, this is the latest iteration of blaming people. We blamed the vagabonds and the [00:49:00] poor for causing problems in the countryside by criminalising activities, and exporting them off. And today we’re blaming migrants, and I think, to be able to know our history and to look at how the enclosure acts and the loss of a sense of common belonging is connected to how we are having our dispossession thrown back at us through a sense of blame for others who have absolutely no stake in the uprooting of our connection.

Chris: Hmm. Brilliant. Yeah. Thank you so much, Louis, for bringing this up. I mean, I’ve had my friend and mentor Steven Jenkinson on the pod a few times. And one of the things that he’s written that describes the dynamics in a lot of the modern condition. But I think in this question, particularly around migration and colonial history,

[00:50:00] he writes that, “ they deify what dispossessed their ancestors.” They turn into a God, the trauma that dispossessed their ancestors. And then, of course, in this particular context, they project it onto the people who are now being dispossessed.

Lewis: Hmm.

I mean, we see this logic also play out in other, smaller ways, I think, in the countryside in England. Like, for example, massive running battles and riots to protect Fenland, the fenlands of the east of England, from being drained and improved. Massive protests to prevent woodlands from being enclosed. But today, we’ll see the everyday public who don’t have any ownership of those lands, protecting this kind of sense of industrial improvement. And I think that there’s a lot of unpicking to be done, to look back [00:51:00] and to say, actually, this is something that was done to us. And with that, we lost our rights, and also now, one of the biggest kinds of parlour tricks really of that whole system has been for us to blame each other.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, I see it on a smaller scale as well in terms of landlordism and rent. I mean, we, I had an interview a few months ago, and we brought up the question of rent, which surely existed before the enclosure of the commons, but has become a staple, a normalised aspect of modern life. And it’s become that rent has become so normalised that no one questions the kind of wage and rent slavery that we’re born into in this late capitalist context. And therefore there’s no need to imagine our relationships with home or [00:52:00] house or housing or land being any different.

And as you mentioned, how the enclosures created this kind of notion perhaps among people in England in the previous hundred years, and then of course exported elsewhere, that the roots of enclosures and the different forms that they take or can take in the world, are the recipe for a ‘better life’, right?

And so I see that as well as a kind of historical extension of the enclosures, this notion that, like, “well, it’s just the way it is and you just have to pay your rent, and there’s no questioning the dynamics of private property. And if you don’t like it, just submit or become a landlord yourself.

Lewis: Hmm. Well, one of the interesting things I think that happened again in Scotland was that in 2003, the Land Reform Act, which came in and which [00:53:00] I’ve mentioned as being the acts which brought about the Scottish right to roam as we know it today, actually, that was almost a kind of footnote to the wider act. And one of the main things that it brought about was for people to have a right to buy, for communities to have a right to buy. And one of the big transformations in Scotland in recent years has been communities being able to buy up parts of whole estates and even sometimes whole islands.

And so, the Isle of Eigg was one of the first examples, but now there are many, many more across Scotland where communities are starting to take literal ownership of places, and with that obviously comes things like rent controls and responsibility and accountability, between each other, within communities.

And so, looking at it through that lens, where people have a greater stake in landscapes that they literally own or have a stake in, there are many, many outcomes in terms of nature conservation and public [00:54:00] access, and a wider sense of responsibility, which can kind of spill over. And it is not without problems. I mean, of course, there are still issues in Scotland with estates, and large, faceless landlords extracting massive amounts of extortionate rent from people. That’s, of course, still happening.

One of the things that we see in England, and I think is maybe a bit of a kind of telling contrast to that, is that in the last year we’ve seen two large estates, and there’s probably been many more, but two that have come up on our radar, really, that have held-in properties.

So one of them down in Dorset, a kind of neighbouring county to where I live, had 32 houses, ostensibly, affordable dwellings for people to live in the countryside, which is hard to come by, actually. In some parts of rural England, it’s really hard to live affordably in the countryside. So, people who have been there for generations saw an estate that had been held by the same family for seven generations, suddenly bought by a [00:55:00] faceless corporation on behalf of an anonymous absentee landowner.

And suddenly, overnight, the community was hit with kind of massive amounts of uncertainty. People worried about evictions or rents going up. And the same things happened just down the road from us, with an estate owned by the royal family suddenly put up for sale, and suddenly, tenant farmers, people who had had this kind of certainty that actually this has been owned by the royal family since the 1300s, are now being put up for sale.

And from that point of view, the person selling it just looks at it like a set of assets that could be sold off. And I think what I would love is for, in England, for us to have a community right to buy. So when things like that happen, then actually communities get this kind of first refusal.

So, landlordism and ownership patterns that are linked to the extortions going on are deeply connected to rights of access, because the golden thread that links all of those is a right to belong. And without that kind of certainty that you can call a place home [00:56:00] without being evicted, or without being told that you can get to your kind of favourite river swimming spot, for me, those two things are deeply related, and they point to the need for something much more robust for people who so desperately need it, who don’t have the means to buy land themselves.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you, Lewis. I’m grateful for this work that you do with the right to roam, and hopefully, as the movement grows, there’ll be an opportunity for, perhaps, seemingly disparate movements or campaigns to join in this way and to recognise their mutual goals.

And so I’m curious, I’d love to ask you about how this shows up on a broader spectrum, in a global spectrum, in terms of the Right To Roam, in terms of access to land and the campaigns and movements that are happening, not just in England, but elsewhere, beyond the Isles and perhaps beyond [00:57:00] Europe.

And so I’m curious what kind of similar movements or campaigns might be happening in other countries or continents, for which there might be solidarity between the fight for the commons in the UK and the fight for the commons elsewhere?

Lewis: Hmm. Well, land. It literally underpins everything, really.

I mean, we see so many campaigns and injustices, which obviously are linked to land and the right to belong and the right to be. And land justice, globally, there’s so much international solidarity. Our work today is very much about drawing those threads and remaining kind of focused on what we need to do, but we can see sort of the parallels elsewhere.

And, people that we campaign with are also involved in international campaigning with Survival International, for example, doing amazing work to support the rights of indigenous peoples and rights to land globally. And the International Land Coalition, the work that they’re [00:58:00] doing, a lot of which is in South America.

We talked already about the rights of nature movement, and seeing lots of that kind of showing up and the rights of nature in the constitution of Ecuador, has, as I’ve already said, been a massive inspiration for that movement now in the UK.

And, obviously, in the majority of Latin American countries, this is a real present challenge, and it’s highly contested. I was speaking with a group from Dalhousie University in Canada as well recently about the kind of the rights to the coastline up there, and how, even in North American countries, there are like these challenges because of the development of coastlines, and not just coastlines, but also, the private property rights which excludes people to perhaps a more extreme extent than we have here in England.

I was always struck by how, in the United States, the [00:59:00] right to roam campaign is sort of... I think people are just bewildered by it. Like, “What is this kind of campaign?” Because the rights of property are so sacrosanct, and the rights of property and the right to exclude, with the exception of the national park.

So, we see these interesting challenges coming up, and international solidarity with people, in all sorts of different contexts.

I was really interested in the conversation that you were having with Devon Taylor on this podcast about the rights to the coast, for example, in Jamaica, as well, and how that is absolutely linked to the exploitation of Jamaica and of people, and that land is still subject to the same kind of sets of exclusions there. And I was really interested to hear about the campaigning that’s being done to just give people a simple right to get to the beach, which just seems so [01:00:00] basic and simple, but actually is fundamental. And so, I’m really gladdened and also shocked by what’s happening there. And particularly if you contrast it with a place like Barbados, where there’s a right to the coast, to see just what’s possible with campaigning. And with political will, actually, you can see that these things are winnable and that they’re winnable because of people like Devon doing that kind of work.

So yeah, our work’s very much focused on England, and what we can achieve within this parliament. We basically want to finish what we’re doing, and then carry on with the wider work that we’re all also interested in doing, and getting this law changed is our kind of like tiny puzzle piece in the wider tapestry of land justice, globally.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. May it be that the people who listen to this and who find their way towards the Right to Roam’s work, join up and remember the [01:01:00] histories that have led us to this point and to people like yourself who are working to reconcile, as you said, what’s been done historically in your name, or in your names.

And, it’s been a blessing to have you on the pod Lewis, to be able to both historically and contemporaneously, bring together a lot of the threads that a lot of other podcast guests in the past have spoken to, threads that bring us to a degree of source or historical origin in terms of how these enclosures came to be and of course, how people like yourself in the place that they began are working for their proper subversion.

And so, on behalf of our listeners, Lewis, I’d like to thank you for joining me today for being willing to speak to these issues, these very complex issues. And I’m of course grateful that you’re digging into the complexities in the way that you do.

It’s a great honour. And finally, [01:02:00] I’d like to ask you, how might our listeners find out more about the Right to Roam and its campaigns? How might they get involved and support, or begin this good work, in the places that they live?

Lewis: Thanks, Chris. It is great to be on here and speaking with you, as well.

And yeah, I mean, we’re a small campaign. We do what we can with the small amount of resources that we have available. But I think, if people want to support our work, you can head over to our website. We’ve got our website at righttorome.org.uk. So check that out. We’ve got a mailing list, as well, and we try to send out fairly infrequent, but we hope, worthwhile emails, which give you a bit of insight.

They tend to be focused on the work we are doing here for England and Wales. But I think for international listeners, this is potentially of interest as well, because, obviously, this speaks to the wider context. We’ve got social media as well, so you can see us on Instagram and on Blue Sky. And we’re just in the process of setting [01:03:00] up a blog, as well. So, stay tuned for that. But get in touch and listen out for any updates.

Chris: Thank you, Lewis. I’ll make sure that those links are on the End of Tourism website in the homework section. And, for those who are outside of England who are wondering about this, perhaps the Right to Roam and their work is something not only of an inspiration, but a foundation for the ways in which you and your people might come to gather together and organise for access to land in your places.

Thank you so much, Louis.

Lewis: Thanks, Chris.

My guest on this episode is Tyson Yunkaporta, an Aboriginal Australian scholar and member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He founded the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University and wrote Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, which examines how Aboriginal methods of inquiry address contemporary ecological and social challenges. In 2025, his second book, Right Story, Wrong Story: How To Have Fearless Conversations in Hell was released.

Tyson’s work brings Aboriginal ways of knowing into dialogue with complexity science, examining how Indigenous thought represents systems thinking developed over tens of thousands of years. His methodology honours Aboriginal traditions of knowledge creation through “yarning” - collaborative dialogue through stories and mutual respect - and “sand talk,” the practice of drawing symbols in earth to convey complex ideas.

Show Notes

• Magpie Migrations

• Making ceremony among tourists

• From sacred entities to souvenirs

• Lawful voyaging: the three pillars of ancestral travel

• Culture-bound syndrome / sorry rocks

• Telling story / experiencing the more-than-human

• Sex tourism: The twisted impulses of sexual energy

• If you don’t move with the land, the land will move you

• Men’s and women’s business

• Falling in love with travel

Homework

• Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

• Right Story, Wrong Story: How To Have Fearless Conversations in Hell

• Tyson’s Deakin University Page

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism Podcast, Tyson.

Tyson: Yeah. Good to see you.

Chris: Yeah. I’d like to extend my gratitude to you for your willingness to join me today, given certainly all of the obligations you have to your people and place. And I’m wondering if you’d be willing to share with me, with our listeners, where you’re situated today, in your days and in the world at large.

Tyson: Yeah. I’m on Bunurong Country, down at the bottom of Australia. Melbourne, here. Yeah, and it’s coming into winter time, but it has changed in the few years that I’ve been here. Winter’s not as harsh, as fast. We kind of had a really long, what they call “Indian summer,” recently. Yeah. And a few weeks back, all the ants started mating and grew their wings, and everything that happens around [00:01:00] that just sort of took off. I know a lot of people think of springtime as a time for birds and eggs and mating and everything, but there’s always something.

So the big birds, your eagles and live birds and turkeys and geese, et cetera, in this cold time, they’re all mating, dancing. Everything’s sexual. All the time. There aren’t any dead seasons. Yeah. There’s always, always something kicking off.

And the bats have just left and the Magpie larks left a few weeks back, a couple of weeks ago, went north. Yeah. So, everywhere, the place is also the time. So we have time and place in our indigenous languages. So I’m three and a half thousand kilometres south of home, up in the north of Queensland, there. [00:02:00] I belong to Apelach clan. And a lot of the birds that were here, recently, and bats and things, they’ve flown north up there. The magpie geese and things like that. Magpie larks. A lot of black and white things have flow north there.

And I guess, yeah, place and time, in our way it’s the same word usually, or the same prefix or suffix in a lot of our indigenous languages. Yeah, because the time is the place because everything’s moving. These locations we inhabit, they’re not static sort of territories. There’s always human and non-human movement within and across bioregions and over vast distances. Voyaging and migration is just how we all behave.

All human [00:03:00] and non-human entities, moving. And even if they’re fixed like a tree, they’re exchanging information, nutrient seeds, leaves, dirt, et cetera, over vast distances, which is exciting, I think. And, lots of us partner with those things and help out with their seed dispersal, and all that sort of thing.

And that’s a kind of an evolutionary mutualism, a collectivism that’s sort of developed over time. There are always flows. And so yeah, I’m just kind of flowing with this place now, but my mind is in other places, following species that mean something to me, that have travelled vast distances. All the little sandpipers from here just flew up to [00:04:00] Siberia.

Chris: Wow.

Tyson: Yeah. A while back. So I know that’s kind of cool. And here I am and you are there. Started out in Toronto and went all around voyaging. And now you’ve ended up, there where you’re sitting now.

Chris: Yeah. In this place that is kind of contending with extreme heat. It’s that time of year. Yeah. In this place. And the June bugs and the cicadas are starting to sing, starting to recognise the time of year here and...

Tyson: Oh, that’s exciting.

Chris: ...pray in the ways that they do for the rains.

Tyson: Do they come yearly or every few years? The cicada’s there.

Chris: Usually every year.

But I think it’s, from the little I understand of the regeneration qualities, they’re probably on different cycles every year.

Tyson: Yeah. Yeah. The cicadian rhythms. Hey!

Chris: [00:05:00] Well, thank you for sharing that with me. I think, there’s so many of these little, kind of biocultural resonances that so many urban people like myself and, and modern people have, either just not been taught about or been taught to forsake in some way. And, I remember the couple of times I spent, there in those lands, in what today is called by many “Australia,” as a backpacker and as a tourist, as a younger man, I remember travelling through those lands and not having any sense or context or even want to understand the voices of the places that I was travelling through, then and there, as I made my way from Cannes to Sydney, and then Melbourne, and many places in between, largely as a tourist, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:06:00] And, so, I’m curious, I could wax on and on about my experiences and, and the lack of, perhaps humility and adequate guest that I proceeded with as a younger person. But I’m curious about your experiences, with the consequences of tourism, either in your own life or in those of the people that you call yours in those lands.

Mm-hmm.

Tyson: Ah, well, I guess the last time I sort of, I went somewhere for ceremony, a while back, it was in the Bunya Mountains, which is a really sort of sacred place and gathering place. People from far afield, all around Australia used to come there, and still do, every three years, because that’s when the Bunya harvest happens.

The bunya nuts are very fat, every three years. So it’s the tree that calls people in, and there’s big ceremony there. And you have to travel the right way. [00:07:00] In the global south in general, and indigenous people’s, there’s very different border work.

Borders aren’t about territories, but they’re more about sites of ceremony increase, where you negotiate the norms of access, the flows. Even animals, as they move between sort of one bioregional area and the next, they pause at the edge and they do things. That’s naturally what we do. We make sure we’re respecting the place we’re going into and, that we’re making connections, with each other.

So I guess the last time I went for that, travelling in the same way, coming into the same way, traditionally, we went to a very sacred site, where there’s like a bit of a waterfall and a big pond and cliffs. And we were sort of there [00:08:00] trying to do our cultural business, and that ceremonies that bring increase to the land. And there were tourists there, jumping off the waterfall into the pond, and a couple of people were just like having sex in the pond like this, like euro-trash tourists kind of thing.

And I think that’s the biggest thing in Australia. Like a lot of our most sacred places are sort of treated as recreational facilities for people to visit and “you know being in da nature. And it’s very much enjoying the waterfall. It’s very good for diving and swimming.”

Yeah. So of course we have the most sacred place is in the centre of Australia - Uluru, Uluru what they used to call “Ayer’s Rock.” Yeah. And, it’s just, it’s taboo. Like none of us, even the most senior elders, can sort of [00:09:00] go up onto that rock. It’s like there are a lot of sacred places like that all over Australia that they’re so powerful and so sacred, they’ll make you sick, and people can’t go there. They disrupt the place. And the lots of tourists for so long have been climbing the rock. It’s one of the things you do when you visit there. You sort of climb up on the top and go, “oh yeah, I’m at the top of the world here.”

That’s something I never understood was mountain climbing. Like, why would anyone want to do that? Anyway. Yeah. So, there’s all that and there’s of course people want buy things, trinkets and such. People wanna buy authentic things. But for us, an object or an image, or a sculpture...

So I mean, this one here, which is a swamp hen carving. I know that this is an audio medium, so no one can see it, but yeah, that’s a [00:10:00] sacred totemic entity, and each carving or image of that carries part of its spirit and its power, so if my children come near it, I have to put my smell on them to make sure they don’t get sick from being near it.

But if too many of these are made, it depletes the spirit of the thing. And so, if you make a thousand of them, that spirit gets divided among all those images, and they become weak, so they’re no longer dangerous or powerful things. And so a lot of our images and entities and stuff like that are replicated millions of times [over] for tourist artifacts and things like that.

So, tourism was always extractive, and much of it involves a kind of imperial nostalgia, this sense from the Age of Discovery and the [00:11:00] empires (French, British, Spanish), the idea that you could go anywhere in the world to these exotic locations, and there would be a table waiting for you. And there’d be slaves and servants and guides and porters, backpacking. In the old days, you didn’t have to carry your own backpack. You could take almost everything and have like twelve black guys carrying it for you. And I guess, tourism throughout Asia and Oceania and Africa, it’s giving that sort of imperial nostalgia, that feeling of going somewhere and experiencing that early colonial kind of luxury, where people were like kings in these places where they stole the land. And yeah, just enjoying very cheap service from locals, and having guides - native guides - take them places, and then getting to be the big boy now being brought into some kind of [00:12:00] ceremony or ritual thing.

A lot of that, psychedelic sort of tourism in South America with the ayahuasca and everything like that. Yeah, so you have guides taking you through to these sacred places or doing sacred things and it’s kind of a dilution that happens, because it’s extractive. You are taking something. You are taking something from the spirit of that place by coming in that way.

And it’s just bad border work, with that idea of borders as walls, where, if you have privilege you have access, and therefore keeping undesirable things out and keeping other things in. Yeah. So, a world of walls and borders and expansionism and all this kind of thing.

Yeah, tourism is a really interesting process for [00:13:00] people. It’s like even underprivileged people, they do that to experience that. You have a holiday, you save up all year for two weeks so you can experience the life of a wealthy person, of the wealth class for a couple of weeks, and access these places and feel the privilege that your nationality, if you belong to an imperial nation or a colonial sort of settler state that you get to enjoy and experience that enormous privilege, for the people to whom all that wealth was accrued, wealth and resources, over the whole colonial era and then the neocolonialism of now.

So you save up all year. You work your ass off, in a job that you hate, so you can enjoy that couple of weeks of immense privilege, a privilege that once belonged to all the people of the [00:14:00] earth. You know, because our first law, our indigenous laws, they seem to have, universally, the same three sort of principles, pillars, of like, no bosses: nobody can force you to do anything. Freedom to choose, freedom to say “no.”

And then there’s the freedom of affiliation, that you can change affiliation with families, clans, and belong in another culture if you choose to. And, so in the old days here, everybody spoke like a dozen different languages, because people would voyage and trade and adopt and marry and spend time in a lot of different countries, here.

And the last one is freedom of movement, freedom to travel and voyage. So, at some stage, most human beings enjoyed that [00:15:00] right and that privilege. But, travelling the right way and coming into places the right way, or we might call “ lawful voyaging.” This is a lawful voyaging, the same as the animals do it. The crows are lawful voyagers. The cranes, the geese, all these different migratory species. And the flows of winds and waters, and all these human and non-human entities, lawfully voyaging in the right way with that respect.

And then I guess there’s lawless voyaging. And so. where in the old days, we would trade things, like different plants or species, and then we’d bring those things in the right way and make sure people were responsible for them as totems, and would be responsible for integrating them into the ecosystem so they didn’t behave invasively or disrupt things too much. Yeah, we’ve always done that, which is why there are [00:16:00] a lot of species that have had a global distribution for tens of thousands of years or more, even hundreds of thousands of years, that they have distribution all over, because people have traded those things and done it the right way.

But I guess in the lawless voyaging, people take things with them, which is not the right way. It’s more like trafficking. So, lots of species now are trafficked, and going to places and cause massive disruptions in the ecosystem, et cetera. Yeah. And I guess the people do, too. There are people who are ferals and weeds, and behave in that way when they land somewhere. They do very well and they proliferate themselves, but they don’t proliferate the rest of life in a place. You should be bringing something to the places you go to where you are [00:17:00] adding to the life force and to the regenerative health of that place, you’re adding to the diversity of the place, you are bringing something. Because that’s the purpose of voyaging. It’s a gift of giving, and the more places you enrich, then the more these vast networks of interconnected systems become enriched. And over the course of your life, all of that comes back in massive abundance to you. You are investing for regenerative futures all the time, and there’s real joy in that.

Yeah. And then you’re hosted. So, if I go to Turtle Island, and I’ve travelled there the right way and been brought in the right way, and so I know which clans are responsible for me and that I answer to while I’m there if I do the wrong [00:18:00] thing, but also will host me so I know that I’ll always have a place to sleep and something to eat. If I find that moose clan people or turtle people or crane people there, those clans will look after me anywhere on the island, on Turtle Island. Because I can speak that and talk about the people who brought me in that way. And then those people, anywhere I land there, they’ll look out after me. Yeah, so it’s like a massive Airbnb, when you travel with those credentials. And so you’re hosted and you are a good guest, a lawful guest in that place.

Chris: Hmm.

Hmm. Wow. Thank you Tyson.

Mm-hmm. There was, a quote in your book that came up for me, when you were mentioning Uluru and, I think it’s in Sand Talk, and you write that,

“there in Uluru there’s a shed full of rocks, [00:19:00] and that for a long time tourists took stones away from that sacred site as souvenirs. Then, a few decades ago, something strange began to happen. The tourists started mailing the rocks back with panicked reports of weird happenings, disturbed sleep, bad luck, ghostly visitations, and terrible accidents.”

Tyson: Hmm. And sickness. Yeah, in psychology, they call it a “culture-bound syndrome,” and there’s a lot of like very specific, mental illness categories for aboriginal people, aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people here. And, yeah, one of those has been studied and is presented as part of the psychology canon, for people when they’re working with indigenous people. Psychologists. Yeah, there are a number of mental illnesses with really specific profiles [00:20:00] of symptoms that doesn’t really show up in anything else.

When I was getting treated for bipolar, for my horrific bipolar disorder, they kind of had to sift through and pull out the symptoms that just did not fit with bipolar or anything else, including fugue states and things like that.

I was lucky enough to have an aboriginal psychologist I had access to, who could help them separate all those things out. So we had a set of treatments for the bipolar, with medication and therapy. And then there was the rest of it that I had to work through as well. So yeah, what we call “sorry rocks,” that’s the Uluru rock phenomenon you were talking about. But that just happens all the time, people picking up rocks in the land and [00:21:00] then taking them away and getting sick from those things. And there’s a really specific treatment protocol that I know for that, that I was trained up to do in the traditional way.

And you have to take that person back to that place with the rocks, and you have to call out to the entities of that place, the ancestors. You gotta call out and explain to them, loudly, what’s going on: “ I’m returning them back.” And then, the other person has to call out, “I’m putting these back here... please stop tormenting me.”

And then, they’ve gotta walk back exactly on the tracks that you came in on. And then, I’ve gotta walk backwards behind them, brushing with leaves, a branch of leaves, [00:22:00] brushing the tracks away, like aromatic leaves, so that we’re not leaving our scent there, or the tracks, for those things to follow us out. And you have to get that bad spirit out of the person there, and then it has to stay there with the rocks.

And then, when you get to the edge, this is that border work. boundaries are places for making sure you’re not bringing things across when you go out. You are not taking anything, but also that you’re not bringing things in that are going to harm the place, either. So that’s where you sit and rest and come into relation with the place and with the entities of the place, or if you’re lucky enough, the people of that place.

So, it’s always good to pause before you walk into these beautiful places, and pause on your way out too.

So then, the two branches are brushing off that person. You’ve gotta brush right quite [00:23:00] vigorously and shake the leaves from the head to toe, right down the front and back as well, and then hit the branches on the ground to flick that stuff away. And then, smoke. Make smoke and make sure they’re bathing the smoke really well there. And then, right there, you leave the coals of that fire warm there in that place. Make sure they’re not gonna blow away, bank ‘em up so they don’t blow away and start a wrong fire.

And then, you brush the tracks, again, away from the fire, and leave out the same way you came in, and drive away as fast as you can though. And so, the bad stuff that’s gonna follow the person, it’ll stop there at the fire, for the warmth. And yeah, I’ve successfully done that a couple of times.

Chris: Wow.

Tyson: And helping with treating people. [00:24:00] And so that goes with anything, because you might not pick up a rock, but you’d be in a place and you’ll pick up something. Some places it’s good to make sure you are sort of looking at the ground and you’re not like looking all around too much.

Chris: Yeah.

Tyson: If you see something like a bright spot or something interesting that really grabs your attention, you don’t want to stare at it too much and really approach it. If you hear something, on the edge of your vision, you’re not sure and you’re like focusing in on it... there are disembodied things that seek embodiment. And they might seek embodiment in you, moving through there.

Which is kind of how I look at a lot of, AI, because these are invisible things, entities. [00:25:00] And they do have patterns and patternings of intelligent-like sort of expression and stuff like that. So they are existing things, entities, but in that invisible way. So, I sort of regard them always as seeking embodiment, so you use them carefully, and keep yourself clean, try to make sure you’re not carrying any of those patterns away, if you use that tool.

So, I’m talking about all the bad tourist things, but we should probably talk about the good things too, like as humans, because we all have that same patterning, of what it is to be human. We all hate bosses. We all seek to have freedom of movement, and seek to affiliate with who we want to affiliate with, and make relationships.

And I don’t know. So I ask you that: [00:26:00] is that always like the biggest and most satisfying thing that you take away where you also put back the same amount, and you feel that connection forever with that place? Is it the relationships, that you make there, when you meet locals or other travellers from other places and you form these strong bonds and memories and connections that last a lifetime? Is that the big thing?

And it might even be making non-human relations, with a tree or a species or a body of water even, or a land form. You come into a relation with that and it’s the relationship that enriches you. I wouldn’t mind hearing your thoughts on that, just as a young fellow, like particularly, too naively travelling and you spoke about the wrongness of how you did it, a lot of it. But I bet there was a lot of rightness to where you were just following your instinctive, human patterning of being somebody who [00:27:00] generates, regenerates, increase. And, yeah, increase, not like growth. Increase is about connections, like creating more diverse infinite connections and relationships in places and across places.

Yeah. What was your experience of that?

Chris: Well, I mean, I think that there’s certainly a degree of human connection that was everywhere, but at the same time, in terms of any kind of qualitative, hospitable, and when I say hospitable, I refer to the willingness of both a potential guest and host, a local and a visitor, to engage each other on the terms of the place and the time, and to do so with, as you said, a degree of [00:28:00] respect for the other that is largely unknown, in the sense that the visitor, often, is largely, a stranger to that place and a stranger to that time, if we’re gonna speak of them as one, interwoven kind of concept.

And, I met a lot of people and I visit a lot of places, and there are only a handful of moments and a handful of people that carry a degree of weight in my memory and in my days that are still very much alive in this life and in my willingness to remember them and to connect with them. And I think a large part of that comes from the kind of infrastructures, the tourism infrastructures that are not necessarily solely beholden to the “destinations” that people go [00:29:00] to, that those notions of how to behave elsewhere come from how people are taught to behave in their home places, how they’re taught to understand hospitality, within the urban or modern context as something that, can be bought and sold, something that’s standardised across all cultures, geographies, calendars, and then of course that’s then, brought in the carry on baggage of people. And that’s the unrecognised or unconsidered, expectation of the visitor that’s then projected upon the host. And so, when you find something, or when you encounter someone or some moment that not only challenges, but even undermines that, I think it’s something that can [00:30:00] be really beautiful.

And I was very lucky, despite having grown up in a major metropolitan western city, to have the lived memory of my grandparents who were peasant farmers in the Balkans before they came to Canada, and that the hospitality, the kind of radical, rooted, local hospitality that they practised in the quote unquote “old country” was still very much alive in the new one.

And then, I got to grow up with them, largely raised by them and got to kind of have that as this kind of memory, this kind of amulet of memory that I could take with me, and not necessarily consciously, but something that, when that kind of hospitality showed up, I had the ability to have a point of reference for it within my own days, in my family, which, [00:31:00] I think that a lot of people that I grew up with and a lot of people in the places, like the place that I came from, don’t have that lived memory anymore. I mean, I also worked a more or less a decade in the hotel and restaurant industries and catering and all that, so, I definitely also saw the other side of that. So I think there’s this sense that when people travel, when they engage in what we call tourism, there is this kind of longing for some kind of live the memory of what that either was like, how it might be in other places, how it could still be for them.

Tyson: Well, your peak moments are always moments of profound connection of coming into relation. You hear people telling their stories, and they always wanna tell story. And I don’t know, there’s this western sort of eye-rolling thing, of “Oh my God, please not [00:32:00] the slideshow. Ah, don’t show me all your holiday pictures, Jesus.”

But that should be something that’s revered, and that people love to receive, because everyone has been on that holiday, and then they come back and they want to share. They want to share, and it’s always stories of relation. No matter where people come from or no matter how disconnected they are from their biology or anything else, or the land. Sharing story, that’s so important. That’s what travel is, and that’s one of the things you bring to places too, when you leave there. You know, it’s your stories that you bring when you meet people, and then the stories that you bring back. It’s so important. Just the informatics of that are mind-blowing. And you see, when they talk about their peak experiences, it’s never just the parasailing or the snorkelling. It wasn’t like, “I snorkelled the Great Barrier Reef.” And, [00:33:00] what they talk about is profound moments of connection, like when they sort of swam right up to a grouper or a grouper swam up to them, or a dolphin or something, and they connected with it and they can’t quite put words to it, but that was their profound moment, of coming into relation with a non-human.

But then also, all they want to talk about is bloody Gregor, who was, I don’t know who was their helper on the boat, who was their guide. You know what I mean? It’s about “how great he was,” and they want to talk about him, and “little Shelly who was the concierge at the motel, and she was so generous, and we had sat down and she told us all about her grandparents,” and all this sort of thing. They talk about the relation. Their peak experiences are always [00:34:00] around that, and their fond memories is around the relationships. Because we know instinctively that that’s why we’re travelling. You are potentially connected to everything in the universe, in one way or another. And it’s kind of like your purpose on earth is to realise as many of those connections as you can to proliferate your networks of relations, because that’s what you are, and the more variation and just abundant diversity in those relations that you can create, as far afield as possible. That’s what makes you. That’s what grows you and makes you everything that you can be. And there’s just infinite satisfaction, need-satisfaction in doing that, becoming that.

I started talking right at the start, and so I’m gonna start another thread here. And I know I’ve been talking for ages, but I’m gonna do it [00:35:00] again and I started at the start talking about how sexual everything is - in the land. And that’s us too, we’re sexual. And when we travel, we leave pieces of ourselves - our smell, our skin cells, our hair, parts of our biology stay there. And the ants take those pieces down into the ground, and they end up in tree roots and then into the trees and our memory and our patterning is there in that place, forever. So it has a memory, and memories that we bring and information that we bring from far afield. When you’re in a place, it’s always the season for something mating, and it’s the task of everything around it. Even if it’s not their season for procreating, they still belong in that sexual ceremony.

So the mag pies here, these, very pointy-beaked things. It’s not their mating season [00:36:00] now, but it is their singing season, because they’re singing the love songs for all the other things that are mating now. And so, your sexual behaviour isn’t limited to one time and for one purpose. It’s continuous with every species. If a tree is flowering, that’s its time. But then also, when it’s not flowering and it’s not its reproductive time, then it’s exuding scents and sounds with the different kinds of winds that come in that season that will be part of the ceremony for everything else.

And so, when we travel and we come into a place, we pick up all these like increased signals from the land, all of this love/magic ceremony, that’s going on all around us. And we feel that. And I guess, if you go into a new place, you are receiving signals from that place [00:37:00] that you might not notice in the places familiar to you, because it’s also new. It’s hitting you raw, even if you’re not conscious of it. And so you do become excited, and you are seeking, as a sexual being, in that place, that new place. And that’s always been a really big part of diplomacy, embassy, meeting, for ceremony between different groups. When you’re coming into new places, the idea is to come into relation, so you either have a sort of a temporary adoptive status, or you figure out how your grandfather might have travelled there, and then, okay, so what did he call somebody? He called him “uncle.” So, all right, well, you and I will call each other “cousin” or “brother,” you know what I mean?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: But if that prior relation isn’t there, then you have to have some kind of adoption through. So you connect with somebody you know, who might want to call you “brother,” [00:38:00] and then you call his uncles “uncle.”

You know what I mean? That kind of thing.

And you come into a relation that way. But then there’s also like that kind of marrying in, which doesn’t have to be a marriage, it can just be a sexual relationship or a romantic relationship. It may or may not be consummated, but it can just be flirty or something like that. But you know, that ultimate kind of exchange is to exchange biology - your biology with someone from that place. And you feel driven to do that, because that’s how we proliferate genetic diversity, in our species, that keeps the species vigorous. It’s to mate with those who are unlike you, who aren’t from the same gene pool.

So you feel very driven to do that. So there is that real drive, like whether you are actually having any romantic hookups or anything like [00:39:00] that. Still, it’s, very much, a profound sexual drive when you voyage, when you go to new places. You feel that very strongly, whether you realise it or not. And that’s part of that sort of big dopamine. Like, you must have felt it when you were young, just that you’re on a high, for travelling in the place.

Chris: Absolutely.

Tyson: And, yeah. And I’d say at least half of that is the same as like feeling the same feeling and chemical cocktail of when you fall in love. You feel like you’re in love. And so you do, you fall in love like stupidly, immediately.

Oh man. When I went to Africa, it was like everything around me was like sexual signals coming in. And I’m looking at like these people in Uganda. I’m like, every single person I see is like, I’m seeing thousands of thousands of [00:40:00] thousands of people. Young and old, big, little, fat, skinny. And they’re all like, just, “oh my God, they’re all really sexy.” And they walk there, culturally, they walk in different ways from how we walk here. And I’m looking at how they walking and I’m like, “oh my God, that’s like, oh, that’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

And so, I found the time that I was there, I just felt on fire the whole time. And I guess, I don’t know, if you come from a culture where sexuality is like repressed, then it kind of gets driven underground and twisted into fetishes, and particularly if you’re coming from a colonising or imperial culture, power relations get mixed up in that.

And so the idea of dominating or being dominated is a lot of that kind of kink, and that sort of appeal and intensifier for you. And [00:41:00] people chase that like an addiction. And so that’s how you end up with what’s basically a really good and pure and natural impulse when you travel. And that feeling is supposed to make you connect and relate, and have a stake through intense relationships, have a stake in that place, to care for that place and the people through that connection. That gets twisted - that impulse. And so, then you end up with the sex tourism.

Chris: Right.

Tyson: And a lot of that is fetishized stuff around power relations. It’s sort of part of that imperial nostalgia around the rape and pillage of these places, and the sort of high excitement and drama of that. Particularly, in Asia, you’ll find this sexual tourism. People are coming to have those experiences that are [00:42:00] not acceptable in their culture or even illegal in their place of origin, and they want to go and do those things, in that kind of twisted, unbalanced power relation. They want to experience the domination that their grandfathers and great-grandfathers experienced, coming into a place, and just pillaging the hell out of it. Yeah.

And so, yeah, if your sexuality is twisted, everything’s twisted. And that’s what like capital and top-down sort of hierarchies do to the people. It twists them at the most fundamental level.

And that border work I was telling you about before, of the Global South. And you find out with lots of minorities and even like LGBTQI+ plus community, they have that more flowing border work, but that other side border work that’s very much in the Global [00:43:00] North of those imperial cultures and that recent invention of nations, that’s only just over a century old, this border workers is iron.

And it’s not just for national and state borders, it’s for people as well and family. So the idea of what a family is, there’s borders around that, and what is normal and what is a polluted or toxic or contagious influence. You can’t let those things in, like gayness and stuff like that. So there’s border work that’s happening all the time. And it’s bad border work like that.

And then there’s even just your personal border work, because you have your boundaries. And the best thing about boundaries is bringing those boundaries up, up and overlapping with another person’s boundaries. And the negotiation of a relation, in that third space where you create a third entity, of your relationship. That is just exhilarating, because you’re driven to do that kind of [00:44:00] border work. But if you are in a society where you have to be competitive with others to survive, then your border work’s gonna be wrong.

And that’s what... consent is the centre of everything, because that’s what happens at borders, is consent. But it’s more than that. Consent is like something beautiful, and you can see it more in the word “con-sensual,” like feeling together. And there is a sensuality to it. It’s the most intoxicating and uplifting thing - is you’re creating consent.

So, when you enter a beautiful place as a tourist, you are stopping at the edge of that place and bringing your boundary of you and all the relations and identities that you’re bringing. You’re bringing that to that border and you’re creating that beautiful consensuality with place. But that gets twisted, right?

Consent, the violation of a boundary, the violation of consent is something that tourists do. [00:45:00] And that’s exhilarating to do that. I’ve done that. I did that when I went to Pompeii. And that place just, that set me on fire - the spirit of that place - and I didn’t come in the right way.

Chris: Wow.

Tyson: I was just all over that place. I’m stepping on things that are crumbling under my feet where I’m not supposed to walk, because “damn it, I want to go.” Like, you see this sort of tunnel and there’s a fence in front of it saying, “do not enter.”

And I’m like, “damn, I’m going in there.” So I penetrate this tunnel and I want to Indiana Jones that place. “I want to go into the tombs and stuff. I want see the stuff I’m not supposed to see. I want to take the things that I’m not supposed to take.” I remember doing that.

And I still remember how exhilarating it was to do that, but like the damage there of me just kind of violating the boundaries of that place, and [00:46:00] violating that respectful relation of a place that was frozen in a moment of time under something as powerful and sacred as a volcano. It’s a very sacred site, and I did the same thing to it that tourists do to Uluru here.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: Yeah. And I don’t know. It was when I was much younger, but I did have a few bad years after I did that.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: I was getting tormented, and it’s probably damaged me in a lot of ways that are permanent. It probably took a few years off my life doing that. But still, my heart’s racing thinking about it. It was so freaking exciting to invade and tomb raid that place. And that’s a telling thing, isn’t it? “Tomb Raider.” You’re raiding somewhere. Anyway, so I reckon that it’s that kind of excitement that’s behind [00:47:00] the worst of the sexual tourism and everything else.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Tyson: But, yeah, that’s the stuff that doesn’t go in the slideshow - the sexual encounters. People come back with secrets. People come back with very intense brief relationships they’ve had physically with people, and they kind of cherish those forever. But that was that drive to be somewhere and come into embassy, an embassy kind of relation with people of different places.

Voyaging is what we do as humans.

Chris: When you were mentioning that just now, I was reminded of a quote in one of your books. And I think it speaks to the broader, perhaps, lawless voyaging of the last centuries. Somewhere in there, you say something to the extent of, “if you don’t move [00:48:00] with the land, or perhaps if you don’t move well with the land, the land will move you.”

And, I’m curious in the context, maybe not just of tourism, but also migration, and you also mentioned the consequences of the nation, the nationalism of our times, what that notion means to you, that the land will move you if you don’t learn to move with it, perhaps in the ways that serves the land.

Mm-hmm.

Tyson: Yeah. That’s it. Well, I guess the desire is to sort of freeze things, sort of conform with this Abrahamic religious idea of there being a single God, and everything that sits outside of God is evil, but God made a creation and a perfect creation, and he put the zebras there, and that’s where they are, and he put the black people [00:49:00] here, and that is their place. And I guess this is part of where the bad border work comes from, this idea of territories that God has declared are yours in perpetuity, and that anything that moves across those borders is evil and outsider and other. I think that’s what’s sort of at the heart of things, nationalism and aggressive ethnostate kind of moves.

This is always like the impulse behind fascism and autocracy, and the rest. And then you need that hierarchical governance. You need that abuse and that aggressive border work of every individual in order to dominate or compete within these systems. And it goes down to every single unit. And you define yourself by who you hate, not who you love. You [00:50:00] define yourself by who is other.

“So what am I? Well, I’m not that. Zebras bloody belong there. And we are gonna traffic those zebras everywhere. We are gonna traffic those things to places where they don’t belong, where they’ll do damage. We’re gonna traffic these foxes because we like fox hunting. So we’re gonna take them to Australia.”

And you’re not responsible for that. But it’s weird, because then the thing itself becomes evil. So the cane toad from Ecuador that’s here, that’s the evil invasive species, not the people who trafficked it. Yeah. So there’s that idea that things that are not in the place where God put them are evil, but somehow you are not evil for having been responsible for trafficking that thing irresponsibly, and not bringing it into place in the right way and being responsible for it. Yeah. So, that’s what all that is. [00:51:00]

But there are right ways, too. Have you ever come across these like, I’ll show you on this woomera, those tiny little red beads with the black pattern, really shiny little seeds. I think the Latin name is abrus precatorius. Precatorius being precious. And there is a global distribution of these things all over the global south, and they’re native here. But they are sacred and they’re deadly poisonous. So animals, even birds, don’t eat them.

Chris: Wow.

Tyson: So they are not dispersed by anything except human beings. Like humans are the only things that disperse these seeds. So, how did they get all around the entire southern hemisphere?

They have these in the [00:52:00] Amazon and I’ve sat with Kichua peoples, like talking about that. They have their own names for it, there. And Sri Lanka, India, Africa. Yeah, they’re all around the world, and they’ve been dispersed all around the southern hemisphere for so long that, they’ve actually evolved differently to be sort of different subspecies in different places. But they can only be dispersed by people.

And so, we’ve got like people in the Amazon who are related genetically to us, indigenous, like aboriginal Australians. We share DNA with those peoples in the Amazon. So, there has been voyaging, internationally, for a really long time. Even long before the Europeans came here, we were trading up through the Silk Road, up through what’s now Indonesia and everything else. We had trade. This greenstone here that’s in the south of [00:53:00] Australia that was traded right up north and then, across the sea and into the Silk Road, and all kinds of things traded. And so, we had steel here and everything traded through, and trading our native tobaccos for tobaccos from elsewhere and all that kind of thing. So, that’s been going on forever now.

But it’s very ancient. Like, you can see from the evidence of that giddi bead, that little red bead, of  abrus precatorius, which, Catholics everywhere, when they’ve encountered these in their travels, in imperial travels, they’ve used them for rosary beads even, because they know they’re sacred. They’re deadly poisonous, but beautiful. And they’re always used in sacred items.

And so that woomera I showed you, that’s a sacred men’s thing that’s used to control your men’s energy. And it’s always seems to be around men’s and women’s business. And there’s [00:54:00] a sexual element to it as well, because you have to pick the right one, and you have to know the process for finding the right one to use, otherwise you’ll kill yourself. One of those seeds, a man can take it and he will be sterile for a year. And the same with a woman, a woman takes it and she’s sterile for a year. So this is actually an ancient, ancient form of birth control that’s been used for that. Like even in Ayurvedic medicines in India, it’s been used from time out of mind for that. It’s been used that way in Africa, in South America, and all over Australia. These giddi beads have been used for birth control for a long time.

So, you know that insane idea of like, “ah, modern western medicine has like liberated women for the first time in history, with the birth control pill.”

It’s like, “nah, no bro.”

Yeah. [00:55:00] So that’s why it’s sacred. It’s part of that whole sexual congress that happens with voyaging and human embassy. And so this is something that’s been dispersed all over the southern hemisphere by people in ritual relation with each other, and travelling and voyaging for ritual relation everywhere, and sharing these things for maybe a hundred thousand years or more. A very long time.

So, I find that story of that seed really exciting. So we use them to decorate our thum pup, which is like fire sticks. There’s a pouch with beeswax with these embedded in it. And with the thum pup, one of the sticks is male and the other is female, and that thum pup is like a sacred thing that represents the sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and their kind of roles and rights together, and what it [00:56:00] is to be in good relation together, in lawful relation.

In the third, that third space, the relation is contained in the fire, the hearth, so the fire sticks are really sacred because the word for wife or partner, female partner is “ fire woman.” And the term for the male partner is “fire man.” And so those sticks are really sacred, and they govern and regulate and carry the law of building a consensual entity of relation, in that third space of the fire, which is that living entity that you create together.

But what’s really cool is when you make a connection with somebody like that, you also have that same relation with all her sisters. So you might not actually have sex or marry any of her sisters. You probably won’t, but they’re still in the same kinship [00:57:00] category as your wife. So like, everybody in kinship that you are compatible with, like you are lawfully allowed to have sex with, they are in that relation and all her parents and uncles and aunties, they’re in-laws to you.

And this affects the way I see like everybody, so if I met your girlfriend or wife or a partner that you had a sexual relation with and I saw them and I felt that we were compatible, sexually, then I would call you “brother,” because that’s that brother relation. But if I wasn’t, if I felt like that I’m not supposed to have that energy sexually with that person, or feel that, or think in that way, then I’d call you like “cousin.” Yeah, because that’s how it works. That’s our instinct, but also the kinship relation prevents inbreeding and stuff like that. It preserves a mitochondria, even in small [00:58:00] populations.

Yeah. So that sexual relation can define what your relation and affiliation is with the people all around. So yeah, any woman I have sex with, I will call her brothers’ “cousins” and I’ll call her cousins’ “brothers,” if that makes any sense. So, if I come into a place and I have like a sexual relationship or a sexual feeling for somebody, then that’ll determine how I relate with the other people if we don’t have any other kinship connection, who will I think of as mothers and aunties, who I will sort of regard as a grandparent or an old person, all that kind of thing.

Yeah. And I don’t know. So, that’s the purpose of travel, is to increase relatedness, to form more networks and bonds of relation.

Chris: A deep degree of courtship that follows in both, contexts, right, in the interpersonal and in the intercultural, as well.

Tyson: Ah, yeah. Courtship. [00:59:00] Yeah. And it’s all that, and it’s not just you two. It’s everybody around you is. Like I said, the magpies are singing their songs now. They’re singing love songs, even though it’s not their mating season, but they’re singing love songs for the other things that are mating in this season, which is amazing. Birds from turkeys and eagles and emus, this is their time. And there is a big, dark emu shape in the Milky Way, that you see in Australia.

And when it’s in that certain position and that star is in its eye there, then that’s the mating. Right now, right now, you can get emu eggs. And it’s the male who raises the chicks and sits on the eggs. And the magpies are singing those love songs for those mating emus.

And how cool is that? And so, that’s what you’re doing, even if you are like, you are already in a committed relationship and you know, you’re not available, or even if you’re [01:00:00] asexual or you’re just not down for sex in that context, you are still joining in that kind of love ceremony for the people around you who are doing that. You’re contributing to that all the time.

And so I guess, if you had a male partner, then I’d be doing it the same, the same way. I’d be like, “oh, well that person is a compatible sexual partner for me, like if I’ve already called you “brother,” because of that girl that we both liked, then I would assume that this fellow, “well, I like this fella too,” I’d call him cousin, and, he’d be compatible and that that’s how I would treat him, in that way, in that kind wife category, which is pretty cool.

And see, that’s the thing too, like all of these relations, they’re really queer kind of assemblages in nature, you know? And so, queer people always [01:01:00] have had that sacred role of being able to move between both of those energies, and to be two things at once in a kinship system, which is pretty cool.

Chris: Yeah. Well, I mean, to me it seems like so much of your work, or at least the little that I’ve had the pleasure and honour of reading and contending with has been an attempt to try to, deepen our capacity as humans to inhabit more than one identity or role or function or maybe even place, at once, and to do so in a way that honours, the kind of dynamic heterogeneity, that’s maybe too dense of a word, but, queerness perhaps that’s laden in the world.

Tyson: Well, like I mentioned earlier, like you LGBTQI+ plus people have good border work generally [01:02:00] because that’s what it is to be somebody who’s in between you in that way. That’s why that’s sacred and that’s why it’s always been sacred. But I guess, summing everything up with all the threads that we brought together, if you’re travelling well, you should feel like you’re falling in love.

Chris: Mm.

Tyson: Or like you’re in the early stages of a relationship. You should feel that “in love” chemical mix happening. And that’s when you’ll know you’re travelling well. But then if you feel that other exhilarated feeling that I described about when I went to Pompeii, that that is a raider rush. And everybody knows the difference, between the excitement of vanquishing someone in a competitive sporting match. That’s a very different chemical mix. It’s great, it’s intoxicating. But I think if anybody, if you asked them, and they answered honestly, they would say they’d rather have the feeling of falling in love.

So to travel well, and not be a [01:03:00] tourist, but to travel as thinking of yourself as a diplomat, between different species and different peoples and different genders and everything else, between the human and non-human, to be in that role and feeling - feeling that like you’re falling in love - you know you’re doing it right then. And you just follow all that. You follow that.

Chris: Hmm. Beautiful. Thank you, Tyson. You’ve given me certainly, a hell of a lot to meditate on and to wonder about. And, of course, I’m deeply, deeply, grateful for your willingness to do so, your time, given all the other things that you certainly have in your life and all the people that you are caring for in your days.

And on behalf of our listeners, of course, I’d like to thank you as well, for those that [01:04:00] will be putting their ear to this episode in the time to come.

Tyson: And yeah, and I guess come back to where we were at the start with where we’re sitting, where and when, which is a where-when, and an every-when, you know, of deep time. But in that sense, we’re always travelling, because the land is flowing around you. Even when you’re still, things are migrating through.

You have travelled to a different place when those birds come in that you haven’t seen since last year, when those butterflies or the ants start flying, you’re travelling. You can always fall in love as a good voyager in the land, because the land will move you, but it also flows around you.

And so, you’re always travelling even when you’re in place, which is pretty damn beautiful. You are looking at different stars every night, and every hour throughout the night, you’re travelling under those stars, [01:05:00] even if you’re just sitting on your porch. It’s pretty cool.

Chris: Hmm.

Yeah. Amen. Well, may your path and your travels be kissed by that feeling and perhaps even skill of falling in love.

Tyson: Yeah. Yeah. I need to get back to that. I need to get back to feeling that love magic again. It’s been a couple of months for me of not feeling it, but, yeah.

Chris: Yeah, me too. Me too.

Tyson: Actually I felt it with the flying ants, but then it went away because of work money, different flow. Yeah. You gotta fall in love. Alright, let’s get off this machine and go fall in love again.

On this episode, my guest is Dr. Devon Taylor, the President of the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement (JaBBEM), an advocacy group founded in 2022 that fights for equitable beach access and environmental justice in Jamaica. He is a Biomedical Research Scientist and environmental and social justice advocate who leads efforts to repeal the colonial-era Beach Control Act of 1956, which he describes as discriminatory and a barrier to public access.

JABBEM uses legal tools, including the Prescription Act of 1882, to establish long-standing community rights to beaches and rivers. The group is currently involved in multiple court cases, including those concerning Bob Marley Beach, Little Dunn’s River, and Flanker/Providence Beach, to secure public access and prevent privatization by luxury resorts like Sandals.

Dr. Taylor emphasizes that beach access is a fundamental human right and reparative justice issue, arguing that Jamaica’s beaches—national treasures—should be accessible to all Jamaicans, not just tourists. He calls for government action to replace outdated laws with modern legislation that ensures constitutional protection for public access and sustainable management of coastal resources.

Show Notes

• The violence and displacement from which JaBBEM emerged

• The Beach Control Act of 1956

• Coastal colonialism / plantation tourism

• Shoreline personhood and the birth of humanity

• The medicinal space of the sea

• Taking the fight to the courts in Jamaica

• Pan-Caribbean solidarity and dilemmas

• Critical mass: advice for guests/tourists

Homework

Jabbem - Website - Instagram - Facebook - YouTube

Stronger Caribbean Together

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome Dr. Taylor, to the End of Tourism Podcast. Thank you for being willing to join me today. And I’m wondering to start, if you could share with our listeners where you’re sitting today and what the world looks like there for you where you are.

Devon: Yeah. You know, funny enough, I’m sitting just outside of Washington, DC today.

Chris: Oh.

Devon: You know, I just got back from Jamaica. All right. And I’m just outside the capital of the “free world” today. Yeah, but Jamaica is home, so we just got back from some community service work, advocacy work. And I’m happy to engage the End of Tourism audience and share what the experience and the livity of the Jamaican people is like.

Chris: Hmm. Thank you, Dr. Taylor. As far as I understand, you are the president of Jabbem, the Jamaica Beach Birthright [00:01:00] Environmental Movement, which was founded in 2022 as “a grassroots organization acutely aware of the adverse effects of misguided development and environmental injustices to beaches, beach property, and sensitive terrestrial ecosystems” And so I’d like to ask you, Devin, a bit about your story, about how and why Jabbem was created, if I can.

Devon: Yeah. So my story is the story of my community - my community of Steer Town, a coastal community that I grew up in, but that’s also the story of the descendants of enslaved Africans, really, and a former slave plantation known as Jamaica, right?

There’s a history that is rooted in displacement, disposition, and disempowerment of a people, you know. [00:02:00] So, Jabbem is a response to continued injustice, injustice not only to black bodies, you know what I mean? And the indigenous ones, the Tainos who were there first, right? But also the desecration of land, right?

Land have a relationship with human beings and with indigenous people, and we have a relationship with land. But all that get disturbed, through this “development.” So, you know, myself, my community, experienced that displacement and disposition and disempowerment in 2019, at the heights of COVID.

When our childhood beach that our community has been using for more than a hundred years, you know, we were displaced from it. And the displacement. It’s around 29 acres of beachfront land that the community... as an extension of our community that we use for everything, everything that Jamaicans use the beach [00:03:00] for, right? You know, recreation, fishing, spirituality, I mean, courtship, artisan work, farming you know all that space that offers a multitude of opportunities, multitude of possibilities, right, which made it that node, that connectivity to the community of Steer Town, to the community of Chalky Hill, to the community of Epworth and Davis Town and, you know, parts of, and tourism mecca of Ocho Rios. You know what I mean? This is what this space represented. It was a community that birthed ideas and continual livity of our people.

And we were displaced from it, displaced from it by force. You know, a force that was part of the state, the Jamaican police, private security, the political class. It was violent. It was a very [00:04:00] violent displacement. And so, if you have ever experienced disposition and displacement, it unsettles you. It arms you. You know, I mean, you are rattled, right?

And so, we had to figure out how this happened and how we need to move, because we’re a resilient people, we never give up. This is where we’re able to survive 500 years of chattel slavery. So, it took us a minute to kinda understand what was happening and knowing that we have to move from the grassroots. We have to come together in solidarity and farm something that could push back at our displacement. So Jabbem was born through state-sponsored violence and private violence, the displacement of communities from beach ecosystems, from the sea, in that time.

Chris: Thank you for that, Dr. Taylor. You know, you mentioned 2019 as a kind [00:05:00] of watershed moment for your community and for the creation of Jabbem. But of course most people have some understanding that the tourism industry has a long history on the island, in Jamaica. And there’s something that arises quite a bit in the work of your organization and in the interviews and in the media that’s come out, and specifically around a law that was created or enacted in 1956, The Beach Control Act in Jamaica. And so, I’m wondering if you would be willing to offer up a little bit about this law, why it’s so infamous in your country and maybe a little something of what was happening in Jamaica before 2019 and perhaps since that act, that law was created in the fifties.

Devon: Yeah. The struggle for beach rights, you know, access to the beaches use of the sea [00:06:00] is historical, right? There are giants before my time who stood in the fight. You know what I mean? We had Dr. Carolyn Cooper, you know what I mean, very instrumental. John Maxwell. We have Kabu Ma’at Kheru. We have Esther Figueroa and many other Jamaicans who lend their voice to a struggle, observing and seeing that, with every new hotel that’s built, every new villa that’s built, every new guest house that’s built, is a loss of the Jamaican people to really continue to enjoy spaces that they have been doing since childhood. Right.

You know, as you mentioned, there’s a long history of tourism in Jamaica. Yes, there is. I mean, Jamaica is still a colony of England. The King Charles is still the king of Jamaica, right? With all that said, Jamaica does have its prime minister who runs the country, and the king don’t really get in his way, so all the experiences of the Jamaican people now is [00:07:00] actually a product of the political class that is running the country.

And the tourism model at one point was more integrated, right? There was more a blend of locals and visitors traversing in beaches and enjoying these spaces, walking around in the country, participating in other cultural activities that are not based along the beach, right? You would come into villages, enjoy villages. You know, that was true for, also, my community. My community was close to a couple of these hotels and guest houses at the time. Many members in our community work in these spaces. Some of those tourists would venture up into the village and enjoy all that we offer, you know, in the Jamaican life.

I should point out that musical albums, between Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones was made with members of of the Steer Town community. “Wingless Angel” is the name of that album.

So this was a time when it was more [00:08:00] of that kind of integration. But the colony that Jamaica is right, and just pre-independence, Jamaica became independent in 1962... a law was passed in 1956 just on the eve of independence, which you alluded to earlier - The Beach Control Act of 1956 - and we’re still trying to fully grasp why there was a need to put a law in place that says that no Jamaicans have the right to the foreshore, or the floor of the sea and was translated by the head of the National Environment and Planning A gency (NEPA), that we do not have the right to swim, to bathe, to fish, to walk along the foreshore. All those rights are vested in the government, in what they basically call “the crown,” controls all that kind of things. And the thinking we are trying to understand, is that the [00:09:00] result is very clear, that it’s stripped us of any inherent rights to the foreshore. Stripped us.

And very important for accessing beaches is the rights, the land. So you cannot get to the beach or the sea without traversing land.

Chris: Right.

Devon: And so this legislation, really inherently, did not give us any land rights. And that is what you know happened post-emancipation. There was never any reparative justice around the rights of descendants of enslaved Africans to land, where compensation was given to the enslavers. They got millions and millions of dollars when slavery was abolished. There was no compensation to the descendants in any form. No rights to land, no distribution of land, nothing [00:10:00] that was constitutionally put in place, nothing for provisions were made. In fact, the secretary of the islands made sure that they put tariffs so high on government land that the descendants could not afford them.

So it kept the Jamaican people, and for that case, most of the Caribbean Islands’ peoples, landless, right? So we walk out of slavery as a homeless people, despite the many rebellions and revolutions that were fought by our ancestors to free our people. You know, the powers to be never gave us any of that rights to land.

And so, the 1956 Beach Control Act is consistent with colonial logic of dispossession and disempowerment.

Chris: Wow.

Devon: And that’s what that legislation has really done to us.

Chris: Wow. Yeah. I mean some of the statistics that have [00:11:00] come up in Jabbem’s research is that at least 35% of Jamaica’s GDP is tourism, that 25% of all jobs on the island are tourism-based jobs, that 70% of tourism dollars go to foreign investors while only 10% goes to the community and 20% going to the government. Then finally, less than 1% and maybe less of Jamaica’s shoreline is accessible to Jamaicans.

You refer to this, I think as coastal colonialism. Is that right, Devin?

Devon: Yeah, it is coastal colonialism. It’s a kind of plantation tourism, right? And the numbers speak, for themselves. I mean, they’re very consistent with colonial logic around ownership of land, possession of land, what land is used for, and who the [00:12:00] usage of land benefits. The resources of the land benefit the colonial master. Of course, in this case, it is the government of Jamaica with it’s elite. You know, the elites are sometimes Jamaican. Sometimes they’re multinational corporations. So all of these kind of things are linked to plantation tourism and the exploitation of labour. Now there’s no way that you can have, in 2024, a tourism product made 4.3 billion US dollars, and more than 3 billion of it, did not stay in Jamaica. It may not even enter the country, because of the way all these transactions are done. You could book your tour from overseas, pay for your hotel from overseas, you pay for your flight, you pay all these things. So those dollars does not even enter the country.

Even many of the Jamaican tours, their banking companies are in international spaces. Many of these entities are the owners of these hotel, these [00:13:00] corporations, also registered in other countries. You’ll have some of them registered in other Caribbean islands, St. Lucia and other tax havens across the planet. So, I mean, all of these things are very similar to the way that the plantation work.

And then of course the workers and the exploitations of the worker, being paid very low wages, wages that are not livable wages. I mean, they’re overworked. And so, the whole thing is consistent just the way the plantation works, right? And so we have to call it what it is. And at the same time, you work at the hotel and you can’t enjoy the beach, right? Not while you’re working there. Neither can you go home and say, “I’m taking my family of five to where I work, and I’m gonna put my towel down on the beach and take a swim, or I’m going to go roll out, and I’m going to fish.

So I mean, the whole model, as to how it’s constructed right now is very [00:14:00] oppressive, and is a continuation of the systems of oppressions that were characteristic of the plantation. So it makes it a plantation tourism model that the Jamaican government is supporting. And it is the government of the country because as you mentioned, you know less than 1% of beaches in the country is accessible by the Jamaicans, right?

The country, the island is 494 miles around right now. 150 miles of it is technically sandy, right? Most of it is are rocky terrain, but the rocky terrains are beautiful terrains. You know, these are terrains that we all meditations from. You know what I mean, we go fish at, you find your moment in these spaces and they’re becoming far and few, and that is supported by just the way all the legislation is constructed, and no government in the history of [00:15:00] “independent Jamaica” from 62, right... The law will be on the book for 70 years, and none of them changed that law to empower the Jamaican people with inherent rights.

Not just to... because I know sometimes the reasoning is that, “well, we just wanna go to the beach to swim.”

Well, we are thinking about a new imagination of our relationship with the coastline that we have been having for many, many, many decades.

It wasn’t just swimming.

You know? No, no, no. It’s beyond that.

So, they may project that that’s all we need: is just to go into the water.

Right? I mean, absolutely. That’s part of it. Absolutely we need to go there where our deads were washed upon the shores from these slave ships, that many were thrown overboard, many jumped overboard.

But livity along the coastline for fisher folks, for vendors, for those who harvest [00:16:00] seaweed, right? For those baptisms, for the artists who get their inspiration there, for farmers who farm there, all of these possibilities, that we used to use the space for.

We are saying that we should be able to continue doing so. Right? And we are fighting for this kind of a justice in this space.

Chris: Wow. I mean, this is a theme, a through line, that that comes up in so many of the conversations I have with people like yourself who are fighting for land and land rights in their homes, in their places.

It seems there’s so much in common. One of the strange things... I don’t know how strange it is really, but I was reading recently on the history of what they call “the enclosure of the commons” in Britain from I think the 13th or 14th century on, and how slowly, little by little, the rich landowner started kind of carving away, the land from the peasants and forcing them into the [00:17:00] towns and cities to work for wages, essentially, and to undermine, not only their ancestral relationships with the land, the places where they’re dead were buried for many, many centuries, but also the kind of lived spiritual relationship they have with it. Right.

And so, this is something that I’ve seen on Jabbem’s website regarding the organization’s principle goals. And that one of them is “the promotion of environmental personhood to beaches, selected rivers and important land formations to protect nature for future generations and to safeguard the intrinsic value of nature by recognizing them [that’s the beaches, the selected rivers, and land] as living entities.”

Now, I think this is something that’s a common understanding, if not something that ecologists and environmentalists today campaign for, which is giving waterways and [00:18:00] land rights, but also legal and judicial protections.

And so I’m curious, how do you think giving legally-bound personhood to land and water could change the lives or the relationships that travellers and local people have to those places?

You know, when we come to live our lives in the presence of rivers and beaches and land as alive and sentient and as having history, their own personal history, how do you think our relationships to places might change, either as tourists or locals.

Devon: Yeah. I mean these ideas are not distant to the human consciousness, because it was like that in the beginning. If we look at the scientific history of earth, right? You know, the sea, oceans are the birthplace of humanity. We crawled out the [00:19:00] sea onto land, and where did we enter first? It was on the shoreline?

So, historically, ancient shoreline is the birthplace of humanity. And we just imagine, what happened in that space was the beauty of evolution. Evolution, physically. Evolution, spiritually. Evolution, in all ways and form you could think of. That space was a space of a multitude of births and rebirths. A space of energy, that led to all that we know it right now - plants and animal life, running around and terra firma.

So I mean, that recognizes that this space of a right to exist because without it, I mean, I and I would not be in existence in this present formation. So it’s not really a kind of thinking that is outside of the grasp of humanity. [00:20:00] It’s just that a version of humanity turned its back against nature, you know, to degrade it, to use it without recognizing the relationship that it had with us.

And so to really raise these ideas, that the space has its own consciousness, has its own intrinsic value, has its own understanding of I and I, knowing what I needed within such time. Give it to I so that I could thrive and manifest. So it did its work and it continues to do its work. It’s just that humanity, a version of humanity, is robbing the space of its ability to continue to serve as a crucible for next generation, even the protection of the planet Earth.

And you will hear it all the while that the shoreline is very important to protect us against the fallout of climate change, in terms of [00:21:00] protecting land. You know, we hear those words, but we don’t live those words. So I think the recognition of personhood status to these kinds of ecosystem will bring us back to our relationship with the land, whereas we are custodian of it and it is custodian of us. And so that kind of duality, between man and environment can reign again, so the environment can serve its role in the next phase of human consciousness, right? It’s not just a space to degrade, but it offers many things. I’m sure you go to the beach and when you go to the beach, you’re alive. And you feel more alive when you go to a beach that is rustic, that when you look around you, you hear the sounds of nature. You can feel the beauty of that sun under your foot, and the smell that you are smelling is smell of a natural coastal forest, a natural ocean. You’re not smelling [00:22:00] chlorine or suntans, or you’re not hearing the bustling of engine mechanizations. You know what I mean? All what we have created in these spaces, right?

You’re not seeing the beautiful crabs run, the crustaceans in the space. You’re not seeing the vibrancy of all the creatures that live in the ocean at near shore, because you take out hectares of grass beds, which is necessary for replenishing life.

You know, the ocean produce more oxygen than the land, because earth is more than 70% water. So the importance there of understanding personhood status is for us to understand our livity and our life is critically linked to this space. And that’s what we’re trying to say.

Understand this space for what it meant for human evolution, what it means for our continued survival, [00:23:00] and allow it to do so, but we have to give it that kinda legal protection. We have to make generations coming on board understand what it is in terms of how critical it is for livity.

Chris: Wow. That’s beautiful.

Yeah. Thank you so much Dr. Taylor. When I think about all the times that I spent on beaches, I mean maybe not as many as other people, but I also think about how much, in our time, in the last few generations that so many people go to the beach to relax. And you know, as far as I know, this wasn’t a very common thing around the world before the Industrial Revolution - to go to the beach to relax, at least en masse, at least with so many people. And it makes me wonder, what might be happening mythically or mythologically or mythopoetically, when people go to the beach, they lie down in front of the [00:24:00] sun and in front of the ocean, and in terms of what you were saying, I always wondered, this seems like a kind of devotion that people are almost, in a religious way, devoting their bodies to being in this place with the sun and the ocean.

But also in this place, as you mentioned, just between the ocean and the land. Right. The shoreline. And while it seems like a kind of religious devotion, maybe the fact that it’s kind of commodified and industrialized and manipulated in such a way so that people don’t recognize the life or lives of the shoreline, of the rivers, of the beach, of the ocean, et cetera, that there’s something in there that humans are longing to express, but it gets turned into this really, really strange and almost demented form of, you know, “oh, take my picture and let’s put it on Instagram” and all that kind of thing, right?

So yeah, thank you for that, Devin. It was really beautiful to [00:25:00] hear.

And for our listeners who can see some of the work that Jabbem is doing on their website, there are many, many campaigns that your organization is involved in in Jamaica, and some of them involve court cases, but I’m curious if you’d be willing to comment, I guess, on how your organization, how your team has been dealing with the campaigns, what kind of successes or failures, what kind of learning has come your way. What can you tell us about the work that you’ve been doing with the people on the ground there and what, if any kind of successes you’ve had so far.

Devon: Yeah. Yeah. So, so we have just been around like four years now. This is our fourth year. Right. You know, kinda listening to how you were kinda talking about the reverence when one goes into these spaces, because the sea is medicine. It’s a medicine space. And I think that’s why a lot of people gravitate towards it. And what we are trying to do [00:26:00] is saying that everyone should be able to experience their birthplace, which is the foreshore, right? And so our fight and our struggle is that, as the United Nation Convention and the Law of the Sea puts it, the sea is the common heritage of humankind. So what we are doing is consistent with what the United Nation goal, that this space, this sea, this ocean, these rivers are common edge heritage of humanity. And so, we must be able to access them, engage them, we must be able to experience them and they must remain protected for all generations.

So, Jabbem’s campaign on the ground are not campaigns that are just for the liberation of the communities, where these beaches are. But it’s for the community of humanity, that when they come into our country, they will experience the ecological heritage of the country, not [00:27:00] restricted by how much money you have in your pocket, by how much you could pay to go to one of these all inclusive hotels. Or one of these high-end villas that are encroaching in the sea, or any of these hotels that they are now building in the sea, is that you could’ve travelled from another country to experience what the foreshore and the sea - which is your heritage, as a human - in Jamaica.

So the campaign, we are fighting for liberation of the coastline, right? So we have five of these cases right now in the Jamaican court system, right? Yeah. We have the case fighting for Bob Marley Beach. I mean, I could speak uniquely to what these spaces symbolize, about what they have been for the Jamaican people. You know, that particular beach has been a space where Rastafari, who are oppressed in Jamaica as a black liberation movement, with its central spiritual nucleus being [00:28:00] Emperor Haile Selassie I. That beach was the cradle of where thoughts and ideas were born in versions of Rastafari, and we had to move into protect that space because ultra-luxury hotels is slated to be built here that was going to displace the community. And so, that fight continues, right?

We have the fightof Mammee Bay, which is my childhood space. As we explained to you earlier, you know, more than a hundred years of usage within this space, an extension of our community. It’s a space that provide livity for many, right?

And we speak to Blue Lagoon, right? Very historical, very beautiful mix of salt and fresh water, which many underground springs being fed from the Blue Mountain, a space that was used by the indigenous Tainos and Africans used this space for spirituality, for food, for all that you could imagine beyond recreation. This space is being commandeered by elite private interests.

We have that in the court. We’re fighting [00:29:00] our own government for liberation of the Blue Lagoon, which is a national monument, which would means that, “oh, can a national monument be privatized?”

But Jamaican laws allow for this to happen. And if we don’t fight to protect the space for humanity, then you may not be able to see this majestic space.

It is the same that is true for a Little Dunn’s River. Again, the intersection of a beautiful waterfalls with the Caribbean Sea, that was occupied by Rastafari from in the fifties. This space is majestic. You know, the rush of the water, the sound that we hear in this space, just brings you to these meditative spaces. You know, feel the blend of sea water meeting fresh water and how that turns into the warmth. Right. It is just beautiful.

We are fighting for that and we are fighting... you know, our newest case is in Providence/F lanker in Montego Bay. One of the tours in mecca, which, you know, the hotel [00:30:00] giant, Sandal Resort International, applied to the National Environmental Planning Agency for a permit to build hotel rooms in the sea and to build villas on this land.

And so we are in the courts trying to defend that, because when we lose these spaces, right, it’s not just Jamaicans lose. It’s just not, you know, “we have been ripped from our culture.” I mean, it’s that humankind loses. Humankind loses.

You know, it’s cultural desecration, right? It’s exploitation. It’s a form of capitalism that see the concentration of wealth in the hands of few people. And the exploitation of labour and, degradation of coastal forests.

So we are fighting with communities, so the way we work, every community that we go into expresses their willingness to protect their spaces. I mean, most of the time they reach out, because we’re grassroots. You know, we’re not a NGO. We don’t [00:31:00] operate and move like these spaces. We are truly community-run. You know, as members from the community that leads up those fights. And we collaborate and we build, because we are one people. And the struggle is led by these communities. You know, I mean, we are just networking the struggle across the island, just as the struggle for people across Earth is always finding brotherhood, sisterhood, and connection in the struggle for liberation.

Chris: Amen. Amen, brother. I’m curious as well if that solidarity has reached beyond the island’s shoreline, if you have any brothers and sisters that you’ve been working with in other Caribbean islands or other countries to forward the cause.

Devon: Yeah, man. Yeah, man. We work very closely with Stronger Caribbean Together Network. It’s a network with other Caribbean countries who are undergoing similar things, similar land struggles for coastal spaces all across the [00:32:00] Caribbean. You know, so while Jamaica has this Beach Control Act that gives us no inherent right to access the beaches and to use the sea, most of the other Caribbean islands, you can access the foreshore, and you can use the sea.

All right. You know, Jamaica is one of the unique countries that does that. It’s not withstanding though that the tourism product across the Caribbean is now where most Caribbean economies are moving towards in terms of investment. So, they are building out these hotels and these overwater bungalows across the Caribbean, which is impacting lives and livelihood as well, because yes, you can go on some of these beaches, but you can’t truly enjoy them in their fullness. And they are building on these beaches, as well, which is also causing environmental issue.

So, I mean, it’s funny that the commonality among Caribbean Islands, since the time of enslavement was plantation [00:33:00] economy, based on sugar and cotton and rum and all these things. And that was not good for us. And the region now is moving towards a very similar tourism model, that doesn’t pay its people as much. Seeing these lands, coastal lands, being owned by private interests, that is actually displacing the indigenous population, and the descendants of enslaved Africans from these spaces. So we’re not really benefitting at scale to the kind of tourism that is coming into the Caribbean.

I mean, I think you are in Mexico, you are seeing it in different parts of Mexico too. I mean, wealthy people come and buy coastal lands or, lease them, I guess in the case of Mexico, of a slightly different kind of law where you, I don’t think you can own coastal lands. I mean, you have a right to beach, but there are barriers that are put in place that makes it difficult for you to sometimes traverse these spaces. And they’re intentional. [00:34:00] All right. You know, I mean, we have experienced them in Puerto Rico as well. You know, we’re seeing them emerging in places like Costa Rica and and in St. Lucia.

In spaces, they’re wide open, but in spaces you can see the creep is coming, Because there’s a thing about capitalism where when it comes in, it takes everything. It swallows everything. It’s not a good political economic model, that takes the environment into consideration as to what it gives back to humanity.

So it takes, and it takes, and it takes, and that’s not the sustainability that you will hear being preached on the planet. If we truly want to be sustainable, then the environment must have as much rights as a moving animal. It was here [00:35:00] before I and I. Earth existed before I and I. So, all I and I come, in the context of Earth, and treated Earth like it’s a second class entity in existence. It must be afforded that right.

I mean, it’s only 3% of the planet that is water, fresh water. So, we know water is a very essential source for life. So we cannot allow this to be controlled. Access to the sea, access to the oceans, must not be controlled by no entity. We must freely move in these spaces. So Jabbem is at the view also that all coastal land must be public land. You know, must be public land.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, I completely agree, you know, that offering rights in these regards can definitely change our understanding of how we are with land, of how we [00:36:00] are with other people. And I think that in order for the function of rights to work that we need to undertake a degree of responsibility for how we are with the land, with each other and the way we implement those rights.

And you know, it’s been a great pleasure to speak with you Dr. Taylor. I know we’re just running out of time now. Before we finish off, I’d like to ask in regards to those responsibilities, you know, I’m sure this conversation or question has come up many times for you and your team, your people there on the island.

If local people have a responsibility to their homes, to their places, to how they live and even host in those places, then what do you think the responsibilities are of the guest, of what we would otherwise call the tourists in our time? What do you think their responsibilities are when, either coming to your island or just even thinking of planning a vacation, because I’ve had many guests on the podcast who are [00:37:00] fighting similar fights as you and your people are.

Some of them say, “please come, please come, and we’ll figure it out.”

And some of them say, “please don’t come. This is not the time.”

So I’m curious what those conversations like look like with Jabbem.

Devon: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s a good question, because we know that there are some countries that too much tourists goes there, and it has a critical mass that it can’t take anymore. And so there’s need to kind of regulate the number of people.

You know, Jamaica’s not at that point right now. And myself and our team believe in freedom of movement. We see this as a world without borders, despite how politicians, and kings, have drawn artificial borders across the world to limit all your move, and requires visa to go in spaces and validation, that you can afford your stay within spaces. Yeah. We don’t have that view still, you know. Those kind of views are colonial logic, because [00:38:00] if that unconsciousness was birthed in humanity, then the migration of I and I outside of Africa would never have happened, and would’ve never had the multitude of nations that make this planet a very beautiful space. So freedom of movement is something that we cherish. So come to Jamaica.

What we would say is that you need to do your homework. You don’t want to participate in injustice. You don’t want to participate in discrimination. You don’t want to participate in displacement and disempowerment of people, so do your homework. Before you come to Jamaica, look where you are staying. And check out whether or not these communities can freely access these beaches, use the sea, whether these fishing communities are thriving, as they were before, whether or not workers are compensated enough, whether the social health of the [00:39:00] community where this hotel is is good, whether or not the space that you are actually coming to is degraded. I think these are question for you to ask yourself.

I would say you boycott those spaces, because I think one thing that the capitalists understand is that when his money is in danger, his behaviour changes. He first gets violent. He first gets violent and come after you, which would be we the people, but if we have the protection of the international community who is demanding a more equitable and just product interact with, a product that is fierce. So you can’t be charging me $3000-$6,000 to stay in a hotel room or $500 to stay in a hotel room, but you’re paying your people minimum wages that are, I think, $15,000 Jamaican dollar might be a hundred US dollars a week. You know, I mean, that is labour exploitation.

“ Then I’m not going to go there. I’m gonna participate in some other products across the island.”

[00:40:00] I know Airbnb have their own sets of issues, but though that’s a growing space in Jamaica. Small mom-and-pop establishments that are there. So it might not be easy, but search them out, you know?

And we are getting ready to actually help the international community by importing some of that resources on our page, so you could see places that you could stay. So we are saying, being responsible, be responsible in your travels.

And when you come, venture out. You know, come amongst our people, come experience the real Jamaican culture. You know, those things are important because tourism is an educational thing, right? It’s idea sharing, right? It is cultural exchange, right? It’s getting to feel outside of your normal space and getting to a new mindset to understand how other people are living around the world, and what adjustment you can make in your life. What can you impart? What can you take back? And these things are important for the [00:41:00] growth of humanity, for us to understand each other. I think these things prevent wars and conflicts. But contrary, you know, I mean, what we see world leaders are doing is driving domination of particular cultures, domination of particular economic systems that are unjust.

And Jamaica is still growing. We still have a lot to offer to the world. We provide real good, music to the world, but we are beyond music. You know what I mean? We are very creative people of just a lot of goodness and a lot of niceness. So come to Jamaica, but you know what I mean? Be responsible in your travel and seek out the spaces that are equitable and just, and help in our struggle, advocate on our behalf in the international community for the repeal and replacement of the Beach Control Act of 1956, for different tourism models to come into play.

Chris: Mm mm mm Thank you, Dr. Taylor. Our listeners can find out more about [00:42:00] the actions and campaigns on the Jabbem website, jabbem.org, if I’m not mistaken.

Devon: That’s it.

Chris: And I believe on Instagram as well.

Devon: JabbemJabbem on Instagram. We are also on Facebook and on your Tiktoks, and all your other spaces. You know, I mean, and reach out to us. We have a GoFundMe page where we are trying to raise money for legal struggles.

You know, we have many more cases that we need to push forward to protect communities. So if you want to help out, you know check us out on GoFundMe there.

And when you come to Jamaica, just link us up and we’ll bring it to couple of the spaces and in some of the communities then you’ll get the real Jamaica, you know?

Chris: So, I’ll make sure that all those links are up on the End of Tourism website and Substack page when the episode launches. And on behalf of our listeners, Devin, I’d like to wish you an amazing, amazing day and to your team, to your organization. It seems like you’re doing incredible work and with a really grounded and [00:43:00] equally political and spiritual basis or foundation for the way that you and your team walk in the world.

I’m very, very grateful for that and for your time today. So, I wish you also the best of luck in the so-called, capital of the free world there, and all the best.

Devon: Yeah, man. Give thanks. Give thanks, Chris, and give thanks to you and your team for having us. Give thanks.

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On this episode, my guest is Hasan Kerim Güç. Kerim graduated from Istanbul High School in 1992 and from Yildiz Technical University in 1996. Between 1997-2004, he completed his master's degree in Information Systems and Business Administration in Baltimore, USA. He returned to Turkey in 2010. Realizing that the treasure he had been looking for for 14 years was right in his own home, he took the position of Chief Editor at Nefes Publishing House in 2014. Kerim nourishes his business life with Sufi studies and is pursuing a doctoral degree from the Usküdar University Institute for Sufi Studies. He has published four books.

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Show Notes

• Rejecting the American Dream

• Anatolian and Sufi Hospitality

• Sufis and the Ottomans

• Tanri misafiri (“God’s guest”)

• Togetherness, and the roots of Religion

• When we welcome suffering, we make honey out of pain

• Submission, servants and the prophet Mohammed

• The Conference of the Birds / Stories from the Thirty Birds

• Limits to hospitality in the Islamic world

• Bereket / Baraka

• Rumi’s Guest House

Homework

• Kerim Vakfı

• Stories from the Thirty Birds

• Cemalnur Sargut: A Sufi Life of Love, Suffering, and Divine Union

• Cemalnur Sargut Books

• Kerim Guc - Instagram

• Kyoto University Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies

• Ken’an Rifâî Chair of Islamic Studies at Peking University

• University of North Carolina (UNC) Ken’an Rifâî Chair in Islamic Studies

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism podcast, Kerim. Hoș geldiniz.

Kerim: Thank you very much for having me.

Chris: Yeah, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for joining me today. Perhaps you could tell our listeners, where you find yourself and what the world looks like there for you.

Kerim: Well, first of all, I’m an immigrant also. I was an immigrant. I lived in the US for a while, and then I came back to to my own country. And things are very different here than there, than it is in US. From the perspective of what I did... I was actually an engineer, and I was working in the IT fields, and I was living the American dream, and then I realized that there was some kind of an emptiness, and this whole thing, and I decided to go back to Turkey and [00:01:00] study Sufism, and since my mother was actually a Sufi teacher. She decided to actually move this whole Sufism into academia. So, she basically established an institute in Istanbul - Üsküdar Istanbul - at the University of Üsküdar. The difference between this institute and the other schools, the people like myself, like engineers, coming from different disciplines, including lawyers and whatnot, they were not able to do their masters or PhDs in Sufism, because in other universities, they require for you to actually have theology backgrounds. But with this new establishment, we were able to educate people from all different disciplines and, [00:02:00] so we basically concentrated on ethics rather than the religion itself.

So, a lot of people coming from different areas, especially the white-collar people, living this, like - how do I say that? - it’s a world of money and materialism and all kind of that stuff. They’re coming to our institute and realizing that money or career is not the only goal for life.

And we started to concentrating on things like spirituality more than the materialist world.

Chris: Thank you. Well, I’m very much looking forward to exploring these themes with you and a little bit of the work that you do with Kerim Vakfı.

Kerim: Sure.

Chris: And so for the last season of the podcast, I’m very much interested in focusing on different hospitality traditions and practices from around the [00:03:00] world, as I mentioned to you. And, one of the key themes of the podcast is radical hospitality. Now, the word “radical” comes from Latin and it means “rooted,” or we might even say “local” or “living.”

And so. I’m curious if there are any radical hospitality practices that you think are unique to your place, to Istanbul, or to the Sufi community that you might be willing to share with us today?

Kerim: Well, Istanbul, actually, is a very metropolitan city. So like the other metropolitan cities, we kind of lost that - what we call the hospitality of Anatolia. Anatolia is basically the Eastern part of Istanbul. And in Istanbul, we have, right now, 25 million people in a very small area. And in older days when the population was smaller, [00:04:00] we were able to show our hospitality, because the Turkish hospitality is very famous, actually. In this area the hospitality is very famous, including the, you know, Greek and Arab hospitality. Usually, it’s a little bit different than the western countries.

For instance, we welcome people - we used to, and probably still, in the countryside - the people coming from other cities or countries or whatnot. The locals actually helped them out as much as possible. They even invite them to their own houses and let them stay for how long they want to stay. And this was kind of like a regular thing in the old days. It’s still going on very much in the eastern side of Turkey, pretty much in the countryside. [00:05:00] But Istanbul, like other cosmopolitan cities, we kinda lost that. You know, neighbourly things. We have a lot of neighbours and we we have always good... we used to have a lot of good relationship with them, but nowadays, again, because of this material world, we kind of lost this hospitality.

So from the Sufi point of view, hospitality is very important. It’s interesting that you mentioned the “radical.” You were talking about where “radical” come from, but you didn’t talk about where “hospitality” comes from. See, there is a relationship between the hospital and the hospitality and the way the Sufis look at things is very much like the illnesses in our body are our guests. So, we don’t think that they’re bad for you. They’re actually [00:06:00] the guests of our house for a time being. So we show them the hospitality as much as we can, and then hopefully we say goodbye to them.

Chris: Wow. Wow. That’s fascinating. I do know that the term “hospitality,” hospital is part of that, and hospital historically came from these notions of hospitality. I mean, in the western world in, and at least in the Christian world, there’s a kind of unauthorized history in which a lot of this hospitality, as you mentioned, that was offered to the stranger, was done by the families or the individual houses or homes within a community. A stranger would come and they would ask for hospitality, ask for food and shelter, and the family would have to decide whether to do that and how to do it. [00:07:00] And then at some point, the institution of the Church kind of stepped in and said, “you know what? You don’t have to do this anymore. When the stranger comes to the community, when they show up at your door, just send them to us. Just send them to the church and we’ll give them what they need.”

And so this did a number of things, but the two most obvious ones, I think, are that the family, the individuals in the family and the community on a grassroots level, slowly ended up losing their ability, their unique kind of familial or personal ability to host the stranger. And at the same time, of course, the church used this as a way to try to convert, the stranger.

Kerim: Right.

Chris: And so I’m curious if there’s anything in that realm that you see in the Islamic world, maybe in the Sufi world... you mentioned that, since the [00:08:00] imposition of modernity and the industrial Revolution in the world, we see less and less possibilities for small-scale, grassroots hospitality between people, in part, because there’s so much movement, and of course, because the hospital has its brothers and sisters in the sense of the “hotel” and the “hostel.”

Kerim: Absolutely.

Chris: So, I’m curious if there’s anything like that that comes to mind for you in regards to the Islamic world.

Kerim: Well, one thing is about like the Ottomans. The Ottomans, when they were coming from the Anatolia and then started conquering all those places in the Balkan area, Greece and Bulgaria, Hungary and all those places, after they actually conquered, they sent Sufis to those places. And, like in Hungary, there is a person, his name is [00:09:00] Gül Baba, which means “Rose Father.” That’s what they call him. He actually has his own tekke (tekke is like a church for Sufis). And this place, it’s like a school more, more like a school, but it’s a religious school.

And in this tekke, he actually finds all those people with needs, and he pretty much helped them out with all those needs. And the people coming from different religions, they actually started liking people like from the Turks’ point of view, because the Turks were symbolized by these Sufi movements. And instead of, you know, pushing people to convert or demolishing the churches and rebuilding mosques and stuff. Instead of that, they actually [00:10:00] welcomed people from all over the world, or all over the place, basically, to stay in the tekke, to eat and to get education in the tekke. So this was a great strategy of Ottomans. That’s how they actually stayed in Europe for almost like 600 years. So that was very much like, you know, their strategy, I think. And in a good way.

Chris: Yeah, you know, in my research I found out that there’s still Sufi orders in the Balkans a group called the Bektashi.

Kerim: Right.

Chris: And of course, with the very little historical understanding that I had, I was very surprised. I had no idea. But of course, when I eventually went to visit the regions that my father is from, I saw churches, synagogues, and mosques, all in the same little neighbourhoods.

[00:11:00] So, quite an impressive kind of understanding that the major religions in those places could coexist for so long. And that in the context of someone who grew up in North America, who thought it was the opposite (previously) and such things are so difficult.

Kerim: Right. Right.

Chris: So, Kerim, a mutual friend of ours has told me, that in the Turkish language, there is a phrase (and excuse my pronunciation). The phrase is tanri misafiri.

Kerim: Right.

Chris: Which translates into English as something like “God’s guest.”

Kerim: Right.

Chris: Or “the guest sent by God.”

Kerim: Right. Right.

Chris: And so I’m wondering if you could speak about this phrase, maybe what it means to you and where you think it comes from?

Kerim: Well, in Anatolia, it’s a very famous phrase. And like I said previously, you know anybody coming from somewhere else, who comes into somebody’s [00:12:00] house, is allowed to stay in the house as “the guest of God,” because we believe that God has sent that guest to us and we try to... you know, it’s more like making that guest happy means making God happy. So, that’s the understanding of older generations.

In today’s metropolitan areas, I don’t think it’s possible because of the security problems and everything. But like I said, in the countryside, people are very welcoming when it comes to this, because it is very important that knowing that person is actually coming from God, from Allah, so we have to take care of that person as much as possible to please God, actually.

So that’s how it is. I still see that in many cities in the [00:13:00] more eastern side of Turkey or south side of Turkey, or even north side of Turkey except in the bigger cities. But in the smaller cities, people are much more welcoming, again because of this specific idiom, actually.

Chris: From tanri misafiri?

Kerim: Right. Tanri means “God” in our language. In the original Turkish language, it’s tanri, and, misafiri means “ the guest.”

Chris: Yeah. So beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Kerim: Absolutely.

Chris: And so when guests arrive in a home, you know, in English, at least in, in the context of the older traditions, it is said that the guest or the potential guest, the stranger, asks for hospitality. They don’t necessarily say “ they ask for food,” which we can imagine that surely they [00:14:00] do. They don’t necessarily say that “they ask for shelter” or “accommodation,” which we surely we could imagine they do. But the literature often says they ask for hospitality.

And so, when we think of hospitality today, we often think about people sitting around a table eating food together. And so I’m curious if there’s a shared understanding among Sufis or at least the community that you live among and in, about the importance of both eating food and eating food together.

Kerim: Togetherness is probably one of the most important things in the Islamic religion. Because like even our way of worshiping God - Allah - we try to do that in a union as much as possible. It is very interesting, the words that “religion” comes from.

[00:15:00] Re- means “again,” and legion means “union.”

So it’s almost like “religion” itself means “to recreate the union,” “to reshape the union,” “ to have the union back,” because we have the tendency to be alone. And even you can imagine that in the western countries, in the western world, a lot of people want to be alone.

Like, there’s a lot of individuals rather than a group of people. And in the eastern world, it’s a little bit different. We are more like family-oriented people. We try to do things together. I mean, there are advantages and disadvantages obviously, but there is a difference between them.

So, we always had this [notion that] “the more is better,” basically. You know, more people is better. So, we help each other, [00:16:00] we understand each other, we talk about our problems. When we try to solve them, it’s easier together. And if there’s pain, you know, the pain actually, can be eased with more people, easier, I think, compared to have this pain alone. So, again, we’re more family-oriented people.

And the Sufi are very much like that. The Sufi always pray together, and they think that it creates a n energy, basically. It produces an energy that basically helps all of them at the same time, in a union.

Chris: Hmm hmm. And do you find that sitting down for a meal together also creates that kind of union, or recreates as you were saying?

Kerim: I think so. Doing any kind of activities, including eating... eating is basically the most common activity [00:17:00] that we do in our daily life and getting together, to talk about our things together, and discuss things together, all those things - togetherness, when it comes to the idea of togetherness - I think, is beautiful.

Chris: Hmm, hmm. Amen. Yeah, I very much agree with that, Kerim.

And so, when we think about hospitality, and we think about food, we often imagine big banquet tables and as you said, this sense of togetherness and celebration.

But there’s also, you know, from what little I’ve read, there’s also this important aspect of the religious life in the Islamic world, and perhaps in the Sufi world as well that points to, maybe not the absence of food, but a different way of being fed, and a different way of feeding that doesn’t [00:18:00] include the food we’re used to, the kind of material food. And we often refer to this as fasting. And so, there’s a beautiful video that you sent me, Kerim, of your mother speaking, and she recalls a phrase in that video from her own mother who said that “when we welcome suffering, we make honey out of pain.”

And so, this is a question I very much want to ask you because I’ve fasted myself quite intensely. I’m curious, what is the honey that comes from fasting? Or, what do you think is the honey that comes from fasting?

Kerim: Right? First of all, yeah, fasting is in our religion. So, we basically do that one month in the whole year. It’s called Ramadan. In some cases, we actually do that because our Prophet Muhammad, when he [00:19:00] lived, he was fasting every Monday and every Thursday. So it was like a common practice for some of the religious people. And at least we do that one month in the whole year.

And obviously, that month is a little bit difficult, you know, because we not only stop eating, we also stopped drinking and all that stuff. In theory, we should not be lying, we should not be telling bad things to other people or gossiping and all that stuff, but usually we do during that time. I mean, in theory, we should not be doing that.

So it’s like a whole discipline thing - the whole fasting. And at the end of the thirty days, you become a really, really different person. And first of all, one thing that [00:20:00] I feel, is that you understand the people who do not have food. We still have people in the world, unfortunately, in Africa, and all those places, the people, having less access to food as we do, and we feel like, oh yeah we don’t actually thank God for all those things that he’s giving to us. And this is the time that you start thinking about the reality and start thanking God for actually giving us all that food, twenty-four hours, seven days [a week]. And when you are fasting during that time, you are understanding the feeling of these people, who are like poor and who cannot eat.

There are people now, in the social media, we are seeing people, who never had [00:21:00] chocolates in their life. The people living in these countries or in the cities or metropolitan cities, we never think about these things.

So, we take these things for granted, and during that time of fasting, you start thinking about these stuff and then you become more thankful, and that’s basically honey itself, after the suffering. And I wouldn’t say “suffering,” because we don’t suffer as much as they do, honestly.

And we’re just telling our egos, “just stop for a day to do bad things and stop eating,” and all that stuff that ego wants to have. And again, it’s at the end of the thirty days, you become a new person because now you have a different mentality. Now, in the other eleven months, you still forget about these things, but [00:22:00] again, it comes through. It’s like a cycle.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with you that, you know, gratitude is the honey and...

Kerim: Absolutely.

Chris: ...I remember the fasting that I did over the course of four years, and I don’t know if it was as intense as the fasting that happens during Ramadan, but doing that fasting and trying to feed something other than myself for a time imbued a degree of hospitality and gratitude that I don’t think I had ever felt before. And it sticks to me. It sticks to my bones to this day. And it’s something that, like you said, I also have to constantly remind myself of those moments when I sit down to eat a meal, because it’s so easy to forget.

Kerim: Absolutely. Absolutely. And one thing is [00:23:00] basically during that time of fasting, you basically stop feeding your ego, and start feeding your spirit, basically. That’s what I think.

Chris: That’s beautiful. Yeah. I absolutely understand that. Thank you, Kerim.

So my next question is around the word “ submission.” So, translated into English, the word “Islam” means “submission.” Now I’ve read that this word can also be translated to mean “servants of God.” Servants of God.

Now in English, the word “servant” can be synonymous with “host.” A servant and a host. Now, there’s a book by an author named Mona Siddiqui called Hospitality in Islam. And in that book she writes, it’s actually a quote, but she writes,

“’What is faith?’ The Prophet replied, ‘the giving of [00:24:00] food and the exchange of greetings.’ He ends on a most dramatic note saying, “a house which is not entered by guests is not entered by angels.”

Kerim: Perfect. Yeah.

Chris: And it seems that in this phrase, the Prophet is suggesting that the way we are with guests and strangers has something to do with how we are with the divine, which I think you kind of alluded to a little bit earlier.

And so I’m curious, is this something that you’ve seen in your own days or in those of others that you know? Is hospitality a practice that connects us to the divine?

Kerim: Absolutely. Because reaching God, you need to reach people first. To be able to reach God... when I say “reach God,” meaning be in communication with Him, is basically being in a communication [00:25:00] with the people he created. So, to serve the people is basically serving him from the Islamic point of view.

So, and that’s a hadith that you mentioned in the book. It’s a hadith of Prophet Mohammed, like you said. And Prophet Mohammed always... it was a common practice that he was hosting maybe, you know, 10-15 people every night. And he was a poor person, by the way. I mean, he doesn’t have much money, much food or anything, but they share. There was a time that... there’s a story that somebody, actually, one of his apostles rather, asks him to visit him for a dinner. So he invites him to a dinner.

But during his conversation, Prophet Mommed said, “can I bring my friends too?”[00:26:00]

And the apostle says, “of course you can bring your friends.” And he brings hundreds of people. Now, the host only have some bread, and maybe a little bit meat, and a little bit rice in the cup.

So, he was ashamed because he doesn’t have any money, and the Prophet Mohammed is going to bring all those guests together, and he didn’t know what to do. But he uses submission, basically.

He said, well, if Prophet Mohammed is coming, then something is going to happen. And as he was thinking all those things, Prophet Mohammed puts his hand on top of the rice holder. And every time he was putting rice onto the dishes, the rice never ends, the meat never ends. So he served like 200 people during this invitation and the food never ended.[00:27:00]

So he was happy for his submission, basically.

Chris: Wow. Beautiful. Thank you, Kerim.

Kerim: Of course.

Chris: You know, you have this beautiful book - that is still in the mail, unfortunately I haven’t got my hands on it yet, but I’m very much looking forward to it - called Stories From the Thirty Birds, which I understand is inspired by The Conference of the Birds, this incredible book from I think the 1300s.

And I’m curious if you could tell us a little bit about that book and what, if any inspiration or maybe teachings around hospitality that come from both, The Conference of the Birds and how you’ve employed it in your book.

Kerim: Right. The Conference of the Birds is really a beautiful story of Farid ud-Din Attar who lived in Nishapur, which is in Khorasan, in Iran, today. And he was one of the very famous [00:28:00] Sufis at that time. He was the teacher of Rumi. A lot of people know Rumi. And he wrote this book about birds, millions of birds, who are in the process of going to their king, which is the phoenix (or what we call it simurg). And during that time, during that travel, they go through seven valleys, and in each valley some of the birds get lost, because the valleys actually symbolize things.

Like, the first valley is the valley of intention. So, a lot of birds actually don’t have the intention to reach their king. The king is basically symbolizing Allah (God), and the birds are symbolizing us very much, and we are getting [00:29:00] lost during the time of life. Like, our intention is basically this world. If our intention is staying in this world, then we stay in this world. And that’s the valley of intention.

And a lot of birds, like half of them, actually, get lost in this stage.

And the second valley is the valley of love. And the birds that get lost in this valley are the ones that actually think the beauty is in this world, rather than they don’t see the beauty of God himself. So they see the shadow of that beauty in the world, but they’re content with that beauty, and they don’t really want to move on.

And again, the third valley is the value of wisdom. And the birds that get lost in this valley are the ones who think that knowledge, [00:30:00] in this world, is more important than anything else, and they don’t realize the source of the knowledge is actually their king.

So on and so forth, they go through the seven valleys and at the end of the seventh valley, only thirty birds remain. And the thirty birds, they’re ready to see their king, and they go through this mountain called Qaf, where the  simurg, the phoenix lives (behind the mountain). And it’s very difficult to get there, basically. When they get there, they can’t find the king over there. They only find a mirror. So, they realize the king is themselves, but more specifically, the union of thirty birds. So simurg - the [00:31:00] phoenix - in Iranian, in Persian means “thirty birds,” actually. Si is “thirty.” “Burg” is “bird,” actually.

So from what we understand is, the union of ourselves, what we are seeing, is our reflection, because the king is actually a perfect mirror. But we don’t see ourselves, only, we see the union of thirty birds together. So there are birds that we don’t think live together. For instance, a hawk doesn’t live with a smaller bird together, but in this union, they live together. There in one. And they use whatever advantage they have together. So it’s almost like being one and using the characteristics of every single bird [00:32:00] itself.

Chris: And I imagine that someone growing up in a culture like that, whether back then or more recently, and hearing this story or hearing it multiple times throughout their life or maybe once a year, that that notion also might arise in the way that they are with others, the way they are with strangers.

Kerim: Right.

Chris: And so, I have one final question for you, if that’s all right?

Kerim: Absolutely.

Chris: So, before we say farewell I’d like to ask you about Istanbul, and I’d like to ask you about the limits to hospitality. So, last year, on a trip I took to the city I met a friend of a mutual friend of ours, and for a couple of hours we walked around the Karakoy neighbourhood and he spoke to me about how the city has changed quite a bit over the last decade.

For many people who grew up in Istanbul, the city [00:33:00] might now appear to be very difficult to live in. He said that the cost of living has skyrocketed. The rents, the rent prices or costs have doubled. And much of this is a combination of tourism and gentrification in the city.

Now it seems that many religious traditions speak of the importance of welcoming strangers and offering them hospitality, but they also speak of the limits to such hospitality. In one particular, hadith or saying of the Prophet Mohammed, it is said that “hospitality is for three days. Anything more is charity or sadaqah.”

Again, excuse my pronunciation.

Kerim: No. That’s perfect pronunciation.

Chris: And so I’m curious, you mentioned a little bit earlier, in the Sufi community and perhaps in the Islamic communities, there is this notion of togetherness, but also that “more is better.” And so I’m [00:34:00] curious in the context of what’s happening in Istanbul and what’s happening in many places around the world, do you think there should also be limits to the hospitality that is offered to the guest or stranger?

Kerim: Well, of course. I mean, of course we have financial issues here, and it’s very difficult for us to actually serve other people as much as we want to. But again, when we are together, even if it’s very difficult to live in the city, it’s still something, you know?

What I see: the rent went up, like you said, so the people try to move into their family houses, the houses there of their families and everything. And in western countries, it’s difficult. You usually don’t do this kind of stuff, but in our community, it’s much easier to do these things. And, you know, the families welcome the children [00:35:00] more than other countries. So that’s something I think that’s a positive thing.

But to the strangers. What do we do for strangers? Obviously, we do as much as possible. We may not be able to serve them as much as we used to, obviously, before this inflation. And we have the highest inflation in the world, or probably the second-highest inflation. So again, it’s difficult, and Istanbul became probably one of the most expensive cities in the world. But even that, again, we may not be able to take them to dinner every night, but we serve what we have in the house, like in the Prophet Mohammed’s story.

Whatever we have, we share. And, we call it bereket, as in Arabic baraka, they call it. Baraka is something [00:36:00] like... we use it for money. It’s not “more money.” That’s not important. How do I say that? I don’t even know how to say it in English, but it’s more like “the luck of the money, itself.” Basically, you may be able to buy more stuff with less money based on your luck. That’s basically what we call it. Bereket. So the bereket is much more important than the amount of the money or the financial thing. And the bereket always goes up when you share it.

Chris: Beautiful. Yeah, I love that. I mean, in English, not to reduce it at all, but in English we say, quality over quantity.”

Kerim: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris: And you said that, in order to offer hospitality or the hospitality that we would like to offer to our guests, sometimes maybe that means not doing it all the time, [00:37:00] because one simply cannot. Right. It’s not possible.

Kerim: Right.

Chris: But yeah, it’s a really beautiful point.

Kerim: Rumi is a very important Sufi, probably known by many Americans. Even the world knows him. He wrote a poem, which is about the guests. So, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna read that, uh, it’s called the Guest House and it goes like:

This human life is a guest house. Every dawn, a new visitor arrives.

A gladness, a sadness, a pettiness, a flash of insights all come knocking, unannounced.

Welcome them all. Make room even if a band of sorrows storms in

and clears your rooms of comfort.

Still honour every guest.

[00:38:00] Perhaps they empty you to prepare you for something brighter.

The gloomy thought, the shame, the bitterness,

greet them at the door with a smile, and lead them inside.

Be thankful for whoever comes, for each is sent as a messenger from the beyond.

So that’s a poem by Rumi, and I think it pretty much explains the whole hospitality thing.

Chris: Yeah, that’s a gorgeous, gorgeous poem. I love that. I’ll make sure that’s up on the End of Tourism website when the episode launches.

And so finally, Kerim, uh, I’d like to thank you so very much for being willing to join me today, to be willing to speak in a language that is not your first, or mother tongue, and to share with us some of the beauty that has touched your days. Before we say goodbye, [00:39:00] perhaps you could tell our listeners how they can follow and learn more about Kerim Vakfı, Stories from the 30 Birds, your book, and any other projects you might want them to know about.

Kerim: We have a Sufi centre in North Carolina, at the University of North Carolina. We have a centre in China, Beijing University, and another center in Kyoto University in Japan. And my mother’s book about the commentary of some Quranic verses is the one. For instance, Yasin is available through Amazon and my book Stories from the 30 Birds is available on Barnes and Noble and all that other places in US.

Chris: Beautiful. Well, I’ll make sure that those links are all available on the End of Tourism website and on my Substack when the episode comes out. [00:40:00] And on behalf of our listeners, tesekkur, tesekkur.

Kerim: I thank you.

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On this episode, my guest is Leslie Kern, PhD, the author of three books about cities, including Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies and Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Her work provokes new ways of thinking about and creating cities that are more just, equitable, caring, and sustainable. Leslie was an associate professor of geography and environment and women’s and gender studies at Mount Allison University from 2009-2024. Today, she is a public speaker, writer, and career coach for authors and academics.

Show Notes

• Gentrification and touristification

• Naturalization of gentrification

• The new colonialism

• Intersectionality

• Who’s to blame: renter or landlord?

• The hipster and the safety net

• The invisible face behind gentrification and touristifcation

• Transactionality or hospitality? The case of Airbnb

• Commercial gentrification

• The right to stay put

Homework

Leslie Kern - Website - Instagram

Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies - USA - Canada

Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World - USA - Canada

Higher Expectations: How to Survive Academia, Make it Better for Others, and Transform the University

The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Leslie, to the End of Tourism Podcast. Thank you for taking time out of your day, to speak with me. Thank you. To begin, I’m wondering if you’d be willing to tell us where you find yourself today and what the world looks like there, for you.

Leslie: Sure. I find myself in Cambridge, Ontario.

It’s a city of about 130,000 people. If I looked out my window right now, I would see a lot of blowing snow. It’s about minus 27 Celsius with the windchill, or something hideous like that today, so taking the time to talk to you this morning means I don’t have to go out and shovel anything just yet. So.

Chris: Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us. it’s a great honour and I’m really looking forward to this conversation that bears a great deal of complexity. So, I had invited you on the pod in part to explore your book, Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies. And [00:01:00] in it, Leslie, you write that

“Gentrification has come to be used as a metaphor for processes of mainstreaming, commodification, appropriation, and upscaling that are not necessarily or directly connected to cities. In this story about gentrification, gentrification stands in for any sort of change that pulls a thing or a practice out of its original context and increases its popularity, priciness, and profit-making potential.”

Given that some of our listeners might not have heard of the term “gentrification” before, although I doubt it, but given that those who have heard it might understand it also to be what you and others refer to as a “chaotic concept,” I’m wondering if you’d be willing to take a stab at defining it for us today?

Leslie: Yeah, absolutely. If we [00:02:00] look to, I guess, a kind of typical scholarly definition of gentrification, it would be describing an urban process in which middle or upper class, or in some other way, privileged households start to move into a neighbourhood or area of the city that has historically been more working class, or perhaps an immigrant neighbourhood, perhaps more industrial, and begin to remake that neighbourhood, kind of in their own image, thus driving up housing prices both in the rental and ownership markets, driving up the cost of living in the area, and critically, as part of the definition, resulting in some level of displacement of the older inhabitants of that neighbourhood. “Displacement” meaning they’ve been kind of priced out or otherwise pushed directly or indirectly to leave and [00:03:00] move to some other neighbourhood.

So, typically with gentrification, the definition is centred around it being a class-based process, but in more recent decades, many scholars, myself included, have wanted to broaden that and to acknowledge that other axes of power and privilege, for example, race, gender, ability, age, sexuality, and so on, also play a role in contributing to the kinds of forces that propel gentrification. And we can maybe get into some of that later.

So for myself, in the book, I talk about gentrification as “any kind of process of taking over claiming space and remaking it in the image and for the interests and benefit of a more powerful group of people, or perhaps even corporations, to some extent.” So, [00:04:00] gentrification is really the process of taking and claiming space. And I also do include displacement as part of that process, although I also acknowledge that sometimes people can be kind of psychologically displaced, even if they aren’t necessarily physically pushed out of their neighbourhoods.

Chris: Mean it’s something that I was noticing in Toronto before I left and moved and migrated here to Oaxaca. It’s something that I think in the last five or ten years has become an unfortunate mainstay of city life in the vast majority of places, of urban places in the world.

And this is also something that I’ve seen quite a bit here in Oaxaca, Mexico in a somewhat prolific tourist destination. And so, in places that have [00:05:00] been deemed “destinations” in this way, there’s often a kind of reductionism, here anyways, and in other tourist destinations in which gentrification and what’s sometimes called touristification is confused.

And so one definition of “touristification” is simply “the process of transformation of a place into a tourist space and its associated effects.” So a kind of very vague and broad definition. But we also understand that gentrification can happen in places that aren’t necessarily tourist destinations.

And so, we’ve also discussed in the pod the possibility that a place doesn’t necessarily need tourists in it to have touristic qualities or context what we might say. [00:06:00] And so I’m curious for you, do you think it’s important to distinguish the two concepts, gentrification and touristification? And if so, why?

Leslie: Yeah, great question. I think a distinction, to some extent, is important in that, yeah, there may be elements of touristification, for example, that are somewhat unique to that process, especially in terms of the kind of impact that it might have on local inhabitants who may not necessarily be displaced, but who may see their everyday lives kind of radically altered by the touristification of an area.

And as you say, gentrification happens in all kinds of areas, many of which are not geared to tourism, although sometimes that is a kind of later effect of gentrification, is that tourists might be drawn to certain neighbourhoods or places that they would not have otherwise gone to in the past.

As [00:07:00] you mentioned in your earlier question, there’s been some concern in the gentrification literature that it’s a bit of a chaotic concept, by which it is meant that it’s maybe too broad of an umbrella [term], and so many different kinds of processes are kind of lumped together under that umbrella. I think it’s a useful umbrella, but under that umbrella, we can try to be clear about what we’re talking about when we look at particular locations, and try to articulate the impacts that these processes are having on the local community, economy, environment, and so on.

Chris: Thank you, Leslie. Thank you for that. So your book is broken up into chapters that reveal the deeper realities behind the tropes or lies sometimes spouted about gentrification. And there are often many. And so I’m curious if after having done the research and writing for this book, and it was published in [00:08:00] 2022, so perhaps there’s been some deeper reflection in that regard, I’m curious what you feel might be the most important lie about gentrification that requires our attention and why?

Leslie: Ooh, really putting me on the hook to like pick a favorite child there. No, I’m joking. Ultimately, I mean, I guess the most straightforward answer would be the first one that I discuss in the book, which is right there in the book’s title, which is the idea that gentrification is inevitable. And we can kind of unpack that a little bit further, as I do in the kind of first main chapter of the book, which is to say that in some accounts of gentrification, it’s presented as a sort of natural process, right? As something that is just akin to evolution, for example. So there’s this idea that if you kind of start with, for example, a working class or immigrant [00:09:00] neighbourhood, lower income community, with some other kinds of attributes that might not make it seem wealthy or desirable, that over time, just through, I don’t know, a kind of mystical series of properties, the way that species evolve or human beings develop from fetus and baby to an adult through this series of difficult to trace impacts, that somehow it just happens. Right. And of course, the problem with that, again, is that if we think it’s natural, then we don’t really think there’s any way to stop it.

And also when we describe something as “natural,” we often imbue it with positive qualities. Well, if it’s “natural,” it’s just meant to happen. It’s just the way things are. And why would we want to stand in the way of that process? From a kind of political standpoint, it becomes very problematic, because it means that there’s not really a [00:10:00] willingness perhaps on the part of those who have some power and influence to slow down gentrification, to pause it, to use whatever tools they might have in their kind of legislative toolbox to create guardrails around the process happening or to try to prevent it altogether. And from a kind of community response standpoint, it can be very disempowering to believe that gentrification is inevitable, unstoppable, that once you see those first, white, middle-class families move into your neighbourhood, “boom, you’re done. It’s over. The clock is counting down to the time when it’s not your neighbourhood anymore and you’ll just have to leave, so why bother to do anything about it?”

And as I also try to show in the book, you know, it’s hard to fight gentrification, but there are examples around the world of communities that have pushed back and kind of “pumped the brakes on gentrification,” as one [00:11:00] activist described it to me. So, we, I think, don’t want to fall into this trap of believing that communities themselves are powerless, or that our politicians and policy-makers have absolutely no tools that they can use to change this.

So I would say that is probably the most important kind of first line myth or lie that we need to challenge. And then we can kind of go down the line and pick apart some of the other ones, which is how I’ve structured the book as you point out. Yeah.

Chris: Thank you, Leslie. Yeah, I mean, that was a really jarring chapter for me, in part because of this notion that not only is quote gentrification inevitable or natural, but that the city is, according to different philosophers and thinkers, imbued with this kind of biological life and [00:12:00] and that it follows as you were mentioning certain processes that are “ natural” as far as evolution is concerned.

And imediately, this brought me back to my research on what’s often referred to as 19th century social evolutionist thought, these notions that were often created or maintained by kind of, elite, wealthy, white men in the 19th century, not all of whom were academics, some of them were bankers, for example, among other things, but essentially promoting this notion that certain races or genders or types of people had evolved along the natural processes of evolution either faster than others or got ahead in certain ways, and that, of course, this was a way for those people, not only the non-academics, but those in academia [00:13:00] to employ hypotheses theories as a way of justifying colonial histories and the ongoing conquests of different people around the world. And so, in that context, I’m curious if you imagine or think that gentrification understood or described as “natural” in this way is a kind of extension, a historical extension of that kind of colonial power play of the 19th century.

Leslie: Yeah, I absolutely do. And there are many ways in which the power dynamics and even the language or the vocabulary around gentrification mirrors that around colonialism with all of the problematic tropes there of neighbourhoods or areas of the city being taken over where “there’s really nothing there,” right?

[It’s the] same kind of justification for colonialism. “There’s nothing there. [00:14:00] There’s nobody there that we need to care about,” so European colonizers are entitled to this land. Similarly, with the way that many developers, for example, I think, rationalize or justify the kind of projects they engage in.

“Oh, there’s nothing really happening in that part of the city. There’s not really a community there. It’s just a space of problems or deviation from the norm or disorder. And so we, as developers, as city planners, we’re going to bring order and light and civilization, quite frankly, to these neighbourhoods.”

So I’m sure you’re hearing in this, all those echoes around colonialism. And this point around the social evolution part of it, I think that is the kind of darker, maybe less acknowledged side of gentrification, is that when we start to talk about neighbourhoods as “nothing’s happening there, there’s nobody there.” [00:15:00] Who’s “nobody,” right? Who falls into that category of “nobody,” right? It’s poor people. It might be unhoused people, working-class people, people of colour, queer people, disabled people, sex workers, right?

“All people who we don’t really think of as kind of counting as citizens, people who we don’t think have a legitimate voice in the city, people who we don’t think have a right to the city or a claim on the city.” And they’re just seen as disposable, as easily displaceable, as not really contributing anything to the community or to the city at large. So I think there’s definitely a sense of kind of hierarchy in terms of, “who are the seemingly new people who are coming in, right?” And they’re viewed as “bringing all of these kind of gifts and benefits to the neighbourhood, and in some ways, perhaps even uplifting the poor [00:16:00] or downtrodden inhabitants of the ghetto or the barrio or whatever. And the locals should somehow be grateful to receive gentrification similarly to the way that people were, say, ‘oh, you should be grateful to receive an education if you’re from the lower-classes or working-classes.’”

So, yeah, I think there’s definitely echoes and traces of that same kind of logic, right? It’s a logic of superiority, a logic of dominance, a logic of control that resonates, whether it’s colonialism or social evolutionism. Um, yeah.

Chris: Wow. Fascinating. Fascinating stuff. I mean, this is, I think, to a large degree culture or what we call culture or what culture might be is made on the tongue, and that the, the kind of unacknowledged ways in which we speak the world into being [00:17:00] is something that’s been direly overlooked in our time. So thank you for speaking to that in that way. And I think it’s something that we would properly kind of continue to wonder about as we speak and as we think, and perhaps before we speak as well.

You know, you mentioned in there the different types of people that are often displaced as a result of gentrification. And this shows up quite a bit in your book. So I wanted to ask you about what you refer to as “intersectionality,” an intersectional approach to gentrification.

Some of the conventional critiques that you mentioned in the book, including the economic critique (kind of follow the money), the aesthetic critique (the kind of clean lines and fancy bakeries that show up), as well as the class critique, which you mentioned kind of upward mobility, among others.

That said, you focus a good portion of the book, I think, on this neglected importance of intersectionality. And so I’m curious, why do you think an intersectional approach has been ignored in the [00:18:00] past, and why might it be crucial for a cohesive or integral analysis of gentrification?

Leslie: Hmm. I think an intersectional approach has been kind of sidelined, if you will, in part because most of the key kind of prominent gentrification scholars of the late 20th century and into the 21st century have been, honestly, white men probably themselves from middle-class backgrounds, or obviously university educated scholars and they’ve been, like neo-Marxist, or Marxist. That’s their theoretical perspective. That’s their training. They come from a kind of Marxist, political economy, background. That’s the lens of analysis that they bring to whatever kind of problem they’re looking at in the world, including gentrification.

And they’ve done brilliant work, right, and created a lot of really foundational [00:19:00] concepts, gone and done really important empirical work so that we can actually see what the impacts of these processes are. And there’s nothing I want to take away from that being a key voice within the field of gentrification studies, but I think too often either there’s been kind of minimal lip service paid or kind of outright pushing to the side of feminist perspectives, anti-racist perspective, anti-colonial perspectives and more, because it’s sort of seemed like, well, “class is the main driver and anything that maybe disproportionately impacts women or people of colour, or queer folks or elderly people, that’s like a side effect, right? Like the main driver is class and those people are simply impacted because they also happen to fall into lower income brackets.”

So it’s a pretty neat and tidy [00:20:00] story and you can kind of see why it has some appeal. So I think, you know, those political economy, neo-Marxist scholars is not that they don’t care about race or gender or other factors. They’re just like, “well, it’s all really rolled up under the umbrella of ‘class.’ And if we just figure out the ‘class’ piece, then those other things will kind of fall into place.” But for feminist scholars, critical race scholars, anti-colonial scholars and so on, they’ve wanted to point out that assuming that class is the primary driver behind things is maybe an assumption that we’ve held onto for too long without questioning it. And instead of seeing racial impacts and so on as something that’s just happening off to the side through a class process, maybe we want to also look, especially in something like an American context, but in other places as well, at the deeply foundational layer of race to the development of cities, to the development of the [00:21:00] nation, and we can’t kind of sideline the impacts of racial discrimination and the kind of hierarchy of race that has developed over many centuries in these locations and say, “oh, well it’s a secondary factor.”

For myself, I’m a feminist scholar. My background is in women’s and gender studies before I kind of accidentally stumbled into being an urban geographer. And to me it was always kind of obvious, but I think I’ve had to argue this point so often that processes like gentrification, neoliberalism, urban revitalization, as it’s called, doesn’t just kind of impact women as a tangential side effect, but that gender inequality or assumptions about gender roles and so on are like part of what drives the process. And so I try to bring that out in the book by looking at different kinds of examples of the ways in which different sorts of [00:22:00] communities or people are impacted to hopefully show, to hopefully make a case for this idea that taking an intersectional perspective doesn’t deny the class factor at all, but that it allows us to look at gentrification through a more nuanced lens and one that respects the fact that class is not the only, and not always the most salient marker of hierarchy and status in our societies.

Chris: Hmm, hmm. Yeah, I did go to university a long time ago, and it seemed that what was offered up on the proverbial, kind of conceptual, bill, politically speaking was, here are your five major theories or perspectives and kind of like choose one and decide what you like the best and then argue for it or against it.

But it does seem that the more apertures that we have onto the world, without necessarily needing [00:23:00] to collapse our considerations into a single one can broaden our understanding of the world deeply, right? Deeply, deeply. And it’s something that I see anyways less and less of.

I think there’s more and more possibilities for experiencing that in our time, but I think there’s a lot of processes that are happening in which there’s less and less of it that’s actually occurring - a kind of collapse of maybe ontological diversity or philosophical diversity.

I don’t know what to call it, but seems prevalent and at least from this little aperture. So.

Leslie: Yeah, I would agree with that, as someone who, just in my own little brief lifetime here on this earth has been peddling my little feminist arguments for 30-plus years. And then we add on to that, the 30 years before that and 30 years before all of the previous generations. It seems like we are, [00:24:00] not just from a feminist perspective, but we are kind of constantly having to make these arguments for that ontological diversity, as you put it, or even just the idea that, oh, you can view things through different lenses and learn different things about whatever kind of process or force or issue that you’re interested in.

Chris: Hmm. Well, thank you for that. I’d like to, if I can, Leslie, there was something I’ve been wrestling with for a while and it was very much front and centre, this kind of inner wrestling when I was reading your book.

And so, I’d like to share that with you at the moment if I can, and we’ll see where it takes us. So part of the reason that I left Toronto a decade ago was that the housing crises, that perhaps for some wasn’t yet a crisis in Toronto, has of course ballooned. But in the past five years I’ve watched that same housing crisis play out here in Oaxaca.

[00:25:00] And what arose almost immediately in the, we’ll say media sphere, the online world and certainly on the streets as well, was a kind of xenophobic campaign or campaigns blaming tourists, digital nomads, and “expats” for the rising cost of rentals and housing. Now, while not entirely misguided, the percentage of such people is insignificant in comparison to the total population of renters and homeowners here.

And then I ask myself, well, “why isn’t anyone questioning the role of homeowners and landlords, those who actually decide the price of rental units, those who decide to turn long-term rentals into Airbnbs, and those who are, some of them anyways, more often than not, part and parcel of the political ruling class in many places?” Why not blame them?

And so, if you think about this enough, you can [00:26:00] begin to imagine that the willingness to blame specific people, types, classes, races, et cetera, can ignore the cultural, economic and structural elements of society that allow and encourage such dynamics to emerge. And it seems to me that you speak to this, to some degree, in your book writing, how

“it is not helpful in a critique of gentrification to get overly stuck on the styles and preferences of a group, when, for many decades now, gentrification has been propelled by much stronger forces than aesthetic trends.”

And in another part of the book, you write that “cultural factors cannot be hastily dismissed, not when their power is easily co-opted by capital. Trends in denim and facial hair are not responsible for gentrification, but when large groups of people are redefined as a class based on their tastes, occupations, and aesthetics, they become a market and a justification for urban [00:27:00] interventions.”

And so my question has to do with what I might call, I don’t know if this is something that shows up in your work or in your research, but a kind of “ecological analysis,” one that doesn’t necessarily separate people into essentialist categories, but contends with how maybe the rules of the game produce the player’s behaviour and beliefs.

And so I’m wondering, you know, in your research, is that something that is tended to, a way of, “okay so, we’re not going to only blame or ask the tourists to take responsibility or the digital nomads, et cetera, and we’re not only gonna blame or ask the landlords to take responsibility, but understand that they live and inhabit a kind of web of relations that has, for a long time, created the context that allows them or even [00:28:00] encourages them to proceed in a particular way?

Leslie: Yes, a hundred percent. I really love the way that you put that there and giving it that kind of label of like an ecological perspective there. I think it’s so important to do in the book. You know, the first quote that you read there, I think has to do with this idea that, “oh, you know, hipsters were causing gentrification” kind of thing.

And I wanted to kind of, not defend the hipster per se, but to just say, well, in a city like New York, for example, the takeover of midtown Manhattan and the absolute sort of pricing out of regular people, well, from Manhattan as a whole in many cases is not to do with artists and yoga teachers moving into those neighborhoods. It has to do with massive multinational corporations buying up housing, developing condos, like all of these other things that [00:29:00] are going on. And as you say, I mean, I think it is useful to question and critique landlordism for example, and even home ownership itself, but there’s a reason why people engage in these practices and as you say, it’s because of these all sorts of other like prior sort of conditions and causes this kind of web of possibilities that so much of our... the policy, the legislative world, our national context shapes for us.

Like in Canada for example, home ownership is, as you well know, sort of seen as the ultimate goal in the housing market. Renting is seen as very much a kind of transitional stage for people. And the idea is to eventually, sooner rather than later, own your own home.

And of course there’s all kinds of cultural myths around that, of homeowners being like responsible people and better citizens and all this kind of stuff that is, maybe like [00:30:00] largely nonsense. But why, in this context, do people become homeowners? Well, this is the way that we’ve been told “you secure your retirement in the absence of a truly kind of robust old age security net.” Yes, we have some. We have pension, old age pension, but for many people, the home is ultimately their social safety net, and government policy has very much been set up to encourage us to treat our homes in that way and to rely on paying off a mortgage and having that home to be the basis of survival into our old age.

Right. And there are many other things. That’s just one example. So I think, as you say, it’s really important to kind of look at that whole ecosystem. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t say, “well, okay, what are homeowners doing that might be potentially problematic and contributing to the problem?”

Well, that could include things like turning units into Airbnbs or acting in NIMBY-ish (Not In My Backyard), kind of ways that limit, for example, the amount of affordable housing that might go up in their neighbourhood and other things. Of course, all of those dynamics have to be critiqued, challenged, pushed back against. But, keeping, at the same time that kind of zoomed out perspective of like what’s going on on a larger scale, in the kind of corporate and investment world and the government policy-making world, I think at least helps us to understand why these different groups are kind of positioned in the way that they do and the kind of range of possibilities that they see for themselves within that web.

Chris: Mm mm Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me of a moment that I had here in Oaxaca, maybe three or four years ago. There was a student group that had come down from a Canadian university, and they were here for a couple weeks, and I was having dinner with them. Not all of them, but there was maybe four of the women from the student group that I was having dinner with.

And one of them was probably in her, I would say [00:32:00] mid-fifties, an indigenous woman from Ontario. And the other three were much younger, probably in their early twenties. And they were suddenly talking about the sudden or at least recent kind of housing crisis in their university town, we’ll call it, maybe a small city, but big town. And how in previous years they could afford the rent, but suddenly, and of course this was 2021-2022, when a lot of these dynamics started changing extremely rapidly. And I was kind of moderating the conversation at first. And then it turned out, she wasn’t so quick to out herself as a landlord. But the indigenous woman, the 55-year-old kind of alluded to it and then said, “well, you know, for a lot of people, it’s a pension plan. “It’s my retirement plan, essentially.” And it was this really interesting dynamic about how these four women, who had come to this place and were in the same program, studying the [00:33:00] same thing, that one of them had to perhaps, unbeknownst to her, undermine the economic life and possibilities of those younger women by virtue of requiring a retirement plan.

Right. And I think at least in Canada, in countries that are very much still welfare states, that it speaks to a, the incredible degree in which the care that’s offered, especially to the elderly, is almost entirely top-down. There’s so little, if any, community care.

And, you know, of course this is a very kind of small example, a very kind of minute example. I think maybe a common one. But of course you also have other examples of, as you mentioned before, corporations... is it BlackRock this massive mutual fund that I know in, in Europe and places like Barcelona and the major cities there end up buying entire apartment buildings or blocks even, and evicting [00:34:00] the residents and then setting up Airbnb buildings, essentially. So, I mean, there’s this incredible kind of degree of difference and diversity in terms of how, as you mentioned landlordism and rent is affecting people.

But I just wanted to mention that. It was a really kind of interesting moment for me to see this dynamic and the young women kind of complaining about, you know, I guess the future, the present and the future of their economic lives. And then, this older woman also not necessarily complaining, but very much concerned about her ability to live as well, economically and to thrive economically into her older age.

Leslie: Yeah. And there’s these kind of ironic situations popping up all over the place where so for example, someone might have a public pension. And as you point out, many public pensions are deeply invested in real estate income trusts. This is like a huge piece for example, in Ontario, of [00:35:00] Ontario public workers’ pensions, but around the world as well, and I don’t have the details, but a story that was in the news several years ago about a man somewhere in Europe who was being evicted from his apartment because that one of these real estate investment corporations was taking it over and was gonna redevelop it in some way. But his public pension was invested in that very same company. Right?

So many people are kind of caught in these loops where it’s like, we would very much like to not be like, displacing ourselves or our neighbours or community members, but we don’t necessarily have control over how our pension funds are invested, right? Like you might have a choice like, “oh, I’d like to divest from fossil fuels, for example, or from tobacco or military, like arms deals.” Like, sometimes, you can opt out of those things in your pension funds, but there’s not really a way to like opt out of real estate investment.

It’s such a huge part of those things now. So I think that’s an area where there’s increasing kind of research and critical perspectives on that in gentrification scholarship and so on that I think is really important to look at, because it’s also very hidden, right? This is another aspect I think of contemporary kind of gentrification touristification even, is that there’s no face to it, right? There’s no face to this process. And maybe that’s why it’s tempting to take, as you put it a minute ago, that kind of like xenophobic perspective or to blame “expats” in the case of Oaxaca and touristification or in cities to be like, “oh, it’s these urban hipsters, maybe these like trust fund kids” or whatever label people might want to put on someone, because there’s a face, right? There you can look and be like, “that’s the problem.” But the reality is there is no face, right? There’s no individual or even group of individuals that’s easy to identify. And people doing [00:37:00] research into some of this pension fund stuff that I’m talking about, they hit very opaque walls, even just trying to get the information about how these companies work, the kinds of decisions they make, what their rubrics are around what they call “socially responsible investing.”

So it’s very deliberately mystified and hidden from us, and I think that is part of the challenge now is like, how do you fight this monster that you can’t see, that you can barely name?

So yeah, that is I think one of the kind of frightening things, if you will, about, whether we call it “gentrification,” or we think about it in this broader sense of the housing crisis, who’s the face of that, the cause of that crisis? Very hard to say in many cases.

Chris: Wow. Yeah, I know that these mutual fund companies that end up buying, you know, whole city blocks or buildings, apartment buildings, and then tending to renovictions or whatever they [00:38:00] might use in order to get people out. Once the buildings are “ renovated” as Airbnbs, what happens is those corporations end up outsourcing all of the operational and cleaning duties to companies that they’re not involved with at all. So, again, you could have this person who’s in front of you, who might be a cleaner or who comes ou in and out of the building or who might run the reservation books or something like that, but they’ve never met anyone from that mutual fund company. Right. They just get a paycheck.

Leslie: Yeah. And it’s happening on this kind of global level. The people behind the company that’s investing in that building in Oaxaca, like they may have never set foot there, and they may never set foot there. Right? So it’s happening from around the world, from thousands of kilometers away from behind these kind of screens of, as you said, these kind of shell companies and these subcontracted, property management companies.

I mean the story you were just telling about the woman who’s a landlord, like on that small scale, not that [00:39:00] there’s nothing problematic about it, but it is also like, you know, she’s probably met her tenants, right? She probably occasionally sets foot in the property that she owns and that she rents out, and there’s like some aspect of a relationship there. It’s still, you know, a problematic power dynamic and all of that, but it’s on a very different scale than the investor from London who’s has a stake in a condo in Oaxaca. Like, it’s a very different web of of relations that goes into that.

Chris: Yeah. And even if someone like that, and I’ve had many, many landlords over the years and I’ve been blessed to have a number of them who are really incredible people and really incredible in terms of showing up when they’re needed in that regard. But it’s something, I discussed on a previous episode regarding the Airbnb-ization of the world, a couple years ago. And one of the themes that came up was around hospitality, right? [00:40:00] And even if you have people who are kind of really engaged and really excited and responsible about having a tenant in their home or in a particular building, the kind of transactional nature of that rent almost (and then of course the history of it) precludes, almost by default, the possibility of there being a kind of host-guest relationship, right? Instead of that we are “clients” and and, and “salespeople,” businesspeople to some degree.

Right. So another layer of it is this question of like, “well, is it even possible within the dynamic or structure that renting implies and incurs, is it even possible to create a dynamic wherein a person can be understood as a guest in another person’s home, and another person can be understood as a host to people who are coming to live in their home? Right? That that same [00:41:00] woman, the 55-year-old landlord said that she had tenants who refused to leave for, I dunno, a year and a half or two years, and once they finally did, left her with a $40,000 damage bill. So, I think there’s just layers and layers that are extremely difficult to kind of get into, I shouldn’t say in terms of dialogue, in terms of investigation, but in terms of the possibility of creating different dynamics that would maybe represent or produce the kinds of dynamics and worlds that, I think, a lot of people would want to live in.

Leslie: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think in a lot of cases, and you honestly don’t have to dig very deep, you can open up CBC News and see some poor, sad landlord story most days of the week or listen to kind of corporate or larger scale landlords talk and they often see tenants as a nuisance.

“The tenants themselves are a problem,” and if they could invest in real estate and still make [00:42:00] these returns without actually having tenants, that would probably be ideal. And I think that is also part of the push to an Airbnb is that with a temporary guest, you know, a week, a weekend or whatever, you don’t have the same responsibility to them as you do to someone with a year lease or perhaps the right to stay there for a longer period of time. So, all you have to do is kind of provide this very basic amenity of the space. You can even impose all these rules on them that you maybe otherwise wouldn’t be able to do if it was a longer-term rental.

You know, the people who check-in have many fewer rights than actual tenants do. And so in some ways it makes that relationship even more transactional and even more hands off in many cases. And of course there’s the quicker profit motive is really the main driving force behind that. But I think there’s also this piece of it where it’s like, “well, how can I maximize the profit potential of this space with as little actually dealing with other human beings and their needs [00:43:00] as human beings as possible.

And yeah, I think that is really, again, from my kind of feminist perspective, that is also interested in thinking about how do we create systems of care in our cities, and what does “care” mean, and what are our responsibilities to one another that, when we look at something like Airbnbification and the touristification and gentrification more generally, those things, in many cases kind of act against the possibility of creating more caring and careful spaces.

Chris: Hmm, hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that, Leslie. I have a couple more questions for you, if that’s all right?

Leslie: Yes, go ahead. Yeah.

Chris: All right. Wonderful. So this next question maybe requires a bit of imagination, which I think you have a good amount of, and it has to do with rent.

And so one of the lies that you highlight in your book is the belief that gentrification is natural and hence forth inevitable. [00:44:00] And of course, as we’ve been discussing, nothing is natural nor inevitable and you make an excellent case for that throughout the book. And I feel that there is an equally and perhaps more subtle incarnation of this myth, of this inevitability, in regards to rent, that we as urban people or modern people who grow up in contemporary societies often reinforce and even naturalize a kind of rent slavery that most people rarely see, that most people rarely see their lives as indentured to their landlords.

And so, when we talk about gentrification, does this show up at all? Should it? You know, this notion that, “well, if we can come to gentrification and understand that it’s in fact not natural and it’s not inevitable, can we do the same thing for rent? Because, maybe I haven’t read much of the research, but it doesn’t seem to be something that [00:45:00] people are so quick to aim their arrows at, we’ll say.

Leslie: Yeah. I love that question. And I think A, you’re right that there hasn’t been enough conversation about that. There has not been nearly enough attempts to kind of denaturalize this and B, that that perspective is emerging and growing. If I could recommend a book called The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan. It’s also a Toronto-based author, and he does an amazing job in this very short book of basically laying out the case against landlordism, and it totally, as you say, kind of denaturalizing and pushes back on this idea that it’s inevitable that there are a class of people that own property and a class of people that rent property, and that this is not inherently a deeply problematic relation. You know, this idea that it’s not in some way akin to some kind of indentureship. And he really asks us to look deeply again at this [00:46:00] idea that, if you’re a landlord, “well, I have a mortgage to pay, so it’s somehow natural that this other person will pay my mortgage for me,” which, when you start to think about it, like it’s really messed up in a way. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So yeah, I think looking more closely at some of these ideas, these kind of statements that come out, and again, you can see it in news articles, these kind of horror stories, and not to diminish, I’m sure, what are very real, like economic and psychological impacts of the so-called kind of nightmare tenant and all of those kinds of things.

But you’ll hear those kinds of statements: “you know, I have a mortgage to pay.”

Well, why is this other person paying your mortgage, then?

And then we could probably take a step back and be like, “why do we have mortgages to pay?” But that’s maybe another conversation.

But yeah, so I definitely recommend that book, The Tenant Class, as a really quick, easy to read, and kind of unforgettable primer on this question. And [00:47:00] I really appreciate you asking it, and I hope your listeners will be like, “oh, yeah, I gotta dig into that a bit more too.”

Chris: Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, in part because, as prices have risen in most western countries in the last four or five years, there’s of course, of course, protests and backlash among people, and “oh, this bakery raised their prices” or “ my rent’s going up,” and all these things. But specifically in terms of products and services, you know, people complain or they just accept the fact that prices have risen to a degree that’s pricing a lot of people out of their lives, really. But, you know, in the conversations I’ve had with people and in the literature that I’ve read, there’s no consideration, I think, that the businesses who are raising their prices have had their rents raised, that so much of a business’ costs include rent, right? And that very few businesses actually [00:48:00] own the building that they’re working out of.

Leslie: Yeah, commercial rent is a whole other story because, you know, the protections on residential rent are not what they could be in most places around the world, but there’s no protections on commercial rent, like no limitations there. So it’s entirely possible that local bakery, their rent could go up by, like double. It could go up from $20,000 a year to $60,000 a year. There’s no restrictions on that. There’s nowhere to appeal that. There’s nothing. So, they are, in some ways, even those small businesses, especially, independent businesses and so on, are very at risk of this. And there’s a whole branch of kind of retail gentrification studies as well that kind of looks at the impacts on the local economic landscape of things like this as well. Yeah.

Chris: Hmm. Wow. Thank you for unveiling that for us. I mean, uh, so much.

So my last question, Leslie, has to do [00:49:00] with what is mentioned in your book, what you refer to as “the right to stay put.”

And so,

“the right to stay put is a common rallying cry in response to the dangers of displacement. Drawing inspiration from the broader notion of the right to the city, the right to stay put insists that communities are entitled to remain in the places they have contributed to. Furthermore, the right to dwell extends beyond simply having a home in an area, encompassing the right to continue using commercial, community, and public spaces and institutions, as well as the dignity of defending such rights. Importantly, it recognizes that agency is a critical factor. People do not want to be forced to move, nor do they want to be forced to stay in place. Rather, people value choice, the ability to participate in [00:50:00] decisions that affect their communities and the right to resist when they need to.”

And so I’m curious what you think it would take for people, say, in urban environments to achieve or enshrine the right to stay put or the right to dwell in their places.

Leslie: Yeah, I think we could talk about kind of two main avenues. One would be more of the top-down approach, which is to work to enshrine anti-displacement measures in neighborhoods, which can include everything from rent control or rent stabilization, to the right to return when there are redevelopment projects going on, to deeply affordable housing in new developments, to communities themselves taking on the role of becoming developers, but creating housing within the community for the [00:51:00] community. Not to draw in new residents or not to primarily draw new residents. Again, we’re not trying to like, build a fortress around communities or anything, but rather to say, “this is housing that we’re earmarking for people from the local community who are struggling with their rent or struggling to find housing, or who need perhaps entry-level home ownership opportunities and to kind of provide that.

So there’s the kind of top-down approach, really pushing our local governments to have things like community benefit ordinances when new developments are happening that force developers to actually pay attention to what the community needs and to provide those benefits and such.

And then, from the kind of ground-up or more grassroots piece, the right to stay put is the the willingness, the ability to organize and come together in some of the places that I mentioned throughout the book. You know, it really [00:52:00] is community-level organization where people have really rallied to make it deeply difficult for planners or developers to kind of roll in and roll out their vision without any pushbacks, to the extent that their neighbourhoods become less of a target for gentrification, because it’s like, “oh yeah, we wanna build something there. Oh, that’s gonna be a real pain in the butt. The community is not gonna let us get away with what we wanna do.” And that means really making it possible for people to come out to meetings, organizing protests, that kind of right to resist. Sometimes taking... You know, we have long histories in many cities of squatters movements and perhaps we need to revitalize some of that old energy, as well. A kind of refusal to leave. And to find ways, you know, perhaps they don’t always have to be kind of in-your-face protest ways, but what are ways to mobilize things like mutual aid to help make sure that our [00:53:00] neighbors are supported, for example, if they have to go before a landlord-tenant board, how can we use community resources and knowledge to actually support one another to stay in place?

And that can be everything from addressing food insecurity to having a local rent bank, to partnering with nonprofits, churches, other religious institutions that may have an interest in building social and nonprofit housing to create some of those options.

So I think it’s about looking at the kind of wide range of alternative forms of housing and housing provision, looking at community mobilizing, community resources, and also tackling the local policy agenda to make staying put as possible, or to enshrine it as a right at a kind of higher level, as well.

Chris: Hmm, hmm. Yeah, you go into [00:54:00] great detail about this in the book, and I’m very grateful for that. And the right to stay put kind of jumped out, the text jumped out of the page at me, because living here in Oaxaca, I came to know about this declaration that was created in 2009 by people in a number of communities here in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca who were meeting with their migrant kin who had gone to work in California and the people who had stayed in the community.

And the declaration is literally translated as “the right to not migrate.” The way it was translated in English by the author of the book of the same name, was “The Right to Stay Home.” And so while there’s a lot of differences between these contexts in terms of rural, indigenous communities here in Mexico and modern urban communities in the global north, there is this sense, [00:55:00] this kind of perhaps shared context wherein the ability to to stay in a place in order so that community can be conjured and maintained and of course enjoyed and lived in, seems to thread its way through these different social movements from the global north into the global south.

So, I’m really grateful to see that and to know that there’s similar understandings, of course not the same, but similar understandings that are even somewhat unorthodox and unexpected given the political context that sometimes challenge them or preclude something like that from coming up.

So that’s a little way of saying thank you for your time today, Leslie. On behalf of our listeners, I’d like to thank you for your willingness to join me and to speak to these often complex issues. And on behalf of them, I’d also like to ask you how they might find out more about [00:56:00] your work and your books: Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies, Feminist City: Claiming Space In A Manmade World, and finally Higher Expectations: How To Survive Academia, Make It Better For Others, And Transform The University.

Leslie: Yeah, thank you so much for this conversation. People can find out about me and my work at my website, which is just lesliekern.ca.

If you just google my name, it will come up easily enough. Feminist City and Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies. For an international audience, you can find those books through Verso books in the US and UK. There’s also many translations of both of those books, so you may have the opportunity to read it in your local language if you want to do that as well.

The more recent book, Higher Expectations is available from my Canadian publisher Between the Lines Books and in the US [00:57:00] from AK Books, as well. And there’s also Epub versions and for the first two books, audiobook versions as well. And I’ve written lots of articles on these topics as well, in the Guardian and other places.

So you can get a little snippet of my thoughts if you, again, Google my name and all of these things will come up in short order. So thank you for letting me share that as well.

Chris: Yeah, of course. I’ll make sure that the links to all those pages that you mentioned are available on the End of Tourism website and the Substack when the episode launches.

And once again, Leslie, a really beautifully revealing conversation today. I think it’s something that will not just provoke generally, but provoke a willingness in our listeners to reconsider some of the assumptions that they’ve had about gentrification.

So, once again, thank you for your time today.

Leslie: Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. Appreciate it.

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On this episode, my guest is . Adam has a PhD in Anthropology and Communications and is an active member of the Medical Anthropology Research Center (MARC-URV). A long-term student and researcher of various magico-medical systems around the world, he has facilitated workshops and retreats in the Amazon rainforest and the Mexican coast for almost a decade. He is the co-founder of Hidden Hand Media, a creative agency at the intersection of psychedelia, technology, and society, and the creator of Healing from Healing, a social media platform that casts a critical, skeptical, and humorous gaze at Healing and Transformation Culture.

Show Notes

• Adam’s doctoral thesis and time in the Amazon

• Iatrogenesis and Healing Culture

• Epistemic Humility

• Our Traumadelic Stories

• Clash in Understandings of Causation

• Disneyfication of Plant Medicine

• Individual vs Relational Healing

• Psychedelic Tourism’s Local Consequences

• Spirit Realm Fallout

• Animistic Perspective

• Narrative, Cults, and Conspirituality

Homework

Adam Aronovich - Substack - Instagram: Healing From Healing

Adam’s Doctoral Thesis: Mother Ayahuasca Told Me: Writings at the Heart of Contemporary Healing Culture

Martin Buber - I and Thou

Thomas Berry

Traumadelic Culture

Transcript

Chris: Welcome to the End of Tourism Podcast, Adam. Thanks so much for being willing to speak with me today.

Adam: Oh no, my pleasure.

Chris: Hmm. So, to begin, Adam, maybe you could share with us where you find yourself today and what the world looks like where you are.

Adam: That’s a simple question, usually maybe with simpler answers, but right now, kind of the last year or two, I’ve been bouncing back and forth between Nayarit in Mexico and Los Angeles. So right now, I’m in LA for the next month or so, and then I’m back in Nayarit for a little bit. But right now, in Los Angeles.

Chris: Well, welcome this morning and I know you mentioned to me that you recently defended your PhD thesis, and I’d like to congratulate you on that alone. It’s a huge accomplishment. And I guess, you know, before we get into my questions, I’d like to ask you if there’s anything in terms of that you’d like to offer us a little glimpse of in terms of what you’ve been tending to and perhaps even slaving over, over the last few years or more?

Adam: Yeah, thank you. Basically, I wrote an ethnography. I mean, my field is medical anthropology, so I did, I wrote kind of a classical ethnography. I mean, it blends a few different genres within anthropological literature.

So, it has some aspects of classical ethnography, which is kind of a little like a travelogue, an observation of certain phenomena that I met on my path, a little bit of critical ethnography, problematizing the field with some context, with theoretical context. But I think like the most important thing for me was also bringing kind of the literary side of it. So, my goal from the beginning was to make something that was readable and enjoyable. Those were kind of like the two parameters.

You know, when I was writing the, the text kind, I constantly just kept thinking about what kind of public I wanted to appeal to. And you know, it is kind of an academic text, but also something that I hope that people can enjoy just for its literary merits. So, it kind of draws from that tradition of ethnographic literature that it’s also enjoyable and pleasurable and interesting. And I mean at least that was what I was aiming for. I don’t know if I succeeded. That’s not for me to judge, obviously that’s for the readers. And yeah, I mean, right now, the thesis is defended and everything is fine. And then, I guess the next step would be to find a publisher and an editor. It shouldn’t be a problem. I mean, it’s still an academic text, so to be publishable as a book for a wider audience, it still would need to be edited to some extent. But yeah, I mean that’s where it’s at.

And I mean that the whole text kind of draws from the years that I spent in Peru, in the Amazon Rainforest. I was working at an ayahuasca retreat centre in Peru for few years and observing and participating and trying to write an account of what it is that people from the Global North speak when they speak about medicine, when they speak about healing, when they speak about spiritual transformation. What is the world of meaning that we draw from? What are the things that we get from it? And, you know, what is the impact of all of that in the social envelope, in the cultural context in which it all happens? And I guess kind of trying to give a different perspective that is not necessarily just hype.

I think there’s a lot of hype in server surrounding psychedelics and psychedelic plant medicines in the so-called psychedelic renaissance. But I think, you know, you spend enough time in in the Amazon rainforest and you notice that things are more complex and there’s much more nuance, and there’s important things that need to be unpacked and problematized to some extent. So, you know, one of the goals was that he doesn’t read kind of like, as a pamphlet, just to like advertise the ayahuasca industry on one hand, but at the same time, also not to completely bash it, right?

Like, it was like trying to find a middle way, highlighting both the beautiful, but also the problematic, and kind of like trying to give a complete picture of the hope, the hype, the fervour, and also the darker sides of the whole enterprise.

So, yeah, I mean, it’s available. If anybody’s interested, they can reach out.

Chris: Oh, wonderful.

Adam: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. Well, congratulations on that. I mean, it sounds like, not just a lot of hard work, but really important work. And that’s in large part why you’ve been invited to speak with me today. there’s very few voices I think in the psychedelic subculture who are willing to take it to task, to do so in a way that honours the kinds of worlds that we’d like to live in and still recognizes the fault lines that we’ve created here in our time.

And so, I’d like to begin, I guess, creating a bit of context for our listeners in terms of a couple terms that sometimes show up in your writing and in your interviews. You know, I was elated when first reading your work, especially in the context of psychedelics to read the word “iatrogenic,” which I think was popularized by the philosopher Ivan Illich in the latter-half of the 20th century. And so I’m wondering if you could offer our listeners just a brief foray into “iatrogenesis” and why you think we might apply it to an analysis of psychedelic or healing culture.

Adam: Yeah. Well, I think in the most, simple term, “iatrogenic” basically means something that is caused by the medical intervention, right? So the iatrogenesis kind of would be, for example, a disease of an illness that is originated or caused by the medical intervention itself. So it’s a term that is oftentimes used to critique certain aspects of medical practice that are perceived to cause more harm than to heal or cure.

And you know, when applied to the psychedelic industry, I think iatrogenesis is something that is very important to understand because, of course, the promise of psychedelics is huge, while the potential risks and damage they can do to a person and also not negligible. And I think it’s something that oftentimes get overlooked.

I think in the last few years there’s been a lot of people that have made it a point to kind of highlight the actual dangers and risks of psychedelic practice, including the iatrogenic component of bad facilitation, for example or bad providers. Or not necessarily bad, like in an ontological way like unskilled or lacking experience or lacking a wide enough repertoire of epistemic frameworks to help people kind of like sense-make and meaning-make their experiences, which is I think something that for me is very important, and something that I focus a lot on, right? Like what kind of epistemic tools we’re providing for people to make sense of experiences that are inherently, oftentimes rocking the foundations of our epistemologies and ontologies, which is something that again not many facilitators are well equipped to deal with, particularly when we’re talking about, let’s say, ayahuasca in a traditional context, where the ontologies from which these medicines originate and feed from are extremely different to the worldviews and ways of understanding ourselves in the world that we’re accustomed to.

So, you know, we’re talking about the iatrogenic harm, I think. I talk about the role that facilitators, providers, supporting staff and cast have, in ensuring not only that the experience falls properly, but also again, just not causing harm, or avoiding risk and damage as much as we can, which is something, again, it’s something that we’re learning along the way, collectively, as this practice has become more globalized and more popularized.

Chris: Thank you for that. And there’s another term that you use, as well among, but almost as a kind of antidote, I think to iatrogenesis, which is “epistemic humility.” And on your Healing From Healing Instagram page, there’s a small post about it in which you write that

“Epistemic humility is an intellectual virtue. It is grounded in the realization that our knowledge is always provisional and incomplete, and that it might require revision in the light of new evidence.”

Now, I imagine you wouldn’t have posted this on an account dedicated to psychedelic healing culture if you thought that epistemic humility was already prevalent there. So my question is, where do you think the lack of epistemic humility among modern people comes from, and why might it be crucial for those in psychedelic or healing cultures?

Adam: These are complex, complex things. I mean, I can give my opinion, which is informed by my observations and my experience in these environments.

I think psychedelics are remarkable for many things. They’re remarkable in a variety of different ways, and one of the ways I think that they’re particularly remarkable, is you know, kind of like helping people widen or reconfigure our capacity to process information, to make sense of the world around us, to consider knowledge, how we acquire knowledge, how we make sense of that knowledge, and how we form belief systems based on that knowledge or how we form models of how the world works, you know, and what our place in the world is like.

I think psychedelics are very apt for allowing people to, at the very least, ask questions related to those domains of epistemology, ontology, and so on. At the same time, I think, for example, if a person Google goes on a psychedelic experience is very powerful and then that experience kind of catalyzes this process of deconstruction of our models of the world and what the world is like, and so and so forth, which happens quite often, then there is an interval in that person’s life of heightened vulnerability, in terms of what other models of the world are available, right? This is a moment where a person can very easily have their epistemology hijacked by, you know, malware. Let’s just call it “epistemic malware.”

Whereas the model of the world that they had prior to it maybe starts dissolving. But then, instead of kind of like staying in that space of uncertainty and non-determination, then it’s easy to kind of gravitate towards some other model that just provides easy answers. And then we get into the domain of conspiracy theory, for example, or conspirituality which is one of the words that became popular in the last five or six years since the pandemic, right? Like this intersection of conspiracy culture, conspiracy epistemics, and western self spirituality that. It is just kind of like this conjunction of conspiracy culture and self spirituality that is really at the heart of much of the contemporary transformation culture, right?

Like all this scene that I call really “healing culture.” I mean the hyper object that I use to kind of think about this thing is “healing culture,” which includes within it, you know, fragments of conspiracy culture, of New Age spirituality but mostly focused on self spirituality

I mean, I don’t know if it’s a religious movement, but it’s the kind of spirituality that really sacralizes the self over everything else, right? Like, I mean, “we’re our own Gods and Goddesses,” like “everything can be found inside,” “all the knowledge and wisdom that we need is already inside of us,” and so on and so forth.

And there are other aspects of healing culture. But so, this moment of epistemic vulnerability, when our epistemologies and our ontologies kind of get shaken or deconstructed is a moment where we’re very vulnerable to them being influenced, or being fed some other story that is not necessarily in our best interest, either.

And I think, facilitators (for example) or integration coaches or medicine providers, any person that is really working with psychedelics, I think there is a huge responsibility in terms of that epistemic vulnerability of the person, Like being super hyper-aware of what kind of stories we are reproducing, what kind of ideologies, what kind of spiritual precepts, what kind of belief systems we carry with us that then get maybe projected into somebody that is in a very vulnerable state.

And I think epistemic humility, to that extent, functions as a sort of cushion or sort of antidote. Like, “Hey, you know, like we don’t have to hurry to attach to beliefs quickly. we don’t have to attach, we don’t have to hurry to leap, to make a leap of faith into another belief system that requires from us that certainty.

I think for me at least when I’m working for myself or when I’m working with other people, I think one of the places where I feel most comfortable is actually in that indeterminacy of allowing myself and encouraging other people to feel comfortable with not knowing, with not making a choice, with the uncertainty of not having to put a finger on like, “oh this is exactly how the world works, this is exactly who is in charge, this is the structure of the new model of the world that I have.”

But rather like, “Hey, you know, like maybe let’s consider that there’s complexity, there’s a lot of nuance to these things.

In that moment, for example, when that epistemic kind of deconstruction happens, the person has choices. So on one choice, we can say “well, I want to learn more about the political economy of drugs,” or “I want to learn more about sociology,” “I want to learn more about the history of governance,” “I want to learn more about how the economic system actually works and how finance works,” and so on, which takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort, is a lifelong endeavour of trying to understand more and more and more about society and about culture and about politics to gain a wider understanding, a more precise model of how the world actually works.

Or on the other hand, we can say like, “fuck that, that’s too complex. Okay, it’s easier for me to just say ‘oh no, it’s actually the Jews or the Masons, or there’s actually like this huge conspiracy or a handful of people that are in charge of everything that happens. And then, I’m going to attach to that worldview, because it provides me a sense of certainty.”

It’s to say like, “well, actually I don’t want to learn about all of these complex things, I just want to attach to that easy answer that is providing me with a different structure that lessens that cognitive dissonance and so on.”

So, you know, conspiracy culture jumps in in those moments. Spirituality, oftentimes, jumps in in those moments, right? Like, both of them together jump in in those moments and hijack that impulse to actually learn and understand better, and just provide you some easy and perhaps comfortable framework that is not necessarily going to be better for the person, or society, or the community.

So that’s kind of been the main concern: how do we actually bring that epistemic humility to prevent that hijacking of all of those, not necessarily malicious, but you know, bad ideas that get people very riled up?

Chris: Yeah, that seems to be the question in our time, the “how.” Yeah, I mean it’s also just a lot of work, and not to simplify it because it is an incredible amount of work, but certainly when you have an ecology of oversimplification and reductionism as we do in our times, or at least in the way that I was raised in Toronto, Canada, it’s a constant battle to remind oneself that you were bombarded most of the time, and the bombardment of reductionism is largely unspoken because it’s so rooted in the culture, in the language of the culture. Yeah. And so, you mentioned also that the nuance and complexity that can come out of psychedelic experiences is also, I think, experienced when people travel to other cultures for example, from the global north or the global south to have psychedelic experiences.

And so, it’s my understanding that you spent several years in the Amazon working with a reputable retreat centre there. And generally speaking, tourists expectations and entitlement can often and easily lead to bad behaviour, the kind of sensationalism that often comes along in news about tourism, and while it’s easy to critique it from afar, I’d like to ask you, Adam, what you saw in your time there in the Amazon in terms of, what we might say or what we might call the lack or absence of epistemic or cultural humility. You know, I’m curious how this showed up either in your own experience or those of the people that arrived as pasajeros down there.

Adam: Yeah. I think none of these things are black or white. I think, you know, something that is important for me to say from the get-go, even though I do bring maybe a critical eye or a critical lens to many of these phenomena, I also have a lot of appreciation for the work that is done, even in retreat centres in the Amazon. I mean, I think there are a lot of complexities and a lot of sides to this. But by the end of the day, I think I do have a lot of appreciation for people who are seeking to heal, even people who are just experiencing the novelty of like different plant medicines, people that are exploring and traveling and wanting to connect with different mystical technologies or spiritual techniques or exploring other cultures, even if they’re not as well informed as they should be. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things, but at the end of the day, I think I do have respect and appreciation for the complex of beings as a whole.

That being said, I mean, yes, there are many things that can be done better, and for me, that’s kind of the approach. You know, it’s not necessarily like, oh, like all of the ayahuasca tourism sucks and we need to completely abolish and eradicate all of it, but rather like how can we actually benefit from it the most, while still contributing to a healthy culture and healthy social dynamics and diminishing the actual impact that this has on local populations, whether it’s economic or social or culture and so on and so forth.

There’s all sort of different angles to it, I think the ones that for me are more interesting... again, we were talking about epistemology. For me, the more interesting angles: of course, there are social concerns, political concerns, there’s all sorts of cultural issues that comes with the arrival of large groups of people from the global north seeking particular things in places that are poor, places that are to some extent destitute, places that are to some extent under the weight of exploitation for many, many, many years and so on. So, there’s a lot to be said about cycles of exploitation resources, whether it’s the history of the Amazon, from rubber to wood to now wisdom and knowledge.

But for me, one of the things that are most salient has to do with what are the stories that we tell people. I mean, this is something that I have focused on a lot, because for me it’s very important. I think in the last decade or fifteen years, we made out of progress, thinking about set and setting, right? This idea that psychedelic experiences don’t really happen in a vacuum, but there’s a whole lot of context and things to take care of when it comes to both our personal inner state and landscape. But at the same time, also kind of like the context in which the experiences happen, the physical spaces, the music, but there’s components to the setting, particularly that I think are not necessarily spoken about enough, and they’re definitely not curated or thought about in that way. And that part has to do more with kind of like the narrative or discursive dimensions. So what are the stories that we tell ourselves? And what are the stories that we tell people? What are the ideas that are floating out there in the culture about what ayahuasca is for, for example? Or what is plant medicine?

These are interesting questions. I mean, for example, if you open the internet and you go to ayahuasca retreat centres, there’s very, very specific narratives that you’re going to see over and over and over, right?

“Ayahuasca pretty much is a panacea for treating trauma.” You know, a very, very, very, a common story that we have nowadays. Like ayahuasca is kind of like this antidote for the root source of all Western affliction, which is trauma. I’m not saying this is true. I’m saying this is the story, right? This kind of like this cultural moment where trauma has been posited in this way through the work of Peter Levine and Gabor Mate and Bessel Van Der Kolk and all sorts of different things. Kind of like “see trauma - childhood trauma, in particular - as kind of like the source of everything that we suffer from in adulthood, from anxiety, depression, to addiction, to all sort different physical ailments, right? This idea that there’s a psychogenic theory of physical illnesses that manifest in our lives, because of things that happened to us when we were children. I mean, all these things are kind of like very, very much well-rooted in healing culture as a whole and the psychedelic world in particular.

So, if you go to the website, then you will see that. You’ll see, oftentimes, kind of those stories, appealing to a public that has been fed that story, that we’re all traumatized, that we’re all suffering we’re all suffering from all sorts of different things, and that the way out of it is to work on our childhood trauma, and the way to work with our childhood trauma is to come and drink ayahuasca in the jungle, because that’s the panacea, or at least the very best medicine that we found for it.

I’m not saying this is not necessarily true. It can be true, in some instances, for some people. There’s nuance to it, but those are the stories that are floating in the culture and, you know, in order to tell those stories, basically, which in other words, in order to attract clients to retreat centres in the rainforest. There is a need to... There’s a few things that need to be done, but one of the things that needs to be done is that there’s a need for translating an incredibly complex world of meaning, let’s say the local worlds of what ayahuasca is, how it is embedded in animistic ontologies, the worldviews of the people in the Amazon rainforest that have worked with Ayahuasca, right? There’s a need to kind of translate those worlds and sell them to potential clients, right? In order to do so, there’s the marketing piece of the thing that they need to appeal to our sensibilities, the things that Western client is looking for in these experiences. So you can’t really quite talk about things that are part of the local world, right?

I’m generalizing a lot, but talking more specifically, for example, let’s say you’re working in a, in a retreat centre that works with Shipibo people, right? And the Shipibo people, as many Amazonian people, their medical systems are medical systems that are rooted in a particular worldview. The medical systems, their theories of disease, the theories of illness, the theories of diagnosis, their theories of cures are rooted in a particular ontology, are emerging from that ontology, an ontology that is animistic, an ontology that is relational, an ontology that is based on a very different understanding of what the world is, than what most people in the global North would recognize as their own ontology, as our own ontology, which is more materialistic, more individualistic in that sense. And that has a lot of implications because, for example, for the Shipibo people, medicine and warfare or medicine and spiritual warfare are not separate domains. They’re one and the same thing. In the Shipibo worldview, again, as in many other Amazonian animistic systems, disease, for example, never really happens in a vacuum. People don’t get ill just because they get they get ill. From malaria to the flu to grave, life-threatening disease, nothing happens “just because.”

The theory of causation in these medical systems is relational. If you get sick, it’s because somebody made you sick. If you experience illness, it’s because somebody in the community of being that you’re a part of wanted you to be ill, wanted you to be And that reason can be all sorts of different reasons. I mean, there’s all sorts of different, domains of disease in Shipibo culture from cutipados to sustos to daños, But basically all of these things are relational. And what that means basically for the medic, right, for the Shipibo medical practitioner who is singing the disease out of your body, is that he’s not only cleaning you or emptying you from affliction, but is actively also engaged in combat against the afflicting entity.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Adam: Every act of curing, every act of healing is also an act of battle, of warfare against some agent that is because of your illness, because everything is relational. And for you to get better, there’s a need to restore that reciprocity, which oftentimes means we need to get rid of the afflicting agent, and then kind of figure out what happens that that agent wanted you ill.

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So, for example, I mean, you know, this can be pure sorcery or pure magic or pure brujeria in the sense of like there’s somebody who is jealous of you or somebody who doesn’t like you for whatever reason, and it’s just like sending you magic darts and making you ill, but it can be also more subtle ways that are embedded within a ecosocial way of understanding the world of how reciprocity actually is enacted in real life, in the sense that you cannot hunt in places where you’re not allowed to hunt, for whatever reason, because it’s not the right season of the year to hunt a particular animal because there needs to be a replenishment of females within a particular species, or you’re not allowed to fish in a particular cocha in a particular time of the year, because there’s a very acute awareness of the cycles of nature. And people know when to fish and who to fish and how to fish. And remembering that an animistic worldview like the fish and the deer and the bird, they’re all persons, right? They’re not just resources to be extracted, mindlessly from the rainforest. They’re people that you engage with, like people, like equals, right? So the fish and the tree and the lupuna tree or the gamitana fish or the deer or the mahaz or the huangana, like there’s a need for engagement in a horizontal person-to-person, equal-to-equal way. So if a person goes and walks under the wrong tree at the wrong time of the day, then there’s an understanding that that person might fall ill, because the tree is enforcing that illness as a result or as a manifestation of that breach in reciprocity and disrespecting an equal.

Hunting the wrong people at the wrong time of the year is a cause of illness, because there’s a breach in that understanding of reciprocity, of you are my equal and I have to respect you in that sense. And if not, then I might fall ill.

Anyway, there’s all sorts of different reasons why a person might fall ill, but all of those reasons are relational, so the healing is also relational. The curing is also relational. The singing is also relational, but to the point, you cannot really say that in the copy of a retreat centre, because you don’t want to scare people away. You can’t say, “oh, like, you’re going to be working with shamans who are also brujos. You’re going to be working in a medical system that is both wonderful but also incredibly dark. At the root of it, there’s like this understanding of reciprocity that entails constant spiritual battle spiritual battle.”

When you get to actually experience the work of a Shipibo onaya... I mean, “onaya” is a emic term, the local term that the Shipibo name themselves - the person who knows how to work with ayahuasca, what we probably would call a “shaman” in a less than ideal way. But when you get to see the work that they actually do, not in the maloca with 25 tourists from the global north, but in smaller settings in their own communities, amongst their own people, then you can really see the toll that it takes on the person, the actual damage from the spiritual warfare.

I mean, again, I’m not making an ontological assertion here that these things are ontologically real in the sense of like... you know, this is always tricky to talk about, right? Like you kind of have, finding the balance between being respectful and openminded about the understanding of the world of different cultures, but at the same time, this is where the epistemic humility comes in very handy for facilitators, right?

For example, the last thing that you want to do as a facilitator is allow a person who came to an ayahuasca retreat to leave the retreat, now convinced that their illness is due to them being haunted by a spirit or something. This is something that I’ve seen many times happen where a facilitator takes a pasajero, takes one of the participants in the ceremony to talk to the Shipibo. There’s a mistranslation of whatever the Shipibo was saying, and then the person is communicated back that their depression, or their anxiety, or their cancer, or whatever it is that they’re ailing from is actually stemming from a curse that somebody put on them, or some sort of jealousy or envy.

There’s a clash in understandings of causation. There’s a clash in understanding of how things happen and what is needed to get rid of them [illnesses]. And there’s a lot of room for iatrogenic damage in those interactions if we’re not able to navigate properly, not only the translation, but also the cultural translation and also the space for epistemic ambiguity in explaining to the person, like, “hey, this is a particular worldview, this is a particular way of understanding things. We’re working within this system, yes, but that doesn’t mean that every person has to completely attach themselves now to that belief system, which is something that happens quite a lot, right? Many of the facilitators in the Amazon Rainforest learn and study with Shipibo healers within a Shipibo framework, and then they become extremely religious, extremely attached to those particular belief systems, and then they reproduce those things in a way that perhaps is not ideal either.

There’s something that I write about a lot in my book - ontological caricatures. This idea that, as much as we would like to try and translate worldviews that are as foreign as, let’s say, a Shipibo, animistic, relational framework can be for me, that translation is always going to be reductive. It’s always going to be incomplete. It’s always going to be a caricature or something that I may approximate an understanding of, but I can’t quite articulate in the same way that an actual Shipibo person who was born in the rainforest, who was raised within that framework, who train their brain with the perception of this jungle life and relationality and so on. I mean, there’s always going to be a massive distance, even between the most observant and well-intentioned, external researcher trying to understand that world. There’s always going to be a distance between him or her and an actual person that grew up within that worldview, and trained within the worldview all the time. So our best attempts at translations are always going to be caricatures. And what we’re selling people are always going to be those caricatures.

And they’re caricatures, not only because they’re incomplete or low-resolution, the caricatures also, because when the incentives of marketing kick in, we’re also stripping away those caricatures from all their complexity, because we’re basically sanitizing them, we want to wash away all the darker sides of it. We don’t want to put the word “brujeria“ on our website. We don’t want to talk about a soul sorcery that is inherent to those interactions, right? We want to kind of sell a sanitized version where the spirits of the plants and the Shipibo healers are basically omni benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, like faint figures that are only working for our benefit for some reason. Like, “the plants of the Amazon really have it as their main goal to heal every foreigner that comes to the jungle because they’re just omnibenevolent” and so on. So, this is something that pretty much every website or every Instagram account of every retreat centre, or the email copy of the people who are working there sells.

This is one version of another, extremely reductive, extremely sanitized, extremely hygienic sort of caricature that sells a product that is meant to appeal to a very wide audience. There’s little resemblance to what actually is the belief system, the worldview, the epistemology of the local communities that are working with those plants, that are offering those services, that are being impacted by this meeting of cultures, whose culture, whose belief systems, whose ontologies and epistemologies are being reduced to something that is mostly used as a marketing ploy to attract people to them. But again, like it bears little resemblance to the actual thing.

So you know, this ontological caricature is something that I also have called the Disneyfication of plant medicine. This Disney-fying process, in which the whole industry becomes a Disneyfied version. And what I mean by Disneyfied is when we say the attributes of Disneyland. Again, “this happy place, omnibenevolent, omnibenevolent we try to hide as much as possible the darker aspects of it. The ugly sides of it kind of get tucked away, and we just kind of offer this fantasy wonderland of omnibenevolence. And you’re just coming here to heal and to transform and everything is fine. And there’s no risk. There’s no danger. There’s, there’s just a promise, right? We’re selling kind of like this aspirational promise of healing trauma.”

Yeah, it’s a very Disneyfied thing to that extent, that it’s very sanitized, very hygenized, a very incomplete version that we’re selling people in order to attract them. them And I mean, in this era of globalized psychotics, it’s inevitable, because for example, you have to have a unique selling point if you’re competing against an increasingly large number of people offering ceremonies worldwide. So they say like, “Hey, how do I draw people from Brooklyn or from London or from Sydney in Australia? How do I sell them the idea that it’s very important for them to actually come to the source of it, to work in the jungle with actual Shipibo who are very authentic, instead of just joining an ayahuasca circle in their hometown?”

I mean, there’s a lot of competition nowadays. The ayahuasca industry is global, and it’s massive.

There’s thousands of ceremonies happening in every big city, over the world every week. So, So there’s kind of like this, this need to create this Disneyfied version to keep the competitive edge. Does that make sense to you?

Chris: It makes, it makes a lot of sense. And that was incredible. I have no doubt that you defended your thesis with precision and beauty. Wow. You know, I want to ask about this, note that you suggested. When someone who spends maybe not enough time, but enough time in, for example, in a place like the Amazon, with a culture like the Shipibo, for example, to gather in the dynamics and even specificities of their culture perhaps superficially or otherwise, and then applies them to their own life or experience or illness or health, or even takes it back home with them, for example, to the global North. wherein there’s, you know no cultural framework to support that kind of thing, or just people who would even understand at the very least, what the person is referring to or talking about.

I mean, there’s definitely this sense of iatrogenesis that you mentioned. And I’m wondering as well within, I guess a more fundamental and less specific level, if this notion of health and illness as inherently relational, as inherently social, as affecting or even afflicting a “social body” as opposed to an individual or, or personal body.

You know, I mean I’ve lived here in Oaxaca, Mexico for the last 10 years. I’ve spent a lot of time in indigenous villages and peered into the indigenous systems are understandings of health and illness here. And they definitely mirror what you’re saying in terms of this relational notion.

And I’m curious, you know. Leaving the specificities of spiritual warfare that exists in the Amazon aside, how do you think that the understanding or the, the possibility of conceiving of health and illness in a relational context might be a kind of sobering, reconfiguring of our understanding of health illness in the global north or in the West, or among modern people to the extent that, well, maybe this might help us not have to pry and ply the unconsidered and maybe even incoherent concepts of other people, and I want to say incoherent - incoherent in the sense that you were referring to in the example that you gave about someone trying to apply it cross-culturally in a way that doesn’t fit. Do you think that a relational model might help us to reconfigure the ways in which we come to health and illness, and the ways in which we are healthy in the world or not?

Adam: Well, I mean, I think that’s my hope. That’s what I hope to achieve also as a facilitator in the rainforest. Every retreat I facilitate to every group that I had the opportunity to talk to when I was there, I always made one session, which was basically based on understanding health, not necessarily as a purely individual process, but as a relational process, not necessarily within the framework of animistic agency and so on, but like just very basic things, right? It was surprising in the beginning that people were not aware of these ideas as much as I would like them to be, but also like the reception was very good all the time, because there were things that just clicked in people’s minds. Again, when you’re selling a story of individual transformation and individual healing... I mean, all the healing culture is extremely individualistic in the sense that it kind of like pretends to form communities in the world. But all the interventions, all the understanding of what it means to be happy and healthy with spirituality, are extremely hyper-individualistic because they’re emergent from overarching kind of like neoliberal culture, that very much takes the individual as the main and only unit of analysis, most of the time.

So, for the most part, what it means to be happy and healthy is an individual process, right? Like, “I have my trauma, I go, I drink ayahuasca, I process my trauma, I develop better habits and so on.” But it’s always kind of like individual transformation, individual healing, individual transformation.

There was a mantra at the place where I worked. A mantra that was repeated pretty much by every facilitator to everybody that came: your individual healing and transformation is the best gift that you can offer the world. You know, that kind of sounds right and sounds true, and it may be in that sense. It is very important for each individual to do our own work as it were. We have to do our work so we can actually heal, transform and then have an impact, but there is also a very navel-gazing culture around that thing where the only thing that matters at the end of the day... I mean, you can very easily interpret that saying “your individual healing and transformation is the best gift that you can offer in the world,” that can very easily be skewed towards what actually happens in the field most of the time, which is complete devaluation of any sort of approach to health, wellbeing, happiness that is not rooted in my own individual process, that is not encapsulated within my own individual psyche. So we kind of just become passive consumers, of retreats, of techniques, of supplements, of classes. But it’s kind of like we’re once again, falling into the cycle of individual consumption, whereas we at some point hope that we’ll escape the matrix just by putting ourselves through the proverbial dishwasher, just like once more and once more, and once again another retreat and another workshop, and another class, and this is a supplement that is going to help, or this is the thing.

So, when I had a group, I would very explicitly try to deconstruct that idea and illuminate the way in which actually health is inherently relational, right? The individual health is inherently connected or related to the health of our communities, and how my individual health is inherently connected to the health of the society that I live in and the culture from which I feel, and the environment which sustains me in all sorts of ways.

And when you talk about these connections and you make them explicit, a lot of people say, “oh yeah, well that’s pretty obvious.” But the truth is that it’s not that obvious in the day-to-day when a person is still self absorbed into this vortex of individualized interventions, right? When you go to a place like the Amazon, for example, and you dig a little bit into what’s actually happening there, and you contemplate the ecological catastrophe that the Amazon is nowadays, right? Like the rivers... there’s all sorts of different things that are happening that are really catastrophic ecological processes that are having a massive impact in the health of communities and individuals.

If the rivers are polluted with oil, because of the oil companies that are extracting oil in the Amazon and then just dumping the pipes or never ever really fixing the pipes in the rivers, the rivers are polluted beyond any practical use for indigenous and mestizo riverine people that live alongside the banks of those rivers are using that water to drink from it and cultivate crops and so on, and they’re getting sick and they’re dying. Then, it’s very easy to illuminate the intrinsic link between environmental health and individual health. If we’re drinking polluted water, then we’re going to be sick.

We, for the most part, in the developed, global north, have the privilege of not having to think about these things all the time, because we’re not drinking water from polluted rivers most of the time. I mean, some of us are, of course. There’s all sorts of massive problems in the north, global north as well, but they’re not as immediate and they’re not as acute as for a lot of people in the global south, including many Amazonian communities that are actually dying all the time just because of the pollution in the rivers.

So, illuminating the link between environmental health and individual health is one way that we can actually yank the person out of the self-absorbed individual healing process and endless process of doing the internal work of changing the locus of healing and transformation from the internal to the external.

Sometimes. It’s fine, it’s okay to have one eye inwards and maybe one eye outwards, right? So, what I tried to encourage people was, as they underwent seven ayahuasca ceremonies and did all of this personal work and all of this healing work and transformation work, and digging out traumas and whatever it is that they we’re there to do...

I’m not saying this with contempt, I’m saying this maybe with a little bit of irony, but a lot of respect for every single person that actually does this work because it’s not easy work.

We can keep that one eye inwards and do all of that heavy, shitty, emotional, psychological, self-absorbed work, but at the same time one eye outwards. Well, actually, it’s actually becoming much, much clearer that community health impacts individual health in all sorts of different ways. I mean, we know, for example, in the West, we’re going through massive epidemics of loneliness, massive epidemics of alienation. We know that loneliness is a massive problem, that is not only a social problem, it’s an individual problem. I’m speaking of men in particular. When men are lonely, when men are alienated, when men don’t have a strong community that binds them to degrees of accountability or reciprocity of being a productive member of a community that is encompassing, then we’re very easily radicalized. It’s very easy to radicalize people who are lonely. It’s very easy to radicalize people who are alienated. It’s very easy to radicalize people who have lost any semblance of community, who are not in balance, who are not accountable by people who love them. And there’s reciprocity in those interactions. It’s very easy to hijack those minds and say like, “Hey, you know, like all of your problems are because of immigrants, all of your problems are because of Jews, all your problems are because of somebody that becomes a scapegoat for an incredibly important socio-cultural problem that then gets individualized in the person.

Or cultural issues that are very important. I mean, political issues are very impactful of individual health. This is one of the examples that I always gave people, because it’s easy to connect with: if we live in a consumerist culture where everywhere we go, whether we’re on the street or we’re in the car listening to the radio, or just trying to watch TV and unwind, and we’re being bombarded thousands of times a day with the same messaging that is meant to get us to buy shit that we don’t want or we don’t really need. I mean, advertising kind of like relies on one assumption, which is like we have to make that person feel incomplete. We have to make that person feel insecure. We want to sell you the shit that you don’t really need. We want to create that artificial sense of scarcity or that artificial sense of insecurity.

So there’s a whole culture that thrives on you feeling insecure with yourself, right? So, when a person goes on the street, and we see these ads all the time of these beautiful people drinking a glass of wine, or we hear these things telling us that we’re not good enough, we’re not pretty enough, we’re not rich enough, we’re not something enough, then that cultural malware is going to have an impact in our individual health, because we’re not only going to feel more insecure, we’re also going to feel anxious, we’re going to feel depressed. Our self-esteem is going to suffer. There’s all sorts of things that are cultural issues that are actually also very impactful to our individual sense of health.

So what happens when we individualize everything is that we lose sight of those things, right? We lose sight of the need for community as an inherent part of our happiness. We lose sight of the damage that consumerist culture does to our wellbeing by producing this artificial sense of not being enough. We lose sight of like the massive damage that social media, perverse incentives, are having on how we are. They keep us trapped into these doom-scrolling traps just by hijacking our dopaminergic systems. Say, “Hey, we’re going to fill you with rage-bait forever and ever to keep you engaged in our platforms. That’s a technological problem that’s also a social problem, but it’s also a cultural problem that manifests as a massive, massive, massive individual issue for a lot of people, right?

I mean, I definitely feel that. I mean, I’m definitely suffering a lot from social media addictions that are structural issues with how these technologies are designed. So, illuminating those links between individual health and community health; individual health, society, culture, technology, environment and so on, is a very, very important step forward into a healing culture that is able to stop navel-gazing and stop that self-absorption into our individual.

We have to start looking also at structure because if we’re not at looking structure. If we’re not looking structures, if we’re not creating better structures, then we’re going to keep having the same results, right? Individuals, as much as we want to think that we’re kind of like these semi-divine Gods and Goddesses who are all powerful and so on, I mean, by the end of the day, we are results of the structures that we inhabit. And Unless we actually do the work to change structures, then we’re always going to be spiraling like a hamster wheel, chasing our own healing and transformation while the structures that we inhabit are completely broken.

There are, in the west, have been, always, very deep awareness of those things.

It’s called public health. The pandemic destroyed it forever. I mean, I don’t know, “forever.” Let’s not say “forever,” but the pandemic did massive damage to the public trust in expertise, right? Like the response to the pandemic now created boogie, a monster kind of like this, I Dunno what the expression is, but public health.

Public health, right? Epidemiologist and public health professionals and so on and so forth are now, kind of the enemy of a lot of people. Public health interventions are now seen as fascism. Social determinants of health, which is something, that should be at the forefront of any medical understanding anywhere in the world, are now just “woke garbage.”

So this understanding that class has an impact in individual health. The poverty is one of the most important things to consider when we’re trying to make an intervention to make people healthier. It’s not only about whether people have access to food that doesn’t have red dyes, but the quality of the food that people are able to purchase. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things that fall within that rubric of public health, of social determinants, of health, of health interventions that are not designed just for individual people, but to like really strengthen the health of communities and societies and cultures. So we have different individual results, but all of those things nowadays are kind of like being completely demonized since the response to the pandemic created a boogie monster and like the anti-woke backlash really saw any sort of attempt to bring forth things about class or race and so on and so forth.

I mean, it’s going to take a while for that to rebound, I guess. But nowadays we’re in a moment in time where all those things are very easily chucked to the side, demonized and increasingly even criminalized. Public health.

Chris: Wow. Wow. Thank you, Adam. In terms of this through line around ecological or social health, I’m curious if whether in your time in the Amazon, or elsewhere, or in your studies, if the people, now I guess this question kind of runs in two parallel directions.

We could speak of the people who operate and own and administer psychedelic retreat centres, and then also the indigenous communities that are employed by them. In your time there before or since, was there any consideration as to the consequences of social health for the indigenous communities there as a result of tourism?

I’ve seen it, I’ve read it. There’s a kind of back and forth debate about whether tourism is now causing more sorcerous attacks or spiritual warfare between, curanderos or shamans or villages, or whether it’s lessening. There’s also the question of the diaspora: the amount of healers from the Amazon who essentially take their skills on the road and spend most of their time in the global north, treating modern people as opposed to those in the villages. There can be, in some places, might be in other places, perhaps is a degree of inequality that is growing, either within the villages or between the villages as a result of this tourism.

So, I’d love to hear your opinion on it, but I’m also curious, if you saw any willingness to consider that, not just among the retreat centre owners, but also the indigenous communities there in the Amazon.

Adam: I really cannot speak to either retreat centre owners or operators, or indigenous people per se. But I mean, I can give some observations in terms of this phenomena. When talking about indigenous people, I think also is very important, when talking about the Shipibo people, for example, I think it’s very important to note that this is not a monolithic voice. There’s no consensus about any of these things. Every person has their own opinions. There’s all sorts of different ideas, opinions and feelings about it. Some people are more radical to either side of it. I mean, I definitely met Shipibo people who were extremely appalled by the whole thing, and they were very conservative and very protective of their own things and very reticent to give knowledge to gringos.

And I met others who were all over the place, like free-for-all, you know, like, “just come, pay us money and we’ll give it.” And I think it’s important to note not only is it not a monolithic set of beliefs or ideas, but also that Shipibo people have of agency within this construct. I mean, it is very asymmetric in the sense that of course, people from the global north do come with much more resources, money, power, decision-making, and so on and so forth, which means that the incentives for the Shipibo populations are fairly strong. I mean, it’s very difficult. For example, if a Shipibo healer or onaya gets hired, or he gets the opportunity to be hired by a leading retreat centre and go work there for three months, I mean the payment or the amount of money that he would make in three months working in a retreat centre away from home is something that will be difficult to say no to, even if that means leaving their communities and their families without their work, which happens all the time.

So my cats are jumping around. I think it’s zoomies time.

So, it is true, for example, that many trained onayas are not serving their communities anymore, both because the majority of the time they’re working with us in, whether it’s in ayahuasca retreat centres, or just traveling around the world, or operating their own retreat centres. This is something that has happened quite a lot in the last 5-7 years, is that many Shipibo families who were on the first waves of employment in Western-owned retreat centres, they figure it out like, “Hey, we don’t have to be employees of anyone. The knowledge, the skills, the resources are ours.” The only thing that we need is our own physical environment, and the know-how, how to run a business. And to the credit of ayahuasca retreat owners, such as in the place where I worked at, there’s a lot of help that is being given to the Shipibo families.

Like, “Hey, you worked for us for many years, and now we’re gonna reciprocate by helping you to create your own dieta centres, whether it’s logistically, knowledge-wise, consulting economically, and now many of the Shipibo onaya bo that I met in the beginning of my time in the Amazon as salaried labourers, as employees or retreat centres, nowadays they have their own centres. They attract their own public, which is mostly made out of people that they met working at retreat centres. They created their own clientele. They came up with their own model of how to give plant dietas. You know, they get a lot of help in marketing by previous guests, they get a lot of social media training by previous guests. I mean all, there’s a lot of gaps that are bridged just by this intercultural, cross-cultural fertilization that happens all the time.

And, it’s neither negative or positive. I think that really depends who you’re talking to. I mean, I think as a whole, there’s a lot of Shipibo families, a lot of Shipibo practitioners that are now retreat centre owners that travel the world, offering medicine to people that love the work that they do.

Has that increased jealousy in the Amazon?

Of course. I mean, it’s completely ripped apart many Shipibo communities for obvious reasons. I mean, if you’re living a lifestyle that is 4, 5, 6, 7 steps upward from the median income, from a median lifestyle, then of course there’s gonna be people opening eyes on “what are you doing” and “how are you doing it?” And so on and so forth.

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So there’s many internal frictions. There’s also been some attempts to regulate those internal frictions in some, in different sort of ways. Shipibo associations of onaya bo got together for the first time a few years ago, trying to provide some guidelines of internal regulations for Shipibo shamans on how to work, where to work you know, what kind of conditions...

I mean, I don’t know where they’re at now, to be honest. I haven’t really followed up on it, but back in the day, we were kind of trying to come up with ideas, that at least some of the money that is sunk into retreat centres comes back to Shipibo communities, whether it’s in forms of school, to train younger generations, which is a massive problem for the Shipibo, still today.

The vast majority of apprentices of Shipibo medical systems are not Shipibo. They’re Westerners like you and I that come to the jungle. They fall in love, they fall in love with the medicine, and they want to become shamans themselves, Where Shipibo youth are not so inclined. They have the opposite drive. They want to go to the city. They want to go to university. They want to join the western world, because that’s what they see as the best path forward. So it’s kind of like these Westerners coming to the jungle to learn ayahuasca, to practice ayahuasca, to eventually provide ayahuasca, whereas most Shipibo people, youth are in the opposite direction, getting as far away as from it as possible, going to university, becoming accountants or lawyers or anything that kind of brings them closer to mainstream Peruvian society. I mean, things are changing all the time. With the people that I, that I spend time with, the families that I spend time with in the Ucayali in Peru, seeing that in the last 10-15 years there has been such an influx of foreigners, maybe people do rethink whether actually learning from the grandparents and practicing the crafts of the families are a better idea. You know, both there’s an economic future in it.

There’s definitely prestige in it. There’s definitely the opportunity for travel. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things that are changing very quickly. Again, it’s not a very monolithic thing. I think different people think different things. I mean for sure, there are things that are pretty universal within contemporary Shipibo criticism again, which is like, “how can we channel more resources into communities? How can we ensure that there’s a future for Shipibo youth within the system, that is not only gringos.” All these things get talked about all the time. And I’m sure that there’s also sort of new developments that I’m unaware of that touch on many of these things, emically from their part.

Chris: Hmm. Wow. Wow. Fascinating. Thank you, Adam. So I have a strange question.

Adam: Sure.

Chris: I have a very left field question that I’ve been wondering about for a few years. So when modern people show up in places like the Amazon or Oaxaca, for example, searching out psychedelic medicines or healing, when they do so as tourists dropping in and flying out, they often come and go with little to no understanding of their level of consequence on a place, consequence that is often lost on them because of the short term duration of their stays, and often because the politics of such things are kept from visitors as you mentioned a little bit earlier. so there’s this kind of touristic element that appears perhaps inherent in psychedelic retreat centres and weekend, weekend warrior ceremonies.

So if we take this, these notions of hypermobility, of temporariness and relative ignorance of, for example, the local culture and history, and if we consider the immense consequence that we have in the places that we visit do you think that we as humans have the same consequence in the psychedelic realm?

Do you think we show up as tourists in the psychedelic realm? And if so, what do you think are the consequences for the psychedelic realm or the medicine or the spirits of the medicine?

Adam: Oh, okay. So you, you’re talking about astral the psychedelic, realms.

Chris: Right. And the context kind of kind of boils down to a degree of hospitality.

If we arrive in a place and we have no invitation, if we have no understanding of the language that the people speak, if we bring no gifts with us, if we just walk in expecting to be fed. If this is sometimes a part of what psychedelic tourism is like, do you think there’s a possibility that we also have some adverse effect on the psychedelic realm when we go there in the same way, or in similar ways?

Adam: Huh. Well, I mean, this is really a conversation for maybe a post-rave state when we’re both on mushrooms and smoking a joint. I think speculating about psychedelic realms is very tricky. I think there’s so many assumptions about what those spaces are, who we are interacting with. This is, maybe again, where epistemic humidity comes into it. I think, my own ideas about what this means have changed quite radically and keep changing all the time, you know, from being a true believer about this space of objectivity when I’m interacting with real, essential beings or ontologically real in front of me all the time, that there’s a knowable dimension of relationships that I can cultivate by coming back to these places and meeting these real people as if they were my family.

You know, I’ve “dieted” quite a lot . I mean, “dieting,” if anybody hasn’t heard about this concept, it’s kind of like the way that many Amazonian cultures, including the Shipibo, can forge these relationships with plant helpers and plant spirits and different medicines through a dieting process that basically entails isolation, social isolation and fasting, and a lot of meditation and creating kind of the right container for focusing on crafting a relationship with one particular plant or one particular plant spirit. And I mean, I’ve done that multiple over the course of weeks or months, sometimes. I’ve done a few diets and every time that I do it, I’m kind of very much drawn into this world of relationships of like objective, ontological beings that I’m in contact with and forging relationships with and then that kind of fades away, and I fall back into like, “well, maybe there’s an ontological primacy to my imagination, as opposed to an actual realm that is objectively real out there.”

I mean, these are very tricky things and I think this is where epistemic humility comes in. maybe it’s a cop out, maybe just my lack of courage to take a stand, but I mean, I feel comfortable saying like, “you know, I don’t fucking know what’s going on in those spaces.” Every time that I visit, I’m blown away. Every time that I visit, I end up in the state of awe and reverence. But at the same time, I’m not gonna tell you, like, “this is real,” “this is not,” “this is what is,” “this is what it’s not.” I think we’re very, very, very far from being able to even approximate any sort of certainty about these states, about these places.

For me, it may be that a lot of that is projection from my imagination. It may be that a lot of that is an actual space that I enter while I’m in contact with actual intelligences that are external to me. I think, a lot of people will resonate with both of those things.

Maybe people have other ideas that are there. For me, I don’t feel that I need to convince myself that there’s anything particularly that any belief system is better. I think I’m very comfortable just visiting the spaces without any sort of certainty and dwelling with it that uncertainty is fine.

But you know, to your question, I’ve had experiences, when I dieted of chiricsanango, I thought it was killing me. In the last ceremony that I did. Chiricsanango is a plant, one of the master plants in the Shipibo pharmacopeia, considered like a very strong, stern but loving teacher in many ways. I mean, you’re not supposed to diet chiricsanango early on your path. It’s something that you do after many years, many diets, many incarnations of all sorts of different practices. I went into chiricsanango fairly early and during my last day with... I mean, I dieted it for one month. And during the last ceremony, like the closing ceremony of my diet with that plant, I just had an experience where I felt like something just strangling me, and a very stern entity was speaking to me and basically telling me, “you don’t have the respect that you need for this experience.” Like, basically, “you didn’t go into this wholeheartedly and you’re gonna pay the price for it.” And then, it just kind of started strangling me. I felt all of my body breaking and compressing. I felt different parts of my body starting to shut down one by one, until it basically just came out to my lungs and my heart. And then just having this voice of like, “there’s nothing left for you to do. You fucked up. Just let go.” You know?

And I did. I thought, “well, you know, I fucked up. I went into this experience unprepared, and now I’m paying the price and it’s gonna kill me, and I’m gonna die.” And I did die. And then of course, I reemerged from the other side with this massive amount of reverence and a newfound respect for this path.

I mean, I tell this story just kind of a personal anecdote of going into something that I wasn’t really prepared for, or that at least I thought I wasn’t prepared for. What happened there, I don’t know. I mean, it was a dead and river experience for sure.

Was the spirit lecturing me? Was the spirit kicking my ass about being unserious? A projection of my own fears? A projection of my own unconscious? An actual encounter with a chiricsanango entity that was just...? I don’t know. Do I have to know?

It probably would be good for me to take a stand. As far as I can tell both of those possibilities are true, or possible and maybe there’s many other possibilities.

When I was younger, I had a friend. Well, I mean, I had many friends. We also did a lot of reckless stuff with plants and so on. And I remember one time, we smoked salvia. You know, back in the day you could buy that in the gas station in different countries. I don’t know what the status is today. I think you can’t anymore, because it’s a fucking scary thing to do. And I remember one of my friends just taking a big hit of salvia from a bong, and then going into this state and then just coming out of it with the most terrified expression that I ever seen in a living person, and the only thing that he said is, he said, “the spirit of salvia appeared to me and she told me, if you do this ever again, I will kill you.”

Chris: Wow. Wow.

Adam: Yeah. And we were like, “you know what, maybe, maybe we don’t want to mess with this thing again.” Like all of us. So, I don’t know. You know? I mean, again, was that really the spirit of salvia just warning him? Was it his own projection of fear? I don’t know.

My honest per my honest appraisal of these things: anyone who professes any degree of certainty about ontological and epistemic matters related to the psychedelic experience is either self-deluded or a charlatan. My personal opinion.

Chris: Anyone from modern culture or the global north?

Adam: Yeah. I’m going to exclude indigenous people, because their worldviews match those experiences to some extent, and I think when you grow up with that sort of programming or cultural programming, with that sort of ontological priming, I mean it’s impossible for me to say it’s impossible.

I very much respect the animistic perspective. I think the world as a whole would be much better off if all of us were animistic to some extent, at the very least, if we had that understanding of reciprocity, of personhood, of respect as equals.

Who was it that said this? I think David Thomas Berry I think, framed it as an understanding of the world as a community of subjects to be in relationship with, as opposed to a collection of objects to extract from personal benefit, right?

if all of us approach the world in that way, as a community of subjects, as a thou. I mean Martin Buber gave a distinction, right? Like “I and Thou” versus “I and It.” The world, not as an “it,” but as a “thou,” as a “you,” as an equal.

I mean, I think we would be much better off everybody. So I have a lot of respect and appreciation for animism. I think animism is a much better framework for relating to the world than whatever it’s that we have.

Chris: Hmm, amazing. Yeah. Thank you for being willing to share those rather trepidatious stories with us. But from time to time you’ll hear people in the psychedelic subculture use these experiences or similar experiences or the quote unquote “bad trip” as a kind of metaphor for the psychedelic subculture at large that, you know, whether it was in the centuries that followed eradication of indigenous wisdom on the European continent and elsewhere as a result of the inquisitions or the witch hunts, or whether it was after the madness and destruction of World War II, there seems to be an unwillingness to approach these plants and certainly even other cultures, with a degree of reverence and awe that would properly sit on the throne, I think of the kind of worlds that we’d otherwise wish to live in.

Adam: Yeah, totally.

Chris: And, you know, you answered my final question, which was, what kind of steps do you think we take going forward in terms of the psychedelic subculture and, and this is something you’ve done for the last almost hour and a half, is proceed with a degree of epistemic humility practicing it, speaking it.

And, you know, I’m deeply, deeply grateful for that. I would just say, people are gonna seek these things out and there’s a degree of respect and courage even that’s inherent in the willingness to do so still, in a time of War on D rugs.

Adam: I mean, you know, again, like honestly, these things are going away.

I mean, retreat centres are gonna keep popping up. People are gonna keep going to the Amazon. They’re gonna keep going to the Mazatec mountains, they’re gonna keep going to the Zapotec mountains in Oaxaca. They’re gonna keep going to Costa Rica. I mean, a lot of things gonna continue happening and probably going to increase more and more as entropy increases. As our social and cultural frameworks continue to collapse to some extent, I think people are gonna keep seeking for answers and seeking for all sorts of different ideas and inspirations.

I think it is very important that we do pay more attention to story, narrative and discourse. I think it’s very important that we get a lot more critical voices involved in these things, not only highlighting risks of iatrogenic damage and so on and so forth, but also, I think there’s many dogmas that have been at the heart of healing culture for a very long time, very individualistic approaches to what it means to be happy and healthy, discourses on root cause and so on.

I mean, one thing that I do, I teach a lot of classes and different training courses and all sorts of different things that they invite me to say. One of the things that I oftentimes say to students is, “If there’s one thing that I would like to transmit or the one thing that I would like not to see is any of you becoming cult leaders. I don’t want any of you to be cult leaders. I don’t want in the future to see that you’re own running a cult with your own preconceived ideas and a high degree of certainty about ideas that you have no business being certain about.”

And, you know, conspirituality as a whole is very prone to cultish dynamics. Psychedelics are very inducive towards cult dynamics if they’re not properly integrated and there’s not a proper process of apprenticeship, apprenticeship that requires a very high degree of epistemic humility, but also that willingness to constantly revisit our own assumptions, our own stories, own belief systems, and so on and so forth. Then, not only that, but constantly revisioning and acknowledging how our own stories, our own beliefs, our own frameworks affect the people that we work with.

So, you know, first of all, when we talk about the iatrogenic damage in the context of psychedelics, healing culture, conspirituality, don’t become a cult leader, most importantly. Secondly, always kind of like be aware and self-critical and self-aware of all the different stories that you carry with you. How do we project that when we work with people? How do we project that in our own experiences? For practitioners, for medicine providers, for retreat centre operators, like a constant, constant, constant, process of self-awareness about those things.

What I would like to see personally, I would like to see a much less emphasis on individual healing and transformation, and much more emphasis on how can we actually approach structure? How can we actually approach structural issues? How can we actually use psychedelics, not necessarily as you know, tools of endless self-absorption and self-contemplation, but actually as catalysts for catalysts for change, like real change that has material impact on a lot of people, bringing back to the forefront social determinants of health, bringing back to the forefront public health, maybe in a revisited way that doesn’t create as much animosity and antagonism with people, but at the same time just that understanding that actually being happy and healthy is a collective project, and by the end of the day, nobody can be fully happy and healthy unless we’re all happy and healthy to some extent.

Those are the most important things. You know, I mean if the Oracle Delphi have scribed on the lintel “know thyself,” I think that’s very important. Know thyself. But I think in modern times, “know thyself” is not enough. I think modern times it’s know thyself, but also know how embedded you are in all different layers of being, and how you’re impacted by them and impact them in turn. And how can we always keep one eye looking inwards, doing our work, doing what it is that we need to be better people, but at the same time, one eye outward. We’re not ignoring structure, we’re not ignoring structural issues. We’re not ignoring social, cultural, political, environmental things that affect all of us and how we can actually have that impact.

I think that would be what I would like to see.

Chris: Hmm. Well count me in. Count me in, brother. Thank you, Adam. On behalf of those listening, I’d like to offer you a deep bow for your work and your contemplations and your critiques and for your time with me today. It’s been a great honour to be able to speak with you, to be able to listen to, what I can see is, someone who is clearly, walking the walk, and talking the talk of epistemic humility.

And, so I’d like to ask finally for our listeners, how might they find out more about your work, whether on social media, Substack or elsewhere?

Adam: Yeah, I mean I think the starting point for most people would be the Healing From Healing Instagram, which nowadays... it changed a lot throughout the last three or four years.

I mean, now it’s really more focused on humour than critique, even though it’s still very critical and skeptical about many of the things. But for a more nuance and a little bit more in depth take on the things that I like to showcase in the Instagram page, then definitely the Substack also called “Healing From Healing.”

And you can follow me both on Instagram and the Substack and the thesis I think is gonna be available soonish, so you can just Google my name and it’s probably gonna pop up. Yeah, so Instagram page Healing From Healing. Like, follow, comment. And then, the Substack really is the project that I’m more interested in now. I haven’t really written anything new in a couple of months, because I was focused on finishing the doctoral dissertation, but I think that’s going to become the platform where mostly I’m going to put up my writings in the future.

Chris: Hmm. Fantastic. Yeah. I look forward to reading your dissertation, Adam.

And hopefully by the time the episode is up on the internet, that’ll be available and I’ll be putting it in the homework section along with the links to your Instagram and Substack.

So once again, Adam, thank you so much deeply for your time today.

Adam: My pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

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On this episode, we dive into the podcast pillar of myth and mythos. How do old myths such as the Odyssey or the Bible inform how we move even if we’ve never read them? To what extent can we understand how myth and all that roots it arise to incline us toward certain ways of travelling? If we can readjust our sight in order to recognize the mythic ground of being we walk upon, could we then walk differently, organizing other ways of travel that serve, rather than starve the world?

Transcript

Welcome friends to Season Zero of the End of Tourism podcast. In these mini-episodes, you’ll hear short transmissions speaking to the principles of the pod. We’ll introduce you, our listeners to the themes and questions that will be woven into our conversations, a kind of primer on our politics. This episode is entitled “Myths and Mythos”

Travel has long held a central place in the mythic imagination of countless cultures. From pilgrimage to conquest, exploration to exile, travel to migration, the open road to the great beyond, such themes have captivated local understandings of home, away, the strange and the stranger, hospitality and danger. From Gilgamesh to the Odyssey, from the Crusades to Manifest Destiny, the myths and mythos that define our cultures’ travelling ways tend to define us, whether we’re aware of them or not.

Myth, to me, tends toward the incarnation in a more solid-state, storytelling kind of corpus. Myth is, to a large degree, story, that arises out of the mythos of a people. Mythos is an ancient Greek word that, according to philosopher Raimon Panikkar, means “the things we believe in without believing that we believe in them.” Mythos is the undercurrent and undertow of culture. It is the unseen understory of who we are as cultural people, waters that are often so transparent so as to be invisible.

According to Panikkar, every attempt to make our mythos tangible changes our mythos. When expressed through song, story, music, dance, art, and gastronomy – the main foundations of culture – mythos becomes myth, or even a myth. Panikkar speaks to mythos’ more well-known sibling logos, another ancient Greek term often mistaken to mean “word.” As in “in the beginning was the word or logos.” But logos is more properly understood as “expression” or more poetically, the incarnation of unknown.

Myths point toward our cultural undercurrents, taking us on often wild rides into the coded language and landscapes wherein all that has given rise to our days rests and resides. Surely there are myths that are magical, fantastic, and speak to strange worlds very different from our own. Fairy tales, folk tales, riddles and creation stories. These are often what we associate with myth, celebrated or sundered as they may be in our time. But there are other myths that people still hold quite dear, as religious as any registered denomination. These are national myths, family myths, political, social, and economic myths, racial, sexual and gender-based myths, that we often call stereotypes or worse.

It is through mythic or what some call mythopoetic lenses that we can begin to form search parties for dreams deferred, descending into the murk of mythos, undertaking underworld journeys in order to acknowledge the watery aspects of our days and especially those of our cultures that for too long have been polluted, principally by our inability to express, enflesh, to put clothes on the invisible men that mythicize and demythicize our times. It is through such mythic lenses that we might become more humble students of the worlds around us, acknowledging our myths, some that no longer serve us and others that have long been waiting to be told, sung, stretched and served.

One of the themes of the podcast is Myth and Mythos. By digging in to the mythic depths and footprints of our millennial movements, we can begin to braille and read, remember and refine, and finally redefine the myths that move us, whether via tourism, migration or other forms of travel. In so doing, we might filter the bullshit from our own mythic watersheds and our own mythic understandings. We might come to see clearly where our prejudices and biases come from, both as persons and cultures. In that way we might begin to be able to imagine, which is to say channel new stories of travel, stories of pilgrimage towards worlds whereby our footprints are recognized by strangers, perhaps descendants as people worthy of an invitation. Welcome to the end of tourism.

A month ago, a good grip on my bicycle turned into no grip at all. As my back wheel flew up off the pavement, I followed suit in what I can only remember as one of those super-slow-mo moments that you see in the movies. As I lay writhing in the middle of a major intersection here in Oaxaca, a motorcyclist stopped to help me up and over to the curb. I couldn’t feel my arm and my entire right side throbbed like the searing afternoon sun. As I walked my wrecked bike and body home, all I could do was pray and give thanks that I was still alive, that I didn’t have any broken bones or a concussion.

This last year looked a lot like that: praise, provoked by the memory of all the little deaths that have led me to today, and humble reckoning for all the near misses. In more quotidian terms, it started off as a long, casual yet careful encounter with unemployment and metamorphosed into an ever-deepening scope of apprenticeship with land, labour, and legacy.

I’ve peppered this post with what I’ve been graced by this year, alongside a smattering of best books, combined with what’s to come in the coming months, including a return of the pod and a focus on original essays - largely psychedelics and tourism. Here we go. (Oh, and I feel compelled mention that I drove through a rainbow in the summer. Not under it or beside it, but through the bow herself!)

The Land

As some of you know, I’ve been involved (alongside some dear friends and incredible human beings) in a long-term project to court and conjure water and soil regeneration on a beautiful piece of land here in southern Mexico. Following a number of medical emergencies, this little team launched a GoFundMe campaign a few months ago to help us meet the financial burden of purchasing the land, which we are ever so close to know. As we come to the end of the year, if there are any among you or your people who might feel called to contribute, you can do so below. We are also looking for those who might be willing to contribute their expertise, experience, time and love to this project. If that’s you or someone you know, please let us know.

https://www.gofundme.com/manage/rio-copalita-nos-llama/donations

The Pod

2025 saw the release of The End of Tourism’s second Spanish-language season. In those episodes, we discussed the ecological consequences of modern tourism in Latin America with Cesar Pineda; sex and drug tourism in Medellin, Colombia with Proyecto NN’s Sofia and Carlos Montoya; modern pilgrimage in Esquipuilas, Guatemala with Anny Puac and Jairo Lemus; the rancorous failure of rigid radicalism with Alf Bojorquez in Mexico; psychedelic tourism and indigenous wisdom in the Amazon with Claude Guislain; the possibilities of post-capitalist tourism with Alba Sud’s Ernest Cañada; media ecology with Carlos Scolari in Spain, and finally the right to not migrate with Aldo Gonzalez and Gloria Lopez in Oaxaca.

It seems to me that 2026 will see the beginning of the End of Tourism (although, perhaps not the kind we might be hoping for). The pod has long been a labour of love, and while necessary in so many ways, it’s place in the world has meant other projects and possibilities remained on the backburner. So, this next year will culminate with the final season of the pod, still focusing on the themes of wanderlust and exile, while leaning deeply into the myriad radical hospitality traditions around the world, and how our travels could take on a fundamentally different character. There are some deep musings in the works about what is to come of these many deep dialogues. I would love to release something in the form of a text-based “best of” series. Lots to consider.

For now, here’s the first episode of the new/final season:

The (Other) Work

Speaking of this dear friend and mentor above, it just so happens I got a call sometime in April asking if I’d be willing and able to lend my days to a project whose principle goal is to transcribe, translate, index, and archive much of Stephen’s live audio recordings (the majority of which have never been released to the public before). I replied by saying it would be an honour, and an honour it has been. Much of my textual time-in over the rest of the year was spent in a kind of mythic, cultural, and storytelling bootcamp, tending to the creation and deepening of the Orphan Wisdom Scriptorium. Bookmark the page, and when you can, please head over and take a look at the incredible project that Stephen’s wife and colleagues have put together in his name and in the name of all that he’s given himself over to.

I did get a number of essays published this past year. The first was by Modern Farmer, who recognized the need to set some of the record straight as far as “ceremonial-grade” cacao is concerned.

The second was released by the independent Spanish tourism research org Alba Sud and featured my first Spanish-language essay. A big thanks to the editorial team there for their assistance.

It was a delight to once again collaborate with Gods & Radicals’ online journal A Beautiful Resistance on a piece about music, listening and resonance in our time.

And finally, it was a real honour to be listed among esteemed authors in Kosmos Journal, a publication I’ve long since respected and read.

The Cultural Communion List - 2024 Edition

The Books (Mine and Theirs)

Much of my reading list this year revolved around psychedelics. I finally finished a book-length manuscript on the dark side of psychedelic culture, which is currently being pitched to anglophone publishers (if you have any of note, please let me know in the comments below or via private message). Here is a quote from that carefully folded forest:

The provocations proposed in the following chapters were written by an ex-addict and ex-spiritual tourist who received a second chance, in part, through psychedelic medicines. Through the lenses of history, culture, myth and personal experience, this book explores the underbelly of our cultural hallucinations, stripping away the layers of glory in the march toward healing at all costs. It was written for those who long to conjure worlds where such medicines, health, healing and wholeness are honoured, rather than colonized and commodified. These pages illuminate the dark side of the counterculture, leading us out of the underworld with the necessary seeds to plant sanctuary and solidarity in our neighbourhoods, repairing the damage done in our names.

While working on both the Scriptorium and my own writing, I managed to sneak in some time to read a number of amazing books, the following that come highly recommended:

• Byung-Chul Han - The Disappearance of Rituals

  “Magic and enchantment – the true sources of art – disappear from culture, to be replaced by discourse. The enchanting exterior is replaced with the true interior, the magic signifier with the profane signified. The place of compelling, captivating forms is taken by discursive content. Magic gives way to transparency.”

• Graham Harvey - Animism: Respecting the Living World

• Stephen Jenkinson - Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work

  “Hospitality of this radical kind is culture in its finest moments. Matrimony, I’ll try to show you, is radical hospitality’s Godmother. And hospitality is matrimony’s alchemy at work.”

• Art Spiegelman - The Complete Maus

• Michael Taussig - Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing

  “It is a simple-sounding social function. The magic invested in the Indian by the civilized assuages the envy that comes from inequality among the whites. The shaman's daughter puts it in a slightly different way, that her father tries to make enemies into friends.”

Music

Given all of the unexpected work this year, I didn’t listen to much music. However, I did get to see TV on the Radio play live this past summer (a band I had always wanted to experience, but never did). And finally, there were some gems that made it into my aural arena this year. Here they are:

• Jairus Sharif - Basis Of Unity

• Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise

• Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople

For now, that’s what’s up. New episodes of the pod have been recorded and are flowing through post-production. Original essays will be coming throughout the new year, all starting in January. All-willing, there will be news of at least one book making its way into the world.

Finally, if you’re reading this, I imagine it’s because we share something that’s not so easily evident (besides screens and email). I wouldn’t pretend to know what it is. For now, all I know is that I’m deeply grateful to still be alive, to imagine that this little work might be worthy of being in the world. Thank you for reading, for listening. To you and the ones you hold dear, living and dead, many blessings upon your path in these dark days.

Sincerely,

Chris Christou

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On this episode, my guest is Stephen Jenkinson, culture activist and ceremonialist advocating a handmade life and eloquence. He is an author, a storyteller, a musician, sculptor and off-grid organic farmer. Stephen is the founder/ principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. Also a sought-after workshop leader, articulating matters of the heart, human suffering, confusions through ceremony.

He is the author of several influential books, including Money and the Soul’s Desires, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), A Generation’s Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), and Reckoning (2022), co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson. His most recent book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work, was released in August 2025. He is also involved in the musical project Nights of Grief & Mystery with singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins, which has toured across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

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Show Notes:

• The Bone House of the Orphan Wisdom Enterprise

• Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work

• The Wedding Industry

• Romantic Sameness and Psychic Withering

• The Two Tribes

• The Roots of Hospitality

• The Pompous Ending of Hospitality

• Debt, And the Estrangement of the Stranger

• More Than Human Hospitality

• The Alchemy of the Orphan Wisdom School

Homework:

Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work | Purchase

Orphan Wisdom

The Scriptorium: Echoes of an Orphan Wisdom

Transcription:

Chris: This is an interview that I've been wondering about for a long time in part, because Stephen was the first person I ever interviewed for the End of Tourism Podcast. In Oaxaca, Mexico, where I live Stephen and Natalie were visiting and were incredibly, incredibly generous. Stephen, in offering his voice as a way to raise up my questions to a level that deserve to be contended with.

We spoke for about two and a half hours, if I remember correctly. And there was a lot in what you spoke to towards the second half of the interview that I think we're the first kind of iterations of the Matrimony book.

We spoke a little bit about the stranger and trade, and it was kind of startling as someone trying to offer their first interview and suddenly hearing something [00:01:00] that I'd never heard before from Stephen. Right. And so it was quite impressive. And I'm grateful to be here now with y'all and to get to wonder about this a little more deeply with you Stephen.

Stephen: Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Chris: This is also a special occasion for the fact that for the first time in the history of the podcast, we have a live audience among us today. Strange doings. Some scholars and some stewards and caretakers of the Orphan Wisdom enterprise. So, thank you all as well for coming tonight and being willing to listen and put your ears to this.

And so to begin, Stephen, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to let those who will be listening to this recording later on know where we're gathered in tonight?

Stephen: Well, we're in... what's the name of this township?

Nathalie: North Algona.

Stephen: North Algona township on the borders, an eastern gate [00:02:00] of Algonquin Park. Strangely named place, given the fact that they were the first casualties of the park being established. And we're in a place that never should have been cleared - my farm. It should never have been cleared of the talls, the white pines that were here, but the admiralty was in need back in the day. And that's what happened there. And we're in a place that the Irish immigrants who came here after the famine called "Tramore," which more or less means "good-frigging luck farming."

It doesn't technically mean that, but it absolutely means that. It actually means "sandy shore," which about covers the joint, and it's the only thing that covers the joint - would be sand. You have to import clay. Now, that's a joke in many farming places in the world, but if we wanted any clay, we'd have to bring it in and pay for the privilege.

And the farm has been in [00:03:00] my, my responsibility for about 25 years now, pretty close to that. And the sheep, or those of them left because the coyotes have been around for the first time in their casualty-making way... They're just out here, I'm facing the field where they're milling around.

And it's the very, very beginnings of the long cooling into cold, into frigid, which is our lot in this northern part of the hemisphere, even though it's still August, but it's clear that things have changed. And then, we're on a top of a little hill, which was the first place that I think that we may have convened a School here.

It was a tipi, which is really worked very well considering we didn't live here, so we could put it up and put it down in the same weekend. [00:04:00] And right on this very hill, we were, in the early days, and we've replaced that tipi with another kind of wooden structure. A lot more wood in this one.

This has been known as "The Teaching Hall" or "The Great Hall," or "The Hall" or "The Money Pit, as it was known for a little while, but it actually worked out pretty well. And it was I mean, people who've come from Scandinavia are knocked out by the kind of old-style, old-world visitation that the place seems to be to them.

And I'd never really been before I had the idea what this should look like, but I just went from a kind of ancestral memory that was knocking about, which is a little different than your preferences, you know. You have different kinds of preferences you pass through stylistically through your life, but the ones that lay claim to you are the ones that are not interested in your [00:05:00] preferences. They're interested in your kind of inheritance and your lineage.

So I'm more or less from the northern climes of Northern Europe, and so the place looks that way and I was lucky enough to still have my carving tools from the old days. And I've carved most of the beams and most of the posts that keep the place upright with a sort of sequence of beasts and dragons and ne'er-do-wells and very, very few humans, I think two, maybe, in the whole joint. Something like that. And then, mostly what festoons a deeply running human life is depicted here. And there's all kinds of stories, which I've never really sat down and spoken to at great length with anybody, but they're here.

And I do deeply favour the idea that one day [00:06:00] somebody will stumble into this field, and I suppose, upon the remains of where we sit right now, and wonder "What the hell got into somebody?" That they made this mountain of timber moldering away, and that for a while what must have been, and when they finally find the footprint of, you know, its original dimensions and sort of do the wild math and what must have been going on in this sandy field, a million miles in away from its home.

And wherever I am at that time, I'll be wondering the same thing.

Audience: Hmm.

Stephen: "What went on there?" Even though I was here for almost all of it. So, this was the home of the Orphan Wisdom School for more than a decade and still is the home of the Orphan Wisdom School, even if it's in advance, or in retreat [00:07:00] or in its doldrums. We'll see.

And many things besides, we've had weddings in here, which is wherein I discovered "old-order matrimony," as I've come to call it, was having its way with me in the same way that the design of the place did. And it's also a grainery for our storage of corn. Keep it up off the ground and out of the hands of the varmints, you know, for a while.

Well that's the beginning.

Chris: Hmm. Hmm. Thank you Stephen.

Stephen: Mm-hmm.

Chris: You were mentioning the tipi where the school began. I remember sleeping in there the first time I came here. Never would I have thought for a million years that I'd be sitting here with you.

Stephen: It's wild, isn't it?

Chris: 12 years later.

?: Yeah.

Chris: And so next, I'd like to do my best in part over the course of the next perhaps hour or two to congratulate you on the release of [00:08:00] your new book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work.

Stephen: Thank you.

Chris: Mm-hmm. I'm grateful to say like many others that I've received a copy and have lent my eyes to your good words, and what is really an incredible achievement.

For those who haven't had a chance to lay their eyes on it just yet, I'm wondering if you could let us in on why you wrote a book about matrimony in our time and where it stands a week out from its publication.

Stephen: Well, maybe the answer begins with the question, "why did you write a book, having done so before?" And you would imagine that the stuff that goes into writing a book, you'd think that the author has hopes for some kind of redemptive, redeeming outcome, some kind of superlative that drops out the back end of the enterprise.

And you know, this is [00:09:00] the seventh I've written. And I would have to say that's not really how it goes, and you don't really know what becomes of what you've written, even with the kind people who do respond, and the odd non-monetary prize that comes your way, which Die Wise gamed that.

But I suppose, I wrote, at all partly to see what was there. You know, I had done these weddings and I was a little bit loathe to let go, to let the weddings turn entirely into something historical, something that was past, even though I probably sensed pretty clearly that I was at the end of my willingness to subject myself to the slings and arrows that came along with the enterprise, but it's a sweet sorrow, or there's a [00:10:00] wonder that goes along with the tangle of it all. And so, I wrote to find out what happened, as strange as that might sound to you. You can say, "well, you were there, you kind of knew what happened." But yes, I was witness to the thing, but there's the act of writing a book gives you the opportunity to sort of wonder in three-dimensions and well, the other thing I should say is I was naive and figured that the outfit who had published the, more or less prior two books to this one, would kind of inevitably be drawn to the fact that same guy. Basically, same voice, new articulation. And I was dumbfounded to find out that they weren't. And so, it's sort of smarted, you know?

And I think what I did was I just set the whole [00:11:00] enterprise aside, partly to contend with the the depths of the disappointment in that regard, and also not wanting to get into the terrible fray of having to parse or paraphrase the book in some kind of elevator pitch-style to see if anybody else wanted to look at it. You know, such as my touchy sense of nobility sometimes, you know, that I just rather not be involved in the snarl of the marketplace any longer.

So, I withdrew and I just set it aside but it wasn't that content to be set, set aside. And you know, to the book's credit, it bothered me every once in a while. It wasn't a book at the point where I was actually trying to engineer it, you know, and, and give it some kind of structure. I had piles of paper on the floor representing the allegation of chapters, trying to figure out what the relationship was [00:12:00] between any of these things.

What conceivably should come before what. What the names of any of these things might be. Did they have an identity? Was I just imposing it? And all of that stuff I was going through at the same time as I was contending with a kind of reversal in fortune, personally. And so in part, it was a bit of a life raft to give me something to work on that I wouldn't have to research or dig around in the backyard for it and give me some sort of self-administered occupation for a while.

Finally, I think there's a parallel with the Die Wise book, in that when it came to Die Wise, I came up with what I came up with largely because, in their absolute darkest, most unpromising hours, an awful lot of dying people, all of whom are dead now, [00:13:00] let me in on some sort of breach in the, the house of their lives.

And I did feel that I had some obligation to them long-term, and that part of that obligation turned into writing Die Wise and touring and talking about that stuff for years and years, and making a real fuss as if I'd met them all, as if what happened is really true. Not just factually accurate, but deeply, abidingly, mandatorily true.

So, although it may be the situation doesn't sound as extreme, but the truth is, when a number of younger - than me - people came to me and asked me to do their weddings, I, over the kind of medium-term thereafter, felt a not dissimilar obligation that the events that ensued from all of that not [00:14:00] be entrusted entirely to those relatively few people who attended. You know, you can call them "an audience," although I hope I changed that. Or you could call them "witnesses," which I hope I made them that.

And see to it that there could be, not the authorized or official version of what happened, but to the view from here, so to speak, which is, as I sit where I am in the hall right now, I can look at the spot where I conducted much of this when I wasn't sacheting up and down the middle aisle where the trestle tables now are.

And I wanted to give a kind of concerted voice to that enterprise. And I say "concerted voice" to give you a feel for the fact that I don't think this is a really an artifact. It's not a record. It's a exhortation that employs the things that happened to suggest that even though it is the way it is [00:15:00] ritually, impoverished as it is in our time and place, it has been otherwise within recoverable time and history. It has.

And if that's true, and it is, then it seems to me at least is true that it could be otherwise again. And so, I made a fuss and I made a case based on that conviction.

There's probably other reasons I can't think of right now. Oh, being not 25 anymore, and not having that many more books in me, the kind of wear and tear on your psyche of imposing order on the ramble, which is your recollection, which has only so many visitations available in it. Right? You can only do that so many times, I think. And I'm not a born writing person, you know, I come to it maniacally when I [00:16:00] do, and then when it's done, I don't linger over it so much.

So then, when it's time to talk about it, I actually have to have a look, because the act of writing it is not the act of reading it. The act of writing is a huge delivery and deliverance at the same time. It's a huge gestation. And you can't do that to yourself, you know, over and over again, but you can take some chances, and look the thing in the eye. So, and I think some people who are there, they're kind of well-intended amongst them, will recognize themselves in the details of the book, beyond "this is what happened and so on." You know, they'll recognize themselves in the advocacy that's there, and the exhortations that are there, and the [00:17:00] case-making that I made and, and probably the praying because there's a good degree of prayerfulness in there, too.

That's why.

Chris: Thank you. bless this new one in the world. And what's the sense for you?

Stephen: Oh, yes.

Chris: It being a one-week old newborn. How's that landing in your days?

Stephen: Well, it's still damp, you know. It's still squeaky, squeaky and damp. It's walking around like a newborn primate, you know, kind of swaying in the breeze and listening to port or to starboard according to whatever's going on.

I don't know that it's so very self-conscious in the best sense of that term, yet. Even though I recorded the audio version, I don't think [00:18:00] it's my voice is found every nook and cranny at this point, yet. So, it's kind of new. It's not "news," but it is new to me, you know, and it's very early in terms of anybody responding to it.

I mean, nobody around me has really taken me aside and say, "look, now I want to tell you about this book you wrote." It hasn't happened, and we'll see if it does, but I've done a few events on the other side of the ocean and hear so far, very few, maybe handful of interviews. And those are wonderful opportunities to hear something of what you came up with mismanaged by others, you know, misapprehend, you could say by others.

No problem. I mean, it's absolutely no problem. And if you don't want that to happen, don't talk, don't write anything down. So, I don't mind a bit, you know, and the chances are very good that it'll turn into things I didn't have in mind [00:19:00] as people take it up, and regard their own weddings and marriages and plans and schemes and fears and, you know, family mishigas and all the rest of it through this particular lens, you know. They may pick up a pen or a computer (it's an odd expression, "pick up a computer"), and be in touch with me and let me know. "Yeah, that was, we tried it" or whatever they're going to do, because, I mean, maybe Die Wise provided a bit of an inkling of how one might be able to proceed otherwise in their dying time or in their families or their loved ones dying time.

This is the book that most readily lends itself to people translating into something they could actually do, without a huge kind of psychic revolution or revolt stirring in them, at least not initially. This is as close as I come, probably, to writing a sequence of things [00:20:00] that could be considered "add-ons" to what people are already thinking about, that I don't force everybody else outta the house in order to make room for the ideas that are in the book. That may happen, anyway, but it wasn't really the intent. The intent was to say, you know, we are in those days when we're insanely preoccupied with the notion of a special event. We are on the receiving end of a considerable number of shards showing up without any notion really about what these shards remember or are memories of. And that's the principle contention I think that runs down the spine of the book, is that when we undertake matrimony, however indelicately, however by rote, you know, however mindlessly we may do it, [00:21:00] inadvertently, we call upon those shards nonetheless.

And they're pretty unspectacular if you don't think about them very deeply, like the rice or confetti, like the aisle, like the procession up the aisle, like the giving away of someone, like the seating arrangement, like the spectacle seating arrangement rather than the ritual seating arrangement.

And I mean, there's a fistful of them. And they're around and scholars aside maybe, nobody knows why they do them. Everybody just knows, "this is what a wedding is," but nobody knows why. And because nobody knows why, nobody really seems to know what a wedding is for, although they do proceed like they would know a wedding if they saw one. So, I make this a question to be really wondered about, and the shards are a way in. They're the kind of [00:22:00] breadcrumb trail through the forest. They're the little bits of broken something, which if you begin to handle just three or four of them, and kind of fit them together, and find something of the original shape and inflection of the original vessel, kind of enunciates, begins to murmur in your hands, and from it you can begin to infer some three-dimensionality to the original shape. And from the sense of the shape, you get a set sense of contour, and from the sense of contour, you get a sense of scale or size. And from that you get a sense of purpose, or function, or design. And from that you get a sense of some kind of serious magisterial insight into some of the fundament of human being that was manifest in the "old-order matrimony," [00:23:00] as I came to call it.

So, who wouldn't wanna read that book?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Thank you. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Stephen. Yeah. It reminds me, just before coming up here, maybe two weeks ago, I was in attending a wedding. And there was a host or mc, and initially just given what I was hearing over the microphone, it was hard to tell if he was hired or family or friends. And it turned out he was, in fact, a friend of the groom. And throughout the night he proceeded to take up that role as a kind of comedian.

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Chris: This was the idea, I guess. Mm-hmm. And he was buzzing and mumbling and swearing into the microphone, [00:24:00] and then finally minimizing the only remnant of traditional culture that showed up in the wedding. And his thing was, okay, so when can we get to the part where it's boom, boom, boom, right. And shot, shot, shot, whatever.

Stephen: Right.

Chris: There was so much that came up in my memories in part because I worked about a decade in Toronto in the wedding industry.

Mm-hmm. Hospitality industry. Maybe a contradiction in terms, there. And there was one moment that really kind of summed it up. I kept coming back to this reading the book because it was everything that you wrote seemed to not only antithetical to this moment, but also an antidote.

Anyways, it was in North Toronto and the [00:25:00] owner of the venue - it was a kind of movie theatre turned event venue - and there was a couple who was eventually going to get married there. They came in to do their tasting menu to see what they wanted to put on the menu for the dinner, for their wedding.

And the owner was kind of this mafioso type. And he comes in and he sees them and he walks over and he says, "so, you're gonna get married at my wedding factory."

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Chris: In all sincerity.

Stephen: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Right.

Without skipping a beat. Could you imagine?

Stephen: Yeah.

I could. I sure could.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: I mean, don't forget, if these people weren't doing what the people wanted, they'd be outta business.

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Stephen: No, that's the thing. This is aiding and abetting. This is sleeping with the enemy, stylistically-speaking. [00:26:00] The fact that people "settle" (that's the term I would use for it), settle for this, the idea being that this somehow constitutes the most honest and authentic through line available to us is just jaw dropping. When you consider what allegedly this thing is supposed to be for. I mean, maybe we'll get into this, but I'll just leave this as a question for now. What is that moment allegedly doing?

Not, what are the people in it allegedly doing? The moment itself, what is it? How is it different from us sitting here now talking about it? And how is it different from the gory frigging jet-fuelled aftermath of excess. And how's it different from the cursing alleged master of ceremonies? How can you [00:27:00] tell none of those things belong to this thing?

And why do you have such a hard time imagining what does

Audience: Hmm mm

Chris: Well that leads me to my next question.

Stephen: Ah, you're welcome.

Chris: So, I've pulled a number of quotes from the book to read from over the course of the interview. And this one for anyone who's listening is on page 150. And you write Stephen,

"Spiritually-speaking, most of the weddings in our corner of the world are endogamous affairs, inward-looking. What is, to me, most unnerving is that they can be spiritually-incestuous. The withering of psychic difference between people is the program of globalization. It is in the architecture of most things partaking of the internet, and it is in the homogeneity of our matrimony. [00:28:00] It is this very incestuous that matrimony was once crafted and entered into to avoid and subvert. Now, it grinds upon our differences until they are details.

And so, this paragraph reminded me of a time in my youth when I seemed to be meeting couples who very eerily looked like each other. No blood or extended kin relation whatsoever, and yet they had very similar faces. And so as I get older, this kind of face fidelity aside, I continue to notice that people looking for companionship tend to base their search on similitude, on shared interests, customs, experiences, shared anything and everything. This, specifically, in opposition to those on the other side of the aisle or spectrum, to difference or divergence. And so, opposites don't attract anymore. I'm curious what you think this psychic [00:29:00] withering does to an achieve understanding of matrimony.

Stephen: Well, I mean, let's wonder what it does to us, generally, first before we get to matrimony, let's say. It demonizes. Maybe that's too strong, but it certainly reconstitutes difference as some kind of affliction, some kind of not quite good enough, some kind of something that has to be overcome or overwhelmed on the road to, to what? On the road to sameness? So, if that's the goal, then are all of the differences between us, aberrations of some kind, if that's the goal? If that's the goal, are all the [00:30:00] differences between us, not God-given, but humanly misconstrued or worse? Humanly wrought? Do the differences between us conceivably then belong at all? Or is the principle object of the entire endeavor to marry yourself, trying to put up with the vague differences that the other person represents to you?

I mean, I not very jokingly said years ago, that I coined a phrase that went something like "the compromise of infinity, which is other people." What does that mean? "The compromise of infinity, which is other people." Not to mention it's a pretty nice T-shirt. But what I meant by the [00:31:00] phrase is this: when you demonize difference in this fashion or when you go the other direction and lionize sameness, then one of the things that happens is that compromise becomes demonized, too. Compromise, by definition, is something you never should have done, right? Compromise is how much you surrender of yourself in order to get by. That's what all these things become. And before you know it, you're just beaten about the head and shoulders about "codependence" and you know, not being "true to yourself" as if being true to yourself is some kind of magic.

I mean, the notion that "yourself is the best part of you" is just hilarious. I mean, when you think about it, like who's running amuck if yourself is what you're supposed to be? I ask you. Like, who's [00:32:00] doing the harm? Who's going mental if the self is such a good idea? So, of course, I'm maintaining here that I'm not persuaded that there is such a thing.

I think it's a momentary lapse in judgment to have a self and to stick to it. That's the point I'm really making to kind of reify it until it turns ossified and dusty and bizarrely adamant like that estranged relative that lives in the basement of your house. Bizarrely, foreignly adamant, right? Like the house guest who just won't fuck off kind of thing.

Okay, so "to thine own self be true," is it? Well, try being true to somebody else's self for ten minutes. Try that. [00:33:00] That's good at exercise for matrimony - being true to somebody else's self. You'll discover that their selves are not made in heaven, either. Either. I underscore it - either.

I've completely lost track of the question you asked me.

Chris: What are the consequences of the sameness on this anti-cultural sameness, and the program of it for an achieved understanding of matrimony.

Stephen: Thank you. Well, I will fess up right now. I do so in the book. That's a terrible phrase. I swear I'd never say such a thing. "In my book... I say the following," but in this case, it's true. I did say this. I realized during the writing of it that I had made a tremendous tactical error in the convening of the event as I did it over the years, [00:34:00] and this is what it came to.

I was very persuaded at the time of the story that appears in the chapter called "Salt and Indigo" in the book. I was very, very persuaded. I mean, listen, I made up the story (for what it's worth), okay, but I didn't make it up out of nothing. I made it up out of a kind of tribal memory that wouldn't quite let go.

And in it, I was basically saying, here's these two tribes known principally for what they trade in and what they love most emphatically. They turn out to be the same thing. And I describe a circumstance in which they exchange things in a trade scenario, not a commerce scenario. And I'm using the chapter basically to make the case that matrimony's architecture derives in large measure from the sacraments of trade as manifest in that story. [00:35:00] Okay. And this is gonna sound obvious, but the fundamental requirement of the whole conceit that I came up with is that there are two tribes. Well, I thought to myself, "of course, there's always two tribes" at the time. And the two tribe-ness is reflected in when you come to the wedding site, you're typically asked (I hope you're still asked) " Are you family or friend of the groom or friend of the bride?" And you're seated "accordingly," right? That's the nominal, vestigial shard of this old tribal affiliation, that people came from over the rise, basically unknown to each other, to arrive at the kind of no man's land of matrimony, and proceeded accordingly. So, I put these things into motion in this very room and I sat people accordingly facing each other, not facing the alleged front of the room. [00:36:00] And of course, man, nobody knew where to look, because you raised your eyes and shit. There's just humans across from you, just scads of them who you don't freaking know. And there's something about doing that to North Americas that just throws them. So, they're just looking at each other and then looking away, and looking at each other and looking away, and wondering what they're doing here and what it's for. And I'm going back and forth for three hours, orienting them as to what is is coming.

Okay, so what's the miscalculation that I make? The miscalculation I made was assuming that by virtue of the seating arrangement, by virtue of me reminding them of the salt and indigo times, by virtue of the fact that they had a kind of allegiance of some sort or another to the people who are, for the moment, betrothed, that those distinctions and those affiliations together would congeal them, and constitute a [00:37:00] kind of tribal affiliation that they would intuitively be drawn towards as you would be drawn to heat on a cold winter's night.

Only to discover, as I put the thing into motion that I was completely wrong about everything I just told you about. The nature of my error was this, virtually all of those people on one side of the room were fundamentally of the same tribe as the people on the other side of the room, apropos of your question, you see. They were card carrying members of the gray dominant culture of North America. Wow. The bleached, kind of amorphous, kind of rootless, ancestor-free... even regardless of whether their people came over in the last generation from the alleged old country. It doesn't really claim them.[00:38:00]

There were two tribes, but I was wrong about who they were. That was one tribe. Virtually everybody sitting in the room was one tribe.

So, who's the other tribe? Answer is: me and the four or five people who were in on the structural delivery of this endeavour with me. We were the other tribe.

We didn't stand a chance, you see?

And I didn't pick up on that, and I didn't cast it accordingly and employ that, instead. I employed the conceit that I insisted was manifest and mobilized in the thing, instead of the manifest dilemma, which is that everybody who came knew what a wedding was, and me and four or five other people were yet to know if this could be one. That was the tribal difference, if you [00:39:00] will.

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So, it was kind of invisible, wasn't it? Even to me at the time. Or, I say, maybe especially to me at the time. And so, things often went the way they went, which was for however much fascination and willingness to consider that there might have been in the room, there was quite a bit more either flat affect and kind of lack of real fascination, or curiosity, or sometimes downright hostility and pushback. Yeah.

So, all of that comes from the fact that I didn't credit as thoroughly as I should have done, the persistence in Anglo-North America of a kind of generic sameness that turned out to be what most people came here ancestrally to become. "Starting again" is recipe for culture [00:40:00] loss of a catastrophic order. The fantasy of starting again. Right?

And we've talked about that in your podcast, and you and I have talked about it privately, apropos of your own family and everybody's sitting in this room knows what I'm talking about. And when does this show up? Does it show up, oh, when you're walking down the street? Does it show up when you're on the mountaintop? Does it show up in your peak experiences? And the answer is "maybe." It probably shows up most emphatically in those times when you have a feeling that something special is supposed to be so, and all you can get from the "supposed to" is the allegation of specialness.

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Stephen: And then, you look around in the context of matrimony and you see a kind of febral, kind of strained, the famous bridezilla stuff, all of that stuff. [00:41:00] You saw it in the hospitality industry, no doubt. You know, the kind of mania for perfection, as if perfection constitutes culture. Right? With every detail checked off in the checkbox, that's culture. You know, as if everything goes off without a hitch and there's no guffaws. And in fact, anybody could reasonably make the case, "Where do you think culture appears when the script finally goes fucking sideways?" That's when. And when you find out what you're capable of, ceremonially.

And generally speaking, I think most people discovered that their ceremonial illiteracy bordered on the bottomless.

That's when you find out. Hmm.

Chris: Wow.

Stephen: Yeah. And that's why people, you know, in speech time, they reach in there and get that piece of paper, and just look at it. Mm-hmm. They don't even look up, terrified that they're gonna go off script for a minute as [00:42:00] if the Gods of Matrimony are a scripted proposition.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us, that degree of deep reflection and humility that I'm sure comes with it.

Stephen: Mea Culpa, baby. Yeah, I was, I got that one totally wrong. Mm-hmm. And I didn't know it at the time. Meanwhile, like, how much can you transgress and have the consequences of doing so like spill out across the floor like a broken thermometer's mercury and not wise up.

But of course, I was as driven as anybody. I was as driven to see if I could come through with what I promised to do the year before. And keeping your promise can make you into a maniac.

Audience: Hmm hmm.

Chris: But I imagine that, you [00:43:00] know, you wouldn't have been able to see that even years later if you didn't say yes in the first place.

Stephen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I wouldn't have been able to make the errors.

Chris: Right.

Stephen: Right. Yeah. I mean, as errors go, this is not a mortal sin. Right, right. And you could chalk it up to being a legitimate miscalculation. Well, so? All I'm saying is, it turns out I was there too, and it turns out, even though I was allegedly the circus master of the enterprise, I wasn't free and clear of the things we were all contending with, the kind of mortality and sort of cultural ricketiness that were all heirs to. That's how I translated it, as it turns out.

So, PS there was a moment, [00:44:00] which I don't remember which setting it was now, but there was a moment when the "maybe we'll see if she becomes a bride" bride's mother slid up to me during the course of the proceedings, and in a kind of stage whisper more or less hissed me as follows.

"Is this a real wedding?"

I mean, that's not a question. Not in that setting, obviously not. That is an accusation. Right. And a withering one at that. And there was a tremendous amount of throw-down involved.

So, was it? I mean, what we do know is that she did not go to any of the weddings [00:45:00] that she was thinking of at the time, and go to the front of the room where the celebrant is austerely standing there with the book, or the script, or the well-intentioned, or the self-penned vows and never hissed at him or her, "is this a real wedding?"

Never once did she do that. We know that.

Right.

And I think we know why. But she was fairly persuaded she knew what a real wedding was. And all she was really persuaded by was the poverty of the weddings that she'd attended before that one. Well, I was as informed in that respect as she was, wasn't I? I just probably hadn't gone to as many reprobate weddings as she had, so she had more to deal with than I did, even though I was in the position of the line of fire.

And I didn't respond too well to the question, I have to say. At the moment, I was rather combative. But I mean, you try to do [00:46:00] what I tried to do and not have a degree of fierceness to go along with your discernment, you know, just to see if you can drag this carcass across the threshold. Anyway, that happened too.

Chris: Wow. Yeah. Dominant culture of North America.

Stephen: Heard of it.

Chris: Yeah. Well, in Matrimony, there's quite a bit in which you write about hospitality and radical hospitality. And I wanted to move in that direction a little bit, because in terms of these kind of marketplace rituals or ceremonies that you were mentioning you know, it's something that we might wonder, I think, as you have, how did it come to be this [00:47:00] way?

And so I'd like to, if I can once again, quote from matrimony in which you speak to the etymology of hospitality. And so for those interested on page 88,

"the word hospitality comes from hospitaller, meaning 'one who cares for the afflicted, the infirm, the needy.' There's that thread of our misgivings about being on the receiving end of hospitality. Pull on it. For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"

End quote.

Stephen: That's so great. I mean, before you go on with the quote. It's so great to know that the word, unexamined, just kind of leaks upside, doesn't it? Hospitality, I mean, nobody goes "Hospitality, ew." [00:48:00] And then, if you just quietly do the obvious math to yourself, there's so much awkwardness around hospitality.

This awkwardness must have an origin, have a home. There must be some misgiving that goes along with the giving of hospitality, mustn't there be? How else to understand where that kind of ickiness is to be found. Right? And it turns out that the etymology is giving you the beginnings of a way of figuring it out what it is that you're on the receiving end of - a kind of succor that you wish you didn't need, which is why it's the root word for "hospital."

Chris: Hmm hmm. Wow.

Audience: Hmm.

Chris: May I repeat that sentence please? Once more.

"For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, [00:49:00] 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"

And so this last part hits home for me as I imagine it does for many.

And it feels like the orthodoxy of hospitality in our time is one based not only in transaction, but in debt. And if you offer hospitality to me, then I owe you hospitality.

Stephen: Right.

Chris: I'm indebted to you. And we are taught, in our time, that the worst thing to be in is in debt.

Stephen: Right?

Chris: And so people refuse both the desire to give as well as the learning skill of receiving. And this is continuing on page 88 now.

"But there's mystery afoot with this word. In its old Latin form, hospice meant both 'host' and 'guest.'"

Stephen: Amazing. One. Either one, This is absolutely amazing. We're fairly sure that there's a [00:50:00] acres of difference between the giver of hospitality and the receiver that the repertoire is entirely different, that the skew between them is almost insurmountable, that they're not interchangeable in any way. But the history of the word immediately says, "really?" The history of the word, without question, says that "host" and "guest" are virtually the same, sitting in different places, being different people, more or less joined at the hip. I'll say more, but you go ahead with what you were gonna do. Sure.

Chris: "In it's proto Indo-European origins, hospitality and hospice is a compound word: gosh + pot. And it meant something like [00:51:00] 'stranger/guest/host + powerful Lord.'

It is amazing to me that ancestrally, the old word for guest, host, and stranger were all the same word. Potent ceremonial business, this is. In those days, the server and the serve were partners in something mysterious. This could be confusing, but only if you think of guest, host, and stranger as fixed identities.

If you think of them as functions, as verbs, the confusion softens and begins to clear. The word hospice in its ancient root is telling us that each of the people gathered together in hospitality is bound to the others by formal etiquette, yes, but the bond is transacted through a subtle scheme of graces.

Hospitality, it tells us, is a web of longing and belonging that binds people for a time, some hithereto unknown to each other is a clutch of mutually-binding elegances, you could say. In its ancient practice, [00:52:00] hospitality was a covenant. According to that accord, however we were with each other. That was how the Gods would be with us. We learn our hospitality by being on the receiving end of Godly administration. That's what giving thanks for members. We proceed with our kin in imitation of that example and in gratitude for it."

Mm-hmm.

And so today, among "secular" people, with the Gods ignored, this old-time hospitality seems endangered, if not fugitive. I'm curious how you imagine that this rupture arose, the ones that separated and commercialized the radical relationships between hosts and guests, that turned them from verbs to nouns and something like strangers to marketplace functions.[00:53:00]

Stephen: Well, of course this is a huge question you've asked, and I'll see if I can unhuge it a bit.

Chris: Uhhuh.

Stephen: Let's go right to the heart of what happened. Just no preliminaries, just right to it.

So, to underscore again, the beauty of the etymology. I've told you over and over again, the words will not fail you. And this is just a shining example, isn't it? That the fraternization is a matter of ceremonial alacrity that the affiliation between host and guest, which makes them partners in something, that something is the [00:54:00] evocation of a third thing that's neither one of them. It's the thing they've lent themselves to by virtue of submitting to being either a host or a guest. One.

Two. You could say that in circumstances of high culture or highly-functioning culture, one of the principle attributes of that culture is that the fundament of its understanding, is that only with the advent of the stranger in their midst that the best of them comes forward.

Okay, follow that. Yeah.

So, this is a little counterintuitive for those of us who don't come from such places. We imagine that the advent of strangers in the midst of the people I'm describing would be an occasion where people hide their [00:55:00] best stuff away until the stranger disappears, and upon the disappearance of the stranger, the good stuff comes out again.

You know?

So, I'm just remembering just now, there's a moment in the New Testament where Jesus says something about the best wine and he's coming from exactly this page that we're talking about - not the page in the book, but this understanding. He said, you know, "serve your best wine first," unlike the standard, that prevails, right?

So again, what a stranger does in real culture is call upon the cultural treasure of the host's culture, and provides the opportunity for that to come forward, right? By which you can understand... Let's say for simplicity's sake, there's two kinds of hospitality. There's probably all kinds of gradations, [00:56:00] but for the purposes of responding to what you've asked, there's two.

One of them is based on kinship. Okay? So, family meal. So, everybody knows whose place is whose around the table, or it doesn't matter - you sit wherever you want. Or, when we're together, we speak shorthand. That's the shorthand of familiarity and affinity, right?

Everybody knows what everybody's talking about. A lot of things get half-said or less, isn't it? And there's a certain fineness, isn't it? That comes with that kind of affinity. Of course, there is, and I'm not diminishing it at all. I'm just characterizing it as being of a certain frequency or calibre or charge. And the charge is that it trades on familiarity. It requires that. There's that kind of hospitality.

"Oh, sit wherever you want."

Remember this one?[00:57:00]

"We don't stand on ceremony here."

"Oh, you're one of the family now." I just got here. What, what?

But, of course, you can hear in the protestations the understanding, in that circumstance, that formality is an enemy to feeling good in this moment, isn't it? It feels stiff and starched and uncalled for or worse.

It feels imported from elsewhere. It doesn't feel friendly. So, I'm giving you now beginnings of a differentiation between how cultures who really function as cultures understand what it means to be hospitable and what often prevails today, trading is a kind of low-grade warfare conducted against the strangeness of the stranger.

The whole purpose of treating somebody like their family is to mitigate, and finally neutralize their [00:58:00] strangeness, so that for the purposes of the few hours in front of us all, there are no strangers here. Right? Okay.

Then there's another kind, and intuitively you can feel what I'm saying. You've been there, you know exactly what I mean.

There's another kind of circumstance where the etiquette that prevails is almost more emphatic, more tangible to you than the familiar one. That's the one where your mother or your weird aunt or whoever she might be, brings out certain kind of stuff that doesn't come out every day. And maybe you sit in a room that you don't often sit in. And maybe what gets cooked is stuff you haven't seen in a long time. And some part of you might be thinking, "What the hell is all this about?" And the answer is: it's about that guy in the [00:59:00] corner that you don't know.

And your own ancestral culture told acres of stories whose central purpose was to convey to outsiders their understanding of what hospitality was. That is fundamentally what The Iliad and The Odyssey are often returning to and returning to and returning to.

They even had a word for the ending of the formal hospitality that accrued, that arose around the care and treatment of strangers. It was called pomp or pompe, from which we get the word "pompous." And you think about what the word "pompous" means today.

It means "nose in the air," doesn't it? Mm-hmm. It means "thinks really highly of oneself," isn't it? And it means "useless, encumbering, kind of [01:00:00] artificial kind of going through the motions stuff with a kind of aggrandizement for fun." That's what "pompous" means. Well, the people who gave us the word didn't mean that at all. This word was the word they used to describe the particular moment of hospitality when it was time for the stranger to leave.

And when it was mutually acknowledged that the time for hospitality has come to an end, and the final act of hospitality is to accompany the stranger out of the house, out of the compound, out into the street, and provision them accordingly, and wish them well, and as is oftentimes practiced around here, standing in the street and waving them long after they disappear from view.

This is pompous. This is what it actually means. Pretty frigging cool when you get corrected once in a while, isn't it? [01:01:00] Yeah.

So, as I said, to be simplistic about it, there's at least a couple of kinds, and one of them treasures the advent of the stranger, understanding it to be the detonation point for the most elegant part of us to come forward.

Now, those of us who don't come from such a place, we're just bamboozled and Shanghai'ed by the notion of formality, which we kind of eschew. You don't like formality when it comes to celebration, as if these two things are hostile, one to the other. But I'd like you to consider the real possibility that formality is grace under pressure, and that formality is there to give you a repertoire of response that rescues you from the gross limitations of your autobiography.[01:02:00]

Next question. I mean, that's the beginning.

Chris: Absolutely. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Thank you once again, Stephen. So alongside the term or concept of "pompe," in which the the guest or stranger was led out of the house or to the entrance of the village, there was also the consideration around the enforcement of hospitality, which you write about in the book. And you write that

"the enforcement of hospitality runs the palpable risk of violating or undoing the cultural value it is there to advocate for. Forcing people to share their good fortune with the less fortunate stretches, to the point of undoing the generosity of spirit that the culture holds dear. Enforcement of hospitality is a sign of the eclipse of hospitality, typically spawned by insecurity, contracted self-definition, and the darkening of the [01:03:00] stranger at the door.

Instead, such places and times are more likely to encourage the practice of hospitality in subtle generous ways, often by generously treating the ungenerous."

And so there seems to be a need for limits placed on hospitality, in terms of the "pompe," the maximum three days in which a stranger can be given hospitality, and concurrently a need to resist enforcing hospitality. This seems like a kind of high-wire act that hospitable cultures have to balance in order to recognize and realize an honorable way of being with a stranger. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to the possibility of how these limits might be practiced without being enforced. What might that look like in a culture that engages with, with such limits, but without prohibitions?

Stephen: Mm-hmm. That's a very good question. [01:04:00] Well, I think your previous question was what happened? I think, in a nutshell, and I didn't really answer that, so maybe see how I can use this question to answer the one that you asked before: what happened? So, there's no doubt in my mind that something happened that it's kind of demonstrable, if only with the benefit of hindsight.

Audience: Right.

Stephen: Or we can feel our way around the edges of the absence of the goneness of that thing that gives us some feel for the original shape of that thing.

So you could say I'm trafficking in "ideals," here, and after a fashion, maybe, yeah. But the notion of "ideals," when it's used in this slanderous way suggests that "it was never like that."

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Stephen: And I suggest to you it's been like that in a lot of places, and there's a lot of places where it's still like that, although globalization [01:05:00] may be the coup de grâce performed upon this capacity. Okay. But anyway.

Okay. So what happened? Well, you see in the circumstance that I described, apropos of the stranger, the stranger is in on it. The stranger's principle responsibility is to be the vector for this sort of grandiose generosity coming forward, and to experience that in a burdensome and unreciprocated fashion, until you realize that their willingness to do that is their reciprocity. Everybody doesn't get to do everything at once. You can't give and receive at the same time. You know what that's called? "Secret Santa at school," isn't it?

That's where nobody owes nobody nothing at the end. That's what we're all after. I mean, one of your questions, you know, pointed to that, that there's a kind of, [01:06:00] what do you call that, teeter-totter balance between what people did for each other and what they received for each other. Right. And nobody feels slighted in any way, perfect balance, et cetera.

Well, the circumstance here has nothing of the kind going with it. The circumstance we're describing now is one in which the hospitality is clearly unequal in terms of who's eating whose food, for example, in terms of the absolutely frustrated notion of reciprocity, that in fact you undo your end of the hospitality by trying to pay back, or give back, or pay at all, or break even, or not feel the burden of "God, you've been on the take for fricking hours here now." And if you really look in the face of the host, I mean, they're just getting started and you can't, you can't take it anymore.[01:07:00]

So, one of the ways that we contend with this is through habits of speech. So, if somebody comes around with seconds. They say, "would you like a little more?"

And you say, "I'm good. I'm good. I'm good." You see, "I'm good" is code for what? "Fuck off." That's what it's code for. It's a little strong. It's a little strong. What I mean is, when "I'm good" comes to town, it means I don't need you and what you have. Good God, you're not there because you need it you knucklehead. You're there because they need it, because their culture needs an opportunity to remember itself. Right?

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Okay. So what happened? Because you're making it sound like a pretty good thing, really. Like who would say, "I think we've had enough of this hospitality thing, don't you? Let's try, oh, [01:08:00] keeping our shit to ourselves. That sounds like a good alternative. Let's give it a week or two, see how it rolls." Never happened. Nobody decided to do this - this change, I don't think. I think the change happened, and sometime long after people realized that the change had had taken place. And it's very simple. The change, I think, went something like this.

As long as the guest is in on it, there's a shared and mutually-held understanding that doesn't make them the same. It makes them to use the quote from the book "partners," okay, with different tasks to bring this thing to light, to make it so. What does that require? A mutually-held understanding in vivo as it's happening, what it is.

Okay. [01:09:00] So, that the stranger who's not part of the host culture... sorry, let me say this differently.

The culture of the stranger has made the culture of the host available to the stranger no matter how personally adept he or she may be at receiving. Did you follow that?

Audience: A little.

Stephen: Okay. Say it again?

Audience: Yes, please.

Stephen: Okay. The acculturation, the cultured sophistication of the stranger is at work in his or her strangerhood. Okay. He or she's not at home, but their cultural training helps them understand what their obligations are in terms of this arrangement we've been describing here.

Okay, so I think the rupture takes place [01:10:00] when the culturation of one side or the other fails to make the other discernible to the one.

One more time?

When something happens whereby the acculturation of one of the partners makes the identity, the presence, and the valence of the other one untranslatable. Untranslatable.

I could give you an example from what I call " the etiquette of trade," or the... what was the word? Not etiquette. What's the other word?

Chris: The covenant?

Stephen: Okay, " covenant of trade" we'll call it. So, imagine that people are sitting across from each other, two partners in a trade. Okay? [01:11:00] Imagine that they have one thing to sell or move or exchange and somebody has something else.

How does this work? Not "what are the mechanics?" That can be another discussion, but, if this works, how does it work? Not "how does it happen?" How does it actually achieve what they're after? Maybe it's something like this.

I have this pottery, and even though you're not a potter, but somebody in your extended family back home was, and you watched what they went through to make a fricking pot, okay?

You watched how their hands seized up, because the clay leached all the moisture out of the hands. You distinctly remember that - how the old lady's hands looked cracked and worn, and so from the work of making vessels of hospitality, okay? [01:12:00] It doesn't matter that you didn't make it yourself. The point is you recognize in the item something we could call "cultural patrimony."

You recognize the deep-runningness of the culture opposite you as manifest and embodied in this item for trade. Okay? So, the person doesn't have to "sell you" because your cultural sophistication makes this pot on the other side available to you for the deeply venerable thing that it is. Follow what I'm saying?

Okay. So, you know what I'm gonna say next? When something happens, the items across from you cease to speak, cease to have their stories come along with them, cease to be available. There's something about your cultural atrophy that you project onto the [01:13:00] item that you don't recognize.

You don't recognize it's valence, it's proprieties, it's value, it's deep-running worth and so on. Something happened, okay? And because you're not making your own stuff back home or any part of it. And so now, when you're in a circumstance like this and you're just trying to get this pot, but you know nothing about it, then the enterprise becomes, "Okay, so what do you have to part with to obtain the pot?"

And the next thing is, you pretend you're not interested in obtaining the pot to obtain the pot. That becomes part of the deal. And then, the person on the making end feels the deep running slight of your disinterest, or your vague involvement in the proceedings, or maybe the worst: when it's not things you're going back and forth with, but there's a third thing called money, which nobody makes, [01:14:00] which you're not reminded of your grandma or anyone else's with the money. And then, money becomes the ghost of the original understanding of the cultural patrimony that sat between you. That's what happened, I'm fairly sure: the advent, the estrangement that comes with the stranger, instead of the opportunity to be your cultural best when the stranger comes.

And then of course, it bleeds through all kinds of transactions beyond the "obvious material ones." So, it's a rupture in translatability, isn't it?

Chris: You understand this to happen or have happened historically, culturally, et cetera, with matrimony as well?

Stephen: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. This is why, for example, things like the fetishization of virginity.

Audience: Mm-hmm. [01:15:00]

Stephen: I think it's traceable directly to what we're talking about. How so? Oh, this is a whole other long thing, but the very short version would be this.

Do you really believe that through all of human history until the recent liberation, that people have forever fetishized the virginity of a young woman and jealously defended it, the "men" in particular, and that it became a commodity to trade back and forth in, and that it had to be prodded and poked at to determine its intactness? And this was deemed to be, you know, honourable behavior?

Do you really think that's the people you come from, that they would've do that to the most cherished of their [01:16:00] own, barely pubescent girls? Come on now. I'm not saying it didn't happen and doesn't still happen. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, God almighty, something happened for that to be so.

And I'm trying to allude to you now what I think took place. Then all of a sudden, the hymen takes the place of the pottery, doesn't it? And it becomes universally translatable. Doesn't it? It becomes a kind of a ghosted artifact of a culturally-intact time. It's as close as you can get.

Hence, this allegation of its purity, or the association with purity, and so on. [01:17:00] I mean, there's lots to say, but that gives you a feel for what might have happened there.

Chris: Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for being so generous with your considerations here.

Stephen: You see why I had to write a book, eh?

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Stephen: There was too much bouncing around. Like I had to just keep track of my own thoughts on the matter.

But can you imagine all of this at play in the year, oh, I don't know, 2022, trying to put into motion a redemptive passion play called "matrimony," with all of this at play? Not with all of this in my mind, but with all of this actually disfiguring the anticipation of the proceedings for the people who came.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine trying to pull it off, and [01:18:00] contending overtly with all these things and trying to make room for them in a moment that's supposed to be allegedly - get ready for it - happy.

I should have raised my rates on the first day, trying to pull that off.

But anyway.

Okay, you go now,

Chris: Maybe now you'll have the opportunity.

Stephen: No, man. No. I'm out of the running for that. "Pompe" has come and come and gone. Mm.

Chris: So, in matrimony, Stephen, you write that

"the brevity, the brevity of modern ceremonies is really there to make sure that nothing happens, nothing of substance, nothing of consequence, no alchemy, no mystery, no crazy other world stuff. That overreach there in its scripted heart tells me that deep in the rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day, the modern wedding is scared [01:19:00] silly of something happening. That's because it has an ages-old abandoned memory of a time when a wedding was a place where the Gods came around, where human testing and trying and making was at hand, when the dead lingered in the wings awaiting their turn to testify and inveigh."

Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Chris: And so I'm curious if

Stephen: "Rayon-wrapped bosom." That's not, that's not shabby.

Chris: "Rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day." Yeah.

So, I'm curious do you think the more-than-human world practices matrimony, and if so, what, if anything, might you have learned about matrimony from the more-than-human world?

Stephen: I would say the reverse. I would say, we practice the more-than-human world in matrimony, not that the more-than-human world practices matrimony. We practice them, [01:20:00] matrimonially.

Next. Okay. Or no? I just gonna say that, that's pretty good.

Well, where do we get our best stuff from? Let's just wonder that. Do we get our best stuff from being our best? Well, where does that come from? And this is a bit of a barbershop mirrors situation here, isn't it? To, to back, back, back, back.

If you're thinking of time, you can kind of get lost in that generation before, or before, before, before. And it starts to sound like one of them biblical genealogies. But if you think of it as sort of the flash point of multiple presences, if you think of it that way, then you come to [01:21:00] credit the real possibility that your best stuff comes from you being remembered by those who came before you.

Audience: Hmm.

Stephen: Now just let that sit for a second, because what I just said is logically-incompatible.

Okay? You're being remembered by people who came before you. That's not supposed to work. It doesn't work that way. Right?

"Anticipated," maybe, but "remembered?" How? Well, if you credit the possibility of multiple beginnings, that's how. Okay. I'm saying that your best stuff, your best thoughts, not the most noble necessarily. I would mean the most timely, [01:22:00] the ones that seem most needed, suddenly.

You could take credit and sure. Why, why not? Because ostensibly, it arrives here through you, but if you're frank with yourself, you know that you didn't do that on command, right? I mean, you could say, I just thought of it, but you know in your heart that it was thought of and came to you.

I don't think there's any difference between saying that and saying you were thought of.

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Stephen: So, that's what I think the rudiments of old-order matrimony are. They are old people and their benefactors in the food chain and spiritually speaking. Old people and their benefactors, the best part of them [01:23:00] willed to us, entrusted and willed to us. So, when you are willing to enter into the notion that old-order matrimony is older than you, older than your feelings for the other person, older than your love, and your commitment, and your willingness to make the vows and all that stuff, then you're crediting the possibility that your love is not the beginning of anything.

You see. Your love is the advent of something, and I use that word deliberately in its Christian notion, right? It's the oncomingness, the eruption into the present day of something, which turns out to be hugely needed and deeply unsuspected at the same time.

I used to ask in the school, "can you [01:24:00] have a memory of something you have no lived experience of?" I think that's what the best part of you is. I'm not saying the rest of you is shite. I'm not saying that. You could say that, but I am saying that when I say "the best part of you," that needs a lot of translating, doesn't it?

But the gist of it is that the best part of you is entrusted to you. It's not your creation, it's your burden, your obligation, your best chance to get it right. And that's who we are to those who came before us. We are their chance to get it right, and matrimony is one of the places where you practice the gentle art of getting it right.

[01:25:00] Another decent reason to write a book.

Chris: So, gorgeous. Wow. Thank you Stephen. I might have one more question.

Stephen: Okay. I might have one more answer. Let's see.

Chris: Alright. Would I be able to ask if dear Nathalie Roy could join us up here alongside your good man.

So, returning to Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work. On page 94, [01:26:00] Stephen, you write that

"hospitality of the radical kind is culture in its finest moments. Matrimony is radical hospitality's godmother, and hospitality is matrimony's alchemy at work.

I'm gonna read that again.

Stephen: Yeah.

Chris: Because when I'm reading it on the page, I have to read it 20 times.

Stephen: Oh yeah.

Nathalie: I'd appreciate that.

Stephen: Do you want me to read it?

Chris: If you like?

Stephen: Sure. Just because I know what it sounds like. I got the book here. What's the page number?

Chris: Page 94.

Stephen: Really . Let's back up a little bit.

Okay.

But rather than cast one more stone against the mediations of formal ritual, we could do something else instead. We could consider its strange, [01:27:00] starched, precise ways. We could give ritual a seat at the laid back, "whatever dude table" of our mutual lives, those of them left. This will be hard for people who are living in those trim and sleek condos outfitted with a sink, a microwave, an island counter for snacking, and a pile of takeout delivery boxes in the closet waiting for garbage day.

Those things are the apotheosis of the non-aligned self-designating life. They have a hole where the hearth used to be. Still, I think we should try. Matrimony, I'll try to show you, is radical hospitality's godmother, and hospitality is matrimony's alchemy at work. [01:28:00]

Chris: Mm. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Yeah, there's another little one from page 93.

Stephen: Oh. Mm-hmm. Okay then. How does that go?

Chris: Quote, "the ceremonies of hospitality were passports to something like peace, to honest regard for what people did not understand or had never seen or heard as it loomed at the gate in dusty array, in human form. Hospitality was how Gods-loving people loved their Gods and honored their ancestors' ways. They fed the gods of strangers by feeding strangers.

Stephen: There you go. It's all in that one sentence.

Chris: And so I feel like this is an exquisite description, subtle as it may be, of the hospitality that has been offered here on your farm over the years.

There were many times in this very hall where toward the end of our hours-long sessions together at the Orphan Wisdom School, [01:29:00] you Stephen, would implore us to consider that the work of those sessions, which you leaned into with such loving ferocity and faithfulness didn't end once we went for lunch or dinner, that instead the big learning was to be found in the banquet hall, the feasting space most often stewarded by her wife Natalie, and her scullery royalty. And so I'm wondering if you two would be willing to speak to the alchemy of how patrimony, matrimony, and hospitality have met and been practiced here on your farm over the years.

Audience: Mm-hmm.

Stephen: That's why you're sitting here - to answer that one. Away you go.

Nathalie: Most beautiful to hear the whipperwill.

Stephen: "You can do it." "You can do it." It says, "you can do it." "You can do [01:30:00] it."

Nathalie: Well, I think I would begin with how things were when we were married here on this farm down by the river, that what comes to mind is that everybody was participating in making the meals for the guests that were arriving were yet to arrive, and over the course of several days, and that we had an opportunity to lean in on some of the people that came to support or witness. Our dearest friends and companions, they came to cook and participate in the preparation of the meals. And I can remember at a certain given moment in the evening when we all [01:31:00] sat together. Stephen had called over a certain group of the people that had assembled on one side of our gathering place, and I had gathered the other group of people that were not yet gathered in by that first group, and we spoke about hospitality or we spoke about how we would honour their coming, but we spoke about it loudly so that the other side could hear, so that they could be catch a whiff of what their presence meant to us, without directly telling them face to face what they meant to us. They got to overhear this particular kind of murmuring. And that was, I think, the first iteration of not doing the same [01:32:00] thing.

Stephen had different conversations with the people he was sitting with in his cluster, and I was having different kind of conversations with the people who were sitting in my cluster. And together we weren't all talking about the same thing. This was layered somehow and complimentary and our conversations became more twilled than anything else, so that our voices began to stir and to waft and to be combined.

By the next day, there were then already connections made between people who had been in the clusters together, but also I overheard, I happen to have overheard a couple of words that came from your waft, from your cluster of people.

And I think that that has often been the way: Stephen has been here in the hall and I have been down cooking and I do what I can to [01:33:00] receive how it is that people come across the field, having perhaps heard or been in something that I have not even been privy to, because I have been in the kitchen behind certain pots, stirring the dishes or in the garden harvesting.

And I get to actually see what Stephen has been up to, only through how people are as they enter the banquet hall.

Stephen: The devastation writ-large on their faces.

Nathalie: Stephen gets to see how it has been with people in my fold as they come back from having sat in the banquet hall. And so, we're not really doing the same thing and we're not actually in the same room with the same function, but I get to see his work through the visitation of the people that come through.

Do you see [01:34:00] what I'm saying? That there's this communication that seems to be between Stephen and I that is not direct. It's not Stephen telling me something and me telling him something.

Stephen: It's mediated.

Nathalie: It's much larger than that. And it's not a courier that is running between the two of us saying, "Stephen just said," and "Natalie just said." It's not like that at all. I get to tend to a certain element of the poverty of our times to quote that phrase that Stephen has so often used and, and he gets to nourish people in a way that I haven't tended to. Or perhaps, even one leads to the other, and one opens the way to another. So, maybe some kind of sphincter or some kind something gland opens up by listening. There's a many different kinds of sphincters. There's not only one.

Stephen: Are you sure?

Nathalie: Yeah. I think there are, [01:35:00] I think there are three sphincters in the human body.

Stephen: Is is it a matter of opinion or?

Nathalie: I'm not sure a hundred percent, but there's something that opens up something that's loosened, or makes way for people to be able to receive the kind of hospitality that I have to offer together with the people that assemble with me and vice versa. Having been well nourished this way, they might be able to enter these doors and sit here with that kind of nourishment in their bodies.

That's what I can come up to on the fly.

Chris: Mm. Thank you so much.

Nathalie: Never having been interviewed in my life, before.

Chris: And I'm so grateful to have been on the receiving end of that hospitality so many times, leading from one house to another, here on the farm.

Nathalie: And an honour. You give me purpose. And you?

Stephen: Oh, I don't know. I'm still on [01:36:00] sphincters, but I'll see if I can get over that, because it's such a visual.

Nathalie: Maybe it's an ESL moment..

Stephen: Yeah, I think so. So you know, I was the one who coined the term scullery royalty.

Nathalie: You were. Yeah.

Stephen: And people thought I was being a bit disingenuous, I think in the early days when I said, you know, what's happening in the kitchen is what I'm trying to keep pace with.

Yeah. But it wasn't disingenuous at all. I mean, I don't underfunction very frequently and I had no oblig, no need to underfunction around that question either. I'm not saying secretly, "what's happening in the kitchen's the whole thing." I wasn't saying that. I was saying, "if you want monophony, you just choose me, or you just choose Nathalie. And a lot [01:37:00] of people have done this. They say they write letters to Nathalie saying, "You're the real teacher" and that sort of thing over the years, you know. Or, "I want you to be my teacher" or that kind of gear. But if you want polyphony, you allow that, from one place in this field to another place in that one, is civilization's flower. I'm choosing that word very deliberately, and saying that things come to be as a result of the time and the distance and the labour to get from one to the other.

It's not really the places. It's the willingness to move. Just when you've grown accustomed to the devastation or the nurturance of one place, you know, the obligation is to pick up and fold your tent and move, you know? Yeah. And [01:38:00] so, there's that. And you know, we're coming close to the end here, so I'll just read a couple little things to you.

One is not my words and one is.

"In John Berger's novel, Once in Europa, there is a peasant woman sitting in her stone kitchen on her farm in the French Pyrenees, late in the 20th century. Given the obligations to innovation for its own sake, that progress binds us to, she is probably among the last generations of her kind, and she's giving life advice to her young daughter, advice that she knows isn't likely to survive the girl's formal education in town.

It's matrimonial wisdom, tradition-bound, and life-affirmed, [01:39:00] trained upon patrimony. Let me say that again. It is matrimonial wisdom, tradition-bound and life-affirmed, trained upon patrimony. She says, 'I will tell you which men deserve our respect: men who give themselves to hard labour so that those close to them can eat, men who are generous with everything they own, and men who spend their lives looking for God. The rest are pig shit.'

Generosity. Labour. A life spent enthrall to the divinity of the world. It's a severe standard, a severe test. It is also [01:40:00] a affirming, exceedingly candid and deeply alert to the truth and travails and mandate of patrimony. There are men aching in their souls to do this work and have it recognized for what it is: the providing, the pilgrimage, those are the blessings that patrimony has to bestow. Recognition and a willingness to live in the house patrimony builds is a blessing for matrimony.

Finally, you know the word 'matrimony' has as its axis, not bride, not woman, [01:41:00] not girl, but mother. That's the root word of 'matrimony:' 'mother.'"

So, apropos of that, and apropos of your question,

"mothering, I should say, does not seem to have been exclusively, and perhaps not even essentially the domain of people who gave birth to small humans. It includes that, of course, when it happens, if it happens, and that might seem to be its most common function, but the capacity to mother is fundamentally the capacity to put oneself in the way of calling the stuff of human life together, that strange mix of willingness and fate-feeling that inclines a person to say yes to [01:42:00] something larger than themselves, into which the personal and particular parts of them are likely to evanesce. Mothering, you could say, takes the biography of the mother for nourishment, for sustenance. Not creator, exactly. Not autonomous conjurer. A mother is as much on the receiving end of the power of life called to rise as on the doing end, and even more so, mothering is the repertoire of a particular way of being human, the exercise of which is the occasion for life to live. Not the reason, not the cause, the occasion.

And this is why I extend the understanding of mothering into the architecture of matrimony and call that proper visitation of the [01:43:00] former upon the latter, "homemaking." Home is the amniotic sea of human it seems to me. And living out the clutch of articulations of home in a human allotment of days is a life, and the presence of enough humans doing the homework of being together is culture. And so, culture making is patrimonial work, and it is matrimonial work, not separated, bound."

That's what we did. Hmm?

Chris: Yes you did.

I am so lucky. What a thing. Mm-hmm.

Thank you both for being willing to sit here and answer these [01:44:00] questions and for being willing to spill so much of your cups over the years in this place for so many strangers.

Nathalie: I'm glad we ain't done yet. Mm-hmm.

Chris: And so to close, I'd like to quote one final sentence from Matrimony. On page 215, you write Stephen, very succinctly.

"I am quite frequently asked to succumb to interviews."

And so, while this is undoubtedly true, I would argue that the interviews more often than not succumb to you and your labours, and your give a shit, and willingness to speak on behalf of more hospitable patrimonial and matrimonial world.

And so your newest book, Matrimony: Ritual Culture and the Hearts Work, along with your other books, films and music are available for purchase now at www.orphanwisdom.com. [01:45:00] Likewise, news on upcoming events and projects, including the Scriptorium: Echoes of an Orphan Wisdom can also be found at www.orphanwisdom.com. On behalf of the dear friends and family here and those listening, may your labours continue to fan out in the world and be of deep consequence to those who come upon them.

Thank you for your time and consideration and care this evening.

Stephen: Well, this room, I heard some fine things over the years. Tonight was another one.

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This essay was originally published by the good people at Kosmos: Journal for Global Transformation in their April 2025 online issue on the theme of water. You can read it along with countless other deep contemplations, here.

It is good knowing that glasses
are to drink from;
the bad thing is not to know
what thirst is for.¹
– Antonio Machado,
Translated by Robert Bly

A lifetime ago, at the invitation of an elder and friend, alongside some twenty others, I made a vow. It contained a commitment to go out into the wilderness for four days and nights at a time, once a year for four years and sit. Once in a frozen forest, once in a summer swarm, once at the edge of the ocean, and once in a charred ravine. Feeding the four directions of our telluric turning. In the name of those who would come after us, we pledged to sink into the ground and surrender to being smoked by time.

The instructions were succinct: we were to sit down and stay still, fixed and grounded. To fast. It seems strange terminology, given the slowness imposed and required. “To fast” means “to abstain from food,” but deeper down we find its roots, which mean “to hold, to guard firmly” from the proto-Germanic fastanan.² Eventually, the word came to mean “to hold oneself to observance,” which is what we were tasked with – to fasten ourselves to the firmament of place, without rest, reassurance, movement or ministration; without food or water.

Previously a stranger to such traditions, I eventually came to digest the words of the late Dagara ritualist Malidoma Somé, who wrote “the emptier your stomach is, the easier it will be for you to learn. Other things within us are better nurtured when the body is not fed.”³ A little more kindred following the four prostrations, I lay these considerations down as a small piece of what I might have learned out there, so that together we might feast on an empty stomach.

These endeavors amounted to a kind of initiation. But, if you asked us, years later, to deliberate and decide what we were initiated into, you’d have a hung jury. Whether or not we were initiated into anything remains a mystery, but it is that mystery and a willingness to feed it, to ensure that it continues to have a place at the edges of our days, that requires me to leave so much of what happened out there out there. Perhaps, you might understand that much of what is sacred is also secret, that for the holy to be heard, a silent surrender might be a prerequisite. While everything in this world belongs, not all of it belongs to everyone or all at once. This is a kind of mercy that honours the original understanding of hierarchy as “a sacred order.”

Such matters, such katabatic undertakings, can prod people into deeper relationships with the underworld, with their mortality, their kin and their nourishment. They can remind us how food and water are the sustaining sentient bodies of all animate beings. While this might not be a recurring reality when you sit down to eat a meal, we can still apprentice such relationships, in part, by knowing what it costs us to abstain from them. In our time, this inquiry also wonders what happens when we refuse to fast, when our will to survive forbids and forsakes the abstention.

Hunger and Thirst

We can say with a degree of fidelity that close to all of our human ancestors’ days were defined by their relationships to sustenance, by working with those who nourish, by working for them and being worked by them. The elements, animals, plants, soils, and spirits. Humans have often deified their relationships with each, to both divine and disastrous degrees. In our age, food and water are either the foundation for life’s prolongation or the primary factor in its subversion. They can nourish or they can neutralize.

Today, though, it is often only the presence of sustenance that gets acknowledged. The absence of such things is almost exclusively spoken of as poverty. But what if this contemporary poverty arises not from sustenance’s presence, but from having forgotten what is absent in that recognition?

During the time-out-of-time that accompanied such intense fasting, my father’s voice echoed around me, recalling his peasant childhood some seventy years previous. “I remember hunger,” he once confessed. An affliction that I, myself, never encountered up until the end of my youth. And while the way he spoke in such moments might have ciphered the memory of an Old Country insecurity, those endless hours of fasting and invocation invited not a feeling, but a form, a figure. A Hunger. The chalk outline of my desire, subsumed by the prayer-tie perimeter surrounding those days, etched a familiar forgetting, as well as its unlikely re-cognition.

What we refer to as scarcity today was forever a factor in the lives of our dead. A lack of food and water. For them and for the countless peasants whose dirt-drenched fingerprints continue to forge kinship between people and place, it is often the scarcity of sustenance that determines life’s trajectory. Not simply a fear that “there won’t be enough,” but a lived understanding and relationship to limit, one that can proffer prayers on the lips, preceding each sip, each taste, each morsel as a communion. Gratitude, in other words.

I’m reminded of the stereotypes of elder generations of Europeans and Africans who apparently rarely bathed throughout their lives and imagine that their silty skin and scents didn’t emerge from a shortage of water. Instead, their lack of cleanliness arose from a godliness that most of us, today, have forgotten. That is, to ensure they could continue to draw from the deep well of religious reverence that fed what sustained them, they largely withdrew from the ability to soak, submerge or siphon. Not because the elixir of life was in short supply, but because they held it in such high and holy regard.

In myriad cultures, past and present, local and lineal foods (both as plants and animals) are revered as deities, just as their wellsprings, rivers, and mountains often are. I wonder about our ancestors, the ones young enough to be considered “ours,” constantly sensing those consecrated presences nearby. At times, I dream about our Old Ones, perhaps seeding, husbanding, and harvesting their food or water, and whether they approached the former, just as they might have the latter, as aware, divine and even kindred – as Flesh and Blood.

Contending with all that I had encountered out there on those long, dark nights of the soul, I felt Hunger and Thirst enter into me, not as the mere absence of food and water, but as presences, as specters. I asked myself then, as I ask you now, what if Hunger and Thirst are names of the numinous? What if they are Gods whom we’ve ghosted? What if our inability to recognize these apparent afflictions, these telluric needs as deities and the sustaining sentiences of our days subverts our relationships to food and water, to Flesh and Blood? And what if any achieved and enduring kinship with our nourishment demands such fastidious remembrance, such material and memorial offerings? What is the cost of gluttony, of surplus, of unquestioned excess, if not a mortgage (i.e. “death pledge”) that starves the world in order to feed only the human?

A Recipe

If you’re lucky, as I sometimes was, after the second full day, your ideas about dying slowly and defiantly give way to your dying. A softness descends, while a subtle strength persists. Appetite is all but an afterthought now. Hunger and Thirst satiate. It’s a strange dynamic. And as the days turn to hours into minutes, your mind exhausts itself. If you’re lucky.

You ask for forgiveness for cursing the scorching sun, the swarming mosquitoes, the icy ground and yourself for signing up. You pray that your life continues until all that’s left to do is to pray that life continues, with or without you. You feel tears thick as cream inching up out of your eyes, wondering how close you are to the last drops. Somehow, you sense that those liquid oblations are worth more to the world than what remains of your raisin frame. So you wait and you pray and for a very long time, this is the afterlife.

And then, the end. Like a candle flame flickering through the veil between worlds, a voice, one that’s been whispering your name over prayer beads and bells all this time, quietly announces itself. With utmost tenderness, you are lifted and led back, cleaved open, to a circle of your still-dying companions.

Alongside them, you can barely hold the freshly-carved spoon to the trembling and anointed threshold of your mouth. Despite your pain and prostration, and even despite your resolve, you will forget this moment. That wooden offering, sliced and shorn under lunar swell and supplication, bearing bone broth myrrh and mercy, about to baptize your body, comes with an uncanny caveat. As much as you will want to forget and as much as you certainly will, do what you can to remember this moment.

Without a lived memory of Hunger and Thirst in our days, without a lived relationship to the care and courtship required to conjure Flesh and Blood, neither are properly satiated.

When nourishment is known only by our need to feed, we squander an understanding of what goes unfed and the banquet table of our times shrinks, losing another guest, another host, foreclosing on another house of hospitality.

To hold oneself to observance is to peer into the unseen, the unrequited, and the dismembered. This was the offering and the ask at the end of each fast – to gather in, to re-member. To break-fast on the final morning, with the estranged, simmering scent of animal stock in the air, a plea was offered up as a prayer, a feast rendered with the fat of memory. A grace offered up as the food:

Whatever you do, try not to forget…
[that Hunger and Thirst are the children of Death,
just as Flesh and Blood are the children of Life].

Let that linger. Let that disclaimed lineage in. It is yours, after all.

Perhaps, now, you can sense it. Maybe you can begin to feel it, to remember that the former are not the absence of the latter, but their twins, the rest of the story, and maybe even the roots of it.

We can be grateful that there are still people alive today who remember such things. We can be humbled by their willingness to act on the understanding of what can come to pass when those things are forgotten. These elders have learned that a deliberate and onerous reunion with Death and his kin is mandatory to temper what each of them can become when they are neglected and malnourished.

Modern Masks

In our age, Hunger and Thirst are routinely subsumed into systems of scarcity, disguised and seldom recognizable as such. These Gods fall famished and like anyone, go looking for ways to feed, which in their cases, are ways to starve.

We can ask if GMO and Terminator seeds and the rivers we turn into sewers aren’t a consequence of this rupture. Not a quick fix to our dilemmas, but their deepening. We can wonder about the modern micromyths of development that sell guilt and scarcity, in part, through images of bloated and starving children, elsewhere. Not the ritual feeding of Hunger and Thirst, but instead, the fetishization of their disappearance from our lives. All of this, as a way of concealing what’s been done to Flesh and Blood, typically in our names.

The solutions that modern institutions solicit too often spring from the poverty that prefaced the problems in question. And so I ask you whether or not we unknowingly unleash Hunger and Thirst onto the world as a result of what we’ve taken from Flesh and Blood, both at present and ancestrally. The phantasmagoric fallout, in other words. And what have we taken from them, you might ask? Their twins, of course, but more emphatically, their kinship, their wholeness and their diets – this last word which signifies both our daily bread and our abstention from it. The segregation of Flesh from Hunger and Blood from Thirst is mirrored in the global food system. The consequence is clear: many must fast, so that a few can fatten.

Could it be, then, that the supermarket invitation to rabid gluttony and the access to it has vilified a capacity to fast – to hold oneself to observance, to be a faithful witness to the times? Could it be that in the threads of ancestral memories, ones that stitch Hunger and Thirst throughout, we have decried what were previously and properly deities in the lives of our people? What if the globalized food systems, the plumbing, the irrigation, the slaughter factories, the supply chains, and the mechanization of each are all consequences of this – not the deification of Hunger and Thirst, but their demonization and exile (as a result of being entered into the oasis of manufactured abundance)? What if Hunger and Thirst were cast as monsters only upon our ability to outlive, to outgrow, and to outrun them, no matter how fleeting that flight may be? And what if our ability and willingness to fast, to go without, to limit ourselves, kept all of that at bay?

Scarcity and surplus seem to be complementary opposites, forces that serve each other in their equanimity. Gain too much of one and the other becomes necessary to reincarnate the true cost and value of each. Among privileged people, “modern” as it’s often said, who not only have access to food but the means to purchase it, how is it that our grace-making rituals have disappeared from our meals? How do the ways we eat and drink banish Hunger & Thirst?

How is it that the more food we produce and consume the less appreciative of it we become? At what point did “gratification” stop being a synonym for “gratitude?”

Within the contemporary calendar of modern peoples, praise typically begins in spring and ends with the sway of falling leaves. The touchdown of rain and snow is sometimes referred to as “inclement,” regardless of water’s millennial associations as the elixir of life. Only certain seasons are celebrated, disgracing or escaping others while ignoring their subsequent dilation, volatility and destruction. Like Flesh and Blood, like Hunger and Thirst, we could ask how our current climatic calamities are consequences of our forgetting to feed the sentient architectures of our broader ecologies.

The countless reasons that led us toward those fasts in the first place are still very much in the world today, more pronounced and perilous than they were when we began. These questions that I’ve courted and laid in front of you are, in part, an attempt to earn that privilege, retroactively. They are a testament wrapped up in a plea, a grace that tries to recall all of the meals that lacked one.

The First Ancestor

Among so many rooted peoples, past and present, the plants and animals of their sustenance are and were understood as forebears. As a friend of mine has proclaimed on occasion, “the thing that fed your first ancestor is your first ancestor.” Those who have nourished your life and your peoples’ lives are, in many places, known both as deities and ancestors. They are the royalty rooting your family tree, the progenitors of your very existence in the world. They are the inflection on the gratitude conjured from your tongue, if it is conjured. And so, what becomes of Life and Sustenance without a relationship to Death and Decay? How can we engage in the slow and sacred act of eating, of communion, of visceral regeneration if we’ve never learned to fast?

Down and into the lineage of language, we find the verb “to fast” as a synonym for the verb “to forbear,” which also means “to abstain, to do without, [and] to endure the absence of.”⁴ Paradoxically, “to forbear” also means “to which we have, or that which has been, borne forward.” To bear, to fast and to fasten ourselves to Hunger and Thirst, as much as we might to Flesh and Blood, is to witness forbearance in full view. It is to give pause to that which we feed on and to allow it to be fed for a time. It is to become nourishment for that which grants us our lives. It is to be on the receiving end of Death’s dominion rather than his supposed surrogate. This is the recipe we might prepare for Them, that we may be cooked, reduced and distilled in their crucible.

If Flesh and Blood in their endless incarnations are some of our earliest ancestors, then Hunger and Thirst are right there alongside them, requiring our reverence and our refrain. They are both the appearance of limits in our midst and our manner of honoring life. They are the roots and the fruits of all that constituted survival for our Old Ones. Likewise, language faithfully leads us by the ear, by the tongue, revealing to us how we might bear them in mind, how to carry them in our days

so that no one
goes
unfed.

Finally, in the bonehouse of the fast, with devoted allies and kin bearing witness, you sit prostrate on the platform of your dying days. Withered and worn, you raise the Gods to your mouth, pausing for prayer, the tears blessing the broth, the broth blessing the body, and a whisper:

Try as you may, you will forget this.
So, try as you might
to remember
this moment.

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This essay was originally published by the good people at Kosmos: Journal for Global Transformation in their April 2025 online issue on the theme of water. You can read it along with countless other deep contemplations, here.

^[1] Machado, Antonio. Times Alone : Selected Poems of Antonio Machado. , Translated by Robert Bly, 1st ed, Wesleyan University Press ; Distributed by Harper & Row, 1983. p 111

^[2] “Fast” Barnhart, Robert K., and Sol Steinmetz. The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology. H.W. Wilson Co., 1988. p 317

^[3] Somé, Malidoma Patrice. Of Water and the Spirit : Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. Putnam, 1994. p 205

^[4] “Fast” Barnhart, Robert K., and Sol Steinmetz. The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology. H.W. Wilson Co., 1988. p 317

(Español Abajo!)

If you survive long enough in the pressure cooker of modern life, your time-in generally forces you to take sides. Am I for the Passion Project of Progress or will I stand against the Trajectory of Tyranny? For those of us with eyes and energy for the latter, for those lucky enough to act on that discernment, we often enter into what Manish Jain calls “alivelihoods.” These are the many-faceted forays that, we hope, tend to the work of repair, whether social, cultural, communal, familial, ecological, or otherwise.

When I interviewed Manish for the End of Tourism Podcast, he described “alivelihoods” in opposition to “deadlihoods,” the latter which represent the overwhelming majority of endeavours or jobs formed to fit and fortify progress and its megaprojects.

Now, as if finding dignified and well-paid work in activist or artistic fields isn’t difficult enough, such people are ongoingly threatened by the promise of a lifetime of rent and wage slavery. The question festers as much as it forges: what can be done? Beyond large-scale mobilizations and penetrating critique, another option is caring for the soil and water in the places we live in.

The Leap of Faith

Almost three years ago, in Oaxaca, Mexico, I convened a small group of dear friends, actionists and ecologists all working in their own way toward alivelihoods. I offered them a vision, a grainy and shaky picture of a future together, as stewards and dwellers of land. A life free of rent and all-willing, drudgery. Given the contemporary circumstances, goodwill among us, and deep desire to honour the ground and all She houses, they agreed.

As we searched through the typical and atypical avenues looking for land that we could afford to purchase, time went on. A year, in fact. It seemed the agave farmers and mezcal corporations, the rural landlords interested in turning farmland into suburban ghettoes had already beaten us to the punch. Almost.

With a great deal of trepidation and cajones, we made a last-minute decision to clamp down and make a go of it, with a three-hectare plot of land in the Ocotlan Valley of Oaxaca. Since then, we continue to visit this place we’ve come to call Rio Copalito or the Copalito River, named after the spring and subsequent creek that flows around the property. There, we walk quietly and carefully, offering offerings, planting small handfuls of seeds, asking that they may feed the land and that the land in turn feed those old ones, going down. We listen patiently, that She might offer us guidance in return.

The Crisis of Faith

Now, we are walking hand-in-hand toward the final instalment of the land purchase, set for the end of this year. As health and financial emergencies have thrown our plans into question, we have come to wonder if there are others among us - friends, family, strangers - who believe in the work of this kind of alivelihood, as much as they might believe in the four of us as people fit to honour such a path.

In the last month, we began to ask this question, aloud and abroad: who among our extended kith and kin, our colleagues and co-conspirators, might raise their hand, might take the time, might recognize a dream of theirs in ours, might bow in some way toward our ask? In that time, we’ve been met with a deep degree of generosity, of solidarity and support from people all over the world. We’re about one-fifth of the way there, grateful beyond measure for the help.

And so, on behalf of a few compañerxs who have granted so much aliveliness to my days, friendship and love, I ask if you, dear reader, would be willing to support this project. We are modest people asking those who, I too imagine to be modest people. So, could it be, would it be, that in our modesty, in our humility and humanity, that the thing that binds all three - hospitality - might arise from the foundation of this ask. May it be so.

If you are able and willing to donate, you can so here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/rio-copalita-nos-llama

If you are able and willing, we ask that you share this plea among your peoples that might feel the call to support such a project, a little endeavour of people endeavouring toward alivelihoods, together.

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Many thank yous for your time, consideration, and conspiracy (breathing-together).

Sincerely,

Chris Christou (alongside Vinik Jure, Yeyo Beltran and Aerin Dunford)

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PS. If you have any questions about the project, if you’d like to add your name to a list of people who could assist in other ways, please feel free to send me a private message. Bless.

Un Rezo por El Rio Copalito

Si sobrevives lo suficiente en la olla a presión de la vida moderna, el tiempo generalmente te obliga a tomar partido. ¿Estoy a favor de la Pasión por el Proyecto del Progreso o me opondré a la Trayectoria de la Tiranía? Quienes tenemos visión y energía para esto último, quienes tenemos la suerte de actuar con base en ese discernimiento, a menudo entramos en lo que Manish Jain llama "alivelihoods". Estas son las incursiones multifacéticas que, esperamos, se centran en la labor de reparación, ya sea social, cultural, comunitaria, familiar, ecológica o de otro tipo.

Cuando entrevisté a Manish para el podcast El Fin del Turismo, describió las "alivelihoods" o vidas vitales en oposición a las "deadlihoods" o vidas mortales, estas últimas que representan la abrumadora mayoría de los esfuerzos o trabajos creados para fortalecer y encajar en el Progreso y sus semejantes.

Ahora bien, como si encontrar un trabajo digno y bien remunerado en el ámbito activista o artístico no fuera suficientemente difícil, estas personas se ven constantemente amenazadas por la promesa de una vida de alquiler y de esclavitud salarial. La pregunta persiste a medida que se forja: ¿qué se puede hacer? Más allá de las movilizaciones a gran escala y la crítica penetrante, otra opción es cuidar el suelo y el agua en los lugares donde vivimos.

El Salto de Fe

Hace casi tres años, en Oaxaca, México, convoqué a un pequeño grupo de queridxs amigxs, activistas y ecologistas, cada uno trabajando a su manera por la subsistencia. Les ofrecí una visión, una imagen granulada e inestable de un futuro juntxs, como guardianes y habitantes de un terreno. Una vida libre de rentas y de trabajo monótono. Dadas las circunstancias actuales, la buena voluntad entre nosotrxs y el profundo deseo de honrar la tierra y todo lo que Ella alberga, aceptaron.

Mientras buscábamos, por caminos típicos y atípicos, tierras que pudiéramos comprar, el tiempo pasó. Un año de hecho. Parecía que los agricultores de agave y las corporaciones mezcaleras, los terratenientes rurales interesados en convertir las tierras de cultivo en lotes y guetos suburbanos, ya se nos habían adelantado. Casi. Con mucha inquietud y valentía, tomamos la decisión de último minuto de tomar medidas drásticas y lanzarnos a la aventura con una parcela de tres hectáreas de tierra abandonada en el Valle de Ocotlán, Oaxaca.

Desde entonces, seguimos visitando la tierra que llamamos Río Copalito, llamada así por el manantial y el arroyo que fluye alrededor de la propiedad. Allí, caminamos en silencio y con cuidado, ofreciendo ofrendas, plantando un puñado de semillas, pidiendo que alimenten a la tierra y que la tierra, a su vez, alimente a las viejas que se hunden. Escuchamos con paciencia, esperando que Ella nos guíe a cambio.

La Crisis de Fe

Ahora, caminamos de la mano hacia el último pago de la compra del terreno, programado para finales de este año. A medida que las emergencias financieras y de salud han puesto en duda nuestros planes, nos hemos preguntado si hay otrxs entre nosotrxs —amigxs, familiares, desconocidxs— que crean en la labor de este tipo de sustento, tanto como creer en nosotrxs cuatro como personas aptas para honrar semejante camino.

El mes pasado, comenzamos a hacernos esta pregunta, en voz alta y abiertamente: ¿quienes entre nuestros familiares y cuates, colegas y cómplices, podría levantar la mano, tomarse el tiempo, reconocer un sueño suyo en el nuestro, comprometerse de alguna manera ante nuestra petición? Durante este tiempo, hemos recibido de manera profunda generosidad, solidaridad y apoyo de personas de todo el mundo. Ya hemos recorrido aproximadamente una quinta parte del camino, y estamos inmensamente agradecidos por el apoyo.

Y así, en nombre de mis compañerxs que han dado tanta vitalidad a mis días, amistad y amor, te pregunto si, queridx lectorx, ¿estarías dispuestx a apoyar este proyecto? Somos personas modestas que pedimos a quienes, imagino, también lo son. Así que, ¿podría ser, que en nuestra modestia, en nuestra humildad y humanidad, el elemento que une a estas tres —la hospitalidad— surja de la base de esta petición?

Que así sea.

Si pueden y desean donar, pueden hacerlo aquí:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/rio-copalita-nos-llama

Si pueden y desean, les pedimos que compartan esta petición entre quienes sientan que pueden apoyar este proyecto, un pequeño esfuerzo de personas que luchan juntas por una vida mejor.

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Muchas gracias por su tiempo, consideración y apoyo.

Sinceramente,

Chris Christou (junto con Vinik Jure, Yeyo Beltrán y Aerin Dunford)

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PD. Si tienes alguna pregunta sobre el proyecto o quieres añadir tu nombre a la lista de personas que podrían ayudar de otras maneras, no dudes en enviarme un mensaje privado.

¡Bendiciones!

BREAKING NEWS: Andrew McLuhan, in association with Gray Area SF, is resuming Part Three of his Understanding Media Intensive in September 2025. If you feel provoked or paralyzed by the times, I implore you to take this course. It will provide you with clarity, tools, nuance, depth, breadth, humility, really smart fellow students and most importantly, the skills you didn’t know you needed. All details can be found here: https://grayarea.org/course/andrew-mcluhan-teaches-understanding-media-intensive-part-three-2025/

Quixote’s Media Meditations #9

Assignment: Given that it seems pretty certain we’re moving into a new upsetting age with AI and ChatGPT, what, like the wheel, is now an active shaping force that will become obsolete and will move into a more subsidiary role in the culture?

With ChatGPT and AI accelerating at a pace that clearly seems to outstrip any previous technological changes, we can imagine and foresee the still-contemporary mediums that might soon become obsolete: the pen, pencil and paper that accompanies students to school, the role of the school teacher, perhaps even the school itself.

While the socializing function of the educational institution has been necessary to indoctrinate the masses of the last couple centuries, we might also wonder how ChatGPT and AI contribute to the creation of platforms of loner learning, of AI home-schooling, of hyper-personalized pedagogy, deepening the delocalized learning that the older, aforementioned mediums create in earnest.

Students might begin to be diagnosed by artificial intelligence based on their capabilities and necessities within the society at large, a kind of early-onset comprehension assessment that takes the pre- and post-secondary education examinations of students and imposes them on children at the youngest of ages, both to examine their possible and even probable abilities later in life as well as to formulate anew the future needs of the society.

With that in mind, I’d like to turn to the legacy of the library. The digitization of information brought forth by the internet, algorithms, accessibility, and the democratized hypermobility of humans and their tools has already given the biblioteca a more subsidiary role in the culture. That said, the stacks have also become a place of sanctuary and resistance in the face of the aforementioned changes.

While the library lingers in many locales as a result of its ability to compute the book’s content, it has also become one of the few remaining examples of the commons. As the fatalistic fallout of private property has become exponentially more constricting in our time, both economically and socially, the library (at least where it remains a public institution) retains and reinforces a commitment to slowness, silence, and scholarship. Within its walls and outside of the humming screens it perhaps regrettably houses, locality and plurality are the secret altars unto which the library’s guests offer their oblations, usually unaware.

Consider that the books on hand are most often written in the local language(s). They gather the dust of the building’s nuanced architecture (what we might otherwise call the proof of life and time passing in a place). That dust delineates the many whirling fingerprints curiously pressed upon the pages. Occasionally, they carry the names and histories of previous borrowers, the post-script pollination that reminds us of the others, there in the community.

The library invites and typically trades in silence, a currency both sparse and spurned by the incessant white noise traffickers who seem terrified of what might be heard in lower frequencies. It’s locus is learning, whereby people can sit and read of other worlds, both together and apart. In many cases, it is the precursor to cafes and chocolate shops, where those dreaming of other ways of being and being together (i.e. politically and socioeconomically) could find examples of how to proceed and proceed differently.

As new and seemingly too-consequential technologies emerge, invoking the obsolescence of older media, as they stand for little more than their own function, significance and survival, we can look for clues to what is absent in the culture, what continues to be antiquated by the unwillingness to stay still, to be human, and to be humane. If, within our historico-cultural context, the function of each new extension of man, each new technology is to feed the myth of exile, in this case, from the land, from neighbouring, and even from the bodies we inhabit, the library might be a place to resist, subvert, and undo this spell.

There, in the quiet corners and unswept shelves of the stacks, through both its context and content, you might begin to delicately finger the folio of how it all came to be this way. There, in the silence, so desperately removed from our surveillance, you come to wonder how it could be otherwise and how it sometimes is otherwise.

Having dove deep and become lost in the pages of other worlds, you finally come up for air. With an open hand cradling each cover, you carefully close the book back in on itself in a manner that resembles someone preparing to pray. Your eyes now off the page, you raise your head and through the cracks in the shelves, you see another, perhaps not unlike yourself, having sought sanctuary, perhaps having found it, perhaps having participated in its sustenance, their hands also opened wide in worship, eyes fixed, following along and reading the story I’ve begun for you here.

If you want to read the rest of it, you know where to go.

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These reflections on technology, language, media ecology & literacy are provoked by Andrew McLuhan’s mandatory, must-take Understanding Media Intensive. You can find out more about McLuhan Studies straight from McLuhan’s mouth by reading his Substack, here.

Estimados oyentes, esta entrevista requirió que Aldo y Gloria se conectaran desde zonas rurales. Por lo tanto, la conexión a internet fue intermitente. Hay algunos momentos del episodio en los que puede resultar difícil comprender lo que se dice. Para mayor claridad, consulten la transcripción abajo. Gracias por su comprensión.

Mis entrevistados en este episodio son Aldo Gonzalez y Gloria Romero López. Aldo es zapoteco de la comunidad de Guelatao de Juárez, Oaxaca, México. Ingeniero de formación, promueve el pleno reconocimiento y la implementación de los derechos de los pueblos indígenas. Trabaja en defensa de la biodiversidad local del maíz, especialmente de una variedad de maíz autofertilizante llamada olotón.

Gloria es una mujer Mixteca que nacio en Lázaro Cardenas, Coicoyan de las Flores, Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca. Curse sus estudios de ingeniería en Tecnologías de la información y comunicaciones en el Instituto Tecnológico Superior - San Miguel el Grande. Actualmente Realizó registros de Nacimientos en el Municipio de Coicoyan de las Flores. Ella gusta mucho platicar en Mixteco.

Notas del Episodio

• Las consecuencias al pueblo

• El derecho a no migrar

• Cambios atraves del NAFTA y el derecho a no migrar

• “Yo tengo maiz, no necessito dinero”

• La complejidad de las remesas

• Las contradicciones y discriminaciones entre migrantes

• La posibilidad del retorno masivo de migrantes

• La violencia como causa de migracion

Tarea

El Derecho a No Migrar (Libro) - Amazon

El DERECHO A PERMANECER EN CASA

Transcripcion en espanol (English Below)

Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido Aldo y bienvenida Gloria al podcast al fin de turismo. Gracias a ambos por estar dispuestos a hablar conmigo hoy sobre estos temas. Tengo curiosidad por saber si ustedes dos se están bien dispuestos a ofrecer una pequeña introducción o resumen sobre ustedes mismos.

Ah, ado, no te escuchamos.

Aldo: Bueno sobre mis viajes, bueno, no me dedico a viajar. Casi no tengo vacaciones. Pero por las cuestiones del trabajo me he tocado ir a diferentes lugares del mundo. Podríamos decir. Este básicamente por el trabajo que realizo?

Más que ir a conocer los lugares a donde a donde me han invitado, lo que he hecho es ir a platicar con la gente que está en esos lugares sobre los problemas que tenemos aquí en la región.

Los problemas que tenemos en México y [00:01:00] quien lo que me ha posibilitado, poder viajar a distintas partes ha sido el problema de la contaminación del maize transgénicos. Entonces eso ha hecho que, con esa bronca que peso en el año 2001, este yo haya tenido la posibilidad de ir a otros lugares a platicar un poco sobre ese problema en particular y muchos otros que se relacionan con él no o el tema de los transgénicos o el tema de los agroquímicos o el tema de el control de las corporaciones hacia la alimentación, hacia las semillas también.

Entonces, digamos que en general, la mayoría de los viajes que yo he realizado están relacionados con estos acentos o con los derechos de los pueblos indígenas también.

Chris: Gracias, Aldo. Y nos podrías decir donde te encuentres hoy?

Aldo: Eh? Bueno, hoy estoy en Guelatao y es mi comunidad y estoy en las oficinas de la organización de mi organización, que es la unión de organizaciones de la Sierra Juarez

Chris: Muchas gracias, [00:02:00] audo Aldo y gloria.

Gloria: Sí, igual. Yo casi no he salido así del estado, pero sí conozco mucha gente que si emigra por lo regular a los estados unidos, es que es donde la mayoría de acá, pero casi no emigran mucho así hacia otros estados. Pero si la mayoría emigra para estados unidos, ya si tengo muchos vecinos, familia y mucho de acá de Coycoyan, si emigran más para allá que son para los estados unidos.

Chris: Muy bien. Muchas gracias por eh, a tiempo con nosotros hoy. Entonces, aunque es temprano en la conversación, mi pregunta es sobre cómo han visto que el regreso de los migrantes a sus pueblos ha afectado a la comunidad en sus propios lugares o pueblos?

Gloria: Sí en en cuando han cómo ha afectado la comunidad? Que muchos cuando regresan, pues ya tienen otras ideas, otras cultura, otra forma de ver la vida y a veces mucho ya no [00:03:00] quieren este participar así en las asambleas de la comunidad o ya vienen con otras técnicas, digamos, de cultivo y las técnicas que anteriormente habían acá, pues ya se van perdiendo y yo más cada veo como también esto afecta también en sus vidas personales, porque muchos cuando regresan ya regresan ya enfermos, cansados.

En en el mejor de los casos, muchos ya regresan con dinero, no? Y eso hace que la gente que está en el pueblo, ve que como ellos les fue bien, pues también quieren emigrar y ya después ya son más personas que quieren migrar y ya se se hacen más y de idea de que, pues allá en estados unidos existe la oportunidad de que puedan mejorar sus vidas.

Pero yo digo que así en ,general el impacto es un tanto positivo como [00:04:00] también negativo, porque igual, como digo, muchos regresan ya cansados, enfermos. Muchos igual dejan aquí sus familiares y cuanto regresan, pues sus familia ya no los encuentran, o algunos que dejan sus papás, cuando regresan sus papás ya, ya murieron o ha o esas situaciones que impacta así su vida personal.

Chris: Gracias, Gloria. Aldo, querrías responder?

Aldo: Aunque aquí en la comunidad de Guelatao, no hay muchos, no hay una migración tan alta como en otras comunidades cercanas. Digamos que una de las cosas que nosotros vemos que ha afectado, es que se elevan los precios, porque traen dinero, ya no trabajan en el campo. Entonces, para sus familias reciben recursos.

Y pues eso hace que ellos tengan mayor capacidad para poder pagar a los mozos, por ejemplo, para que vayan a ser la [00:05:00] misma. Entonces, eso hace que el resto de la población pues se sienta afectada, porque no tiene los recursos para poder pagar lo que está pagando un migrante. Bueno, eso en alguna medida, está afectando la producción también de maíz, de por sí, ya la había afectado, porque muchos salen y dejan de trabajar la tierra. Los que quieren que se siga trabajando la tierra por parte de su familia mandan recursos, pero digamos que allí los costos se elevan para el resto de la población porque ellos pagan salarios más altos. Entonces, si alguien viene a la comunidad a trabajar, te va a cobrar más de lo que te cobraba anteriormente y muchos no lo pueden pagar.

Entonces nos dice, "ya no voy a sembrar, porque el mozo está muy caro." No?

Y eso es una afectación, pues directa, digamos a la economía de quien no migra.

Y como hay pocos migrantes también, o digo [00:06:00] como hay poca gente que se que que se queda trabajar el campo en la comunidad, ya no hay suficientes personas para que se pueda hacer lo que nosotros llamamos gozona.

O sea que vayamos entre todos a trabajar la parcela de cada uno de los que entran a ese tipo de trabajo. Bueno, también, eso es una afectación por la migración. No?

Chris: Y Gloria, tú piensas que esa misma dinámica existe o ha pasaron en tu pueblo?

Gloria: No, yo digo que igual, sí, estoy de acuerdo con lo que dicen algo y si sí, ha influenciado mucho de las personas que emigran si pagan más que los que no migran. Sí, si se ve mucho ese cambio.

Chris: Gracias. Este pues parte de mi mi interés o cómo empecé, eh, acercándome a la cuestión de inmigración fue en parte por mi familia. [00:07:00] También eran migrantes de Macedonia y Grecia, y el otro lado de Inglaterra hacia Canadá hace como 50 años. Entonces este lo que he sentido, es que las dinámicas, las consecuencias de la migración en los pueblos y la gente que no migren, que hay patrones en el nivel mundial, y son casi bueno, muy parecidos. .

Encontré un un libro en inglés, pero también existía en español. Eh? Que se llama El Derecho A No M igrar o The Right To Stay Home por David Bacon. Y ese libro, es titulado por una declaración que la gente de FIOB o La Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales hicieron en ahí en Santiago Juxtlahuaca en La Mixteca,

Después de días de días de discutir sobre las [00:08:00] consecuencias de migraciones en los lugares de los migrantes, o sea, los pueblos originarios de los migrantes, resultó una declaración: "el derecho a no migrar conjunto con el derecho a migrar." Entonces tengo curiosidad por saber si ustedes podrían hablar sobre esos tiempos y la declaración, si saben cómo se formó o cómo se fue recibida en la mixteca o en la sierra norte de Oaxaca.

Aldo: Bueno, nosotros aquí en la organización. Sí, hemos hablado del derecho a no migrar, porque estamos interesados en fortalecer la identidad de las personas que vivimos en nuestras comunidades. Pues, al final, somos parte de un pueblo más grande. No solamente es nuestra comunidad, sino que hay varias otras comunidades que pertenecemos al mismo pueblo, al pueblo zapoteca y en ese sentido, pues lo que estamos tratando [00:09:00] de hacer es que se fortalezcan nuestras comunidades, que se fortalezcan nuestra comunalidad, que es nuestra forma de organización comunitaria, y por esa razón es que preferiríamos que la gente no migra.

Pero el problema es que ha habido un empobrecimiento muy brutal del campo en general, no solamente en México. Lo vemos también en otros países, que los que emigran principalmente son gente que sale del campo y van hacia los estados unidos a trabajar al campo en estados unidos, pero en condiciones que son completamente distintas a como se trabajaba en la comunidad. Incluso aquí en México, algunos van a trabajar en los campos del norte del país, también este en condiciones, pues terribles, con muchos agroquímicos.

La gente regresa en algunos casos regresan enfermos, no? O regresan con las patas por delante, dijeron en el pueblo, porque [00:10:00] ya pues están muertos. Regresan nada más para que los entierren en la comunidad. Pero pues, prácticamente toda su vida la hicieron fuera, no?

Entonces, quienes se van sufre porque añoran estar en la comunidad. Quieren comer lo que en la comunidad. Quieren escuchar la música de la comunidad. Quieren hacer la vida como si estuvieran en la comunidad, pero ya no está. Quienes se quedan a vivir fuera de la comunidad, digamos en estados unidos, sobre todo, pues sus hijos ya no los van a entender, porque ellos son educados de una manera distinta en escuelas que no tienen nada que ver con su cultura.

Digamos que son colonizados mentalmente en las escuelas en estados unidos. Hay muy pocas escuelas que podríamos decir tienen la la eh capacidad de poder ser interculturales y enseñar en español y inglés y [00:11:00] enseñar la cultura de la comunidad y la cultura pues que se viven en los estados unidos, el individualismo.

Entonces es muy complejo que un niño de inmigrantes, nacido en estados unidos pueda regresar a la comunidad, porque pues ya se adaptó a otra forma, a otra civilización, a otra forma de vida completamente distinta a la comunitaria. Y bueno, eso a nosotros nos preocupa. Estamos interesados en que la gente se quede.

Sabemos que es difícil porque hay pocos recursos económicos en las comunidades, pero aun así pues, estamos haciendo el esfuerzo para que la gente se sienta orgullosa de ser de sus orígenes y no tengan la necesidad de migrar o en último de los casos, si tiene la necesidad de emigrar, por lo menos que tenga una referencia de lo que es su comunidad y la lleve a donde esté, [00:12:00] no?

Porque pues, a veces, pues la gente lo hace por necesidad. Y esa necesidad, te lleva a a otros lugares, pero si tú te sientes orgulloso de tu identidad cultural, vas a llevar ese identidad donde tú estés. En el caso de la sierra, hay gente de varias comunidades que hace comunidad en donde está. Pero bueno, obviamente no lo va a poder hacer de la misma manera como si viviera en la comunidad, pero al menos algo se llevan.

Otra forma de de ver el mundo se puede llevar también, aunque no la vas a poder practicar como como lo vas a hacer en tu comunidad, no? Y en general, digamos el trabajo que nosotros hacemos en la organización está enfocado a que se fortalezcan, pues distintos mecanismos para que la gente se quede.

Por ejemplo, ahorita estamos trabajando en la en el establecimiento de la escuela de agroecología, para que los jóvenes tengan herramientas para [00:13:00] poder sembrar la tierra sin depender de los herbicidas de todos los agroquímicos que vienen con la revolución verde y que son los que utilizan normalmente en los estados unidos para la producción agrícola de la mayoría de las cosas que se hacen allá.

Y dentro de este esquema de agroecología, pues obviamente que para nosotros el elemento cultural es es fundamental porque no podemos hacer solamente la agricultura fuera de nuestro contexto territorial-cultural. Entonces, todo esto tiene que estar englobado en esas, iniciativas que estamos tratando de impulsar eso.

Chris: Mm ya. Gracias. Gracias, Aldo. Y Gloria, esa declaración surgió en la región en la Mixteca donde estás y pues me gustaría, saber si recuerdes la declaración, si era parte de la política o la gente de tu pueblo?

Gloria: Bueno, me enteré que esta declaración surgió debido a las grandes [00:14:00] injusticias que sufre los migrantes. Como dice algo desde el memento en que salen de sus hogares hasta llegar allá en, digamos en estados unidos, donde tienen que trabajar igual y siguen sufriendo lo que son abusos físicos, psicológicos.

Y qué más quisiéramos que la gente? Pues no, no emigrara no, pero sabemos que debido a sus necesidades emigran, pero ojalá y cuanto emigraran tuvieran esas so oportunidades de tan si quiere emigrar lo mejor posible que puedan y no pasar tu portando sufrimiento. Mm-hmm.

La declaración surgió en esta zona de Juxtlahuaca, según lo que yo he encontrado igual, no sabía mucho sobre esta declaración, pero debido a esto ya cheque. Y sí, la declaración surgió especificamente por las injusticias que sufre la gente desde salir de su hogar, hasta llegar en estados unidos.

Todos los abusos que llegan a [00:15:00] sufrir en el camino y hasta igual muchos hasta allá, aunque estén en el trabajo allá, también siguen sufriendo. Y por eso, pues, qué más quisiera la gente que no inmigrara no? Qué más quisiéramos que toda la gente tuviera la dicha de tener una vida digna en su país, en su tierra, para que no tuviera que emigrar, pero sucede, sucede que si emigran, sucede por muchas razones que a veces no están en nuestro alcance poderlos ayudar, pero digamos tan siquiera ofrecerles las oportunidades para que emigren de la mejor manera posible y no tengan tantas desventajas al memento de emigrar.

Chris: Gracias. No, pues sí, el pueblo de mi papá, por ejemplo, era un pueblo campesino en Grecia y ya no esta abandonado, pero cuando si salieran hubiera 800 personas. Y el día de hoy hay como 50. Y hay como unos dos, tres campesinos todavía, entonces [00:16:00] este entiendo bien el de lo que dicen y que tan importante es de crear las condiciones para que la gente no necesitan migrarse si no necesitan.

Pero me gustaría también preguntarles sobre el éxito quizás que ha existido. Entonces, si hubo una declaración en que salió de la verdad no es muy conocido, a pesar del éxito del libro y y esas cosas. No es muy conocido, por lo que he visto en México y por hablar con algunas personas de FIOB en estados unidos, pero vamos a eso en un memento. Quería preguntarles si hay programas o han visto ciertos éxitos dentro o a través de esas programas que, por ejemplo, que mencionaste Aldo y Glorias si en los pueblos hay como un cambio. Si algo ha cambiado en esos 15 años.

Gloria: [00:17:00] Ajá de mi parte. Yo digo que sí. Sí, ha habido un cambio. Tal vez no un cambio directo. No ha habido la declaración. Sí, sí ha ayudado, nada más que nosotros, no lo hemos visto porque casi no se menciona. Pero si ha habido. Gracias a eso, pues se han formado programas, proyectos que se han apoyado a los migrantes, pero que muchas veces nuestros desconocemos.

Pero sí, sí existe, digamos el impacto positivo que ha generado esa declaración.

Aldo: Bueno, en el caso de la sierra Juárez, la sierra norte de Oaxaca, digamos, hay algunas comunidades que tienen un alto índice de migración y bueno, ahí en algunos casos, han llegado algunos programas, por ejemplo, como " dos por uno," donde los migrantes, digamos, ponen una parte de recursos, el estado pone otra parte o pone dos partes, digamos el gobierno federal, el gobierno del estado para hacer alguna obra en la comunidad.

Pero realmente eso no está [00:18:00] solucionando ningún problema, no porque básicamente lo que está haciendo es obligar a los migrantes a que contribuyan a realizar alguna mejor alguna obra en su en su comunidad y cuando esos recursos los podían destinar para sus familias o para otra cosa o para cumplir con sus obligaciones comunitarias, pero no necesariamente realizando las acciones que el gobierno está obligado a rerealizar obras sociales o cosas por el estilo.

Entonces, pues yo podría decir que de los programas que que han aparecido en los últimos años, pues tampoco nos han ayudado mucho a a frenar la migración. Por ejemplo, el programa del sexenio pasado más anunciado fue el de Sembrando Vida, no? Y si bien ese apoyo a algunos campesinos en algunas comunidades, no en todas, pues, podríamos [00:19:00] decir que si los capturó para que no migraran hacia los estados unidos, pero dejaron de sembrar maíz cuando inicialmente el programa este era para que sembraran más maíz.

Nos pusieron a sembrada arbolitos, no árboles que muchos casos ni siquiera son de la región que no iban a pegar o si iban a pegar, no iban a ser útiles aquí, porque venían de otras regiones o si crecían, ya no iba se ya no iba a poder cultivarse maíz en esos lugares porque les iban a hacer sombra al maíz.

Nosotros vivimos en laderas. Aquí no hay lugares planos como en estados unidos, no? Entonces, digamos que programas gubernamentales que hayan beneficiado en alguna medida. El flujo migratorio que hayan hecho que haya menos migratorio, pues tampoco se ven. No se ven con mucha claridad. Nosotros vemos que se siguen estableciendo políticas para destruir el tejido comunitario, para expulsar a la población [00:20:00] del campo hacia las ciudades o hacia los estados unidos.

Chris: Gracias, Aldo. Y has mencionado? Que tu trabajo tiene mucho que ver con la regeneración de maíz y obviamente maíz criollo o sea local también. Porque es tan importante para el pueblo frente de las consecuencias de la migración?

Aldo: El Maiz para nosotros es un elemento muy importante. Nosotros podríamos decir que es el corazón de la comunidad porque lo vamos a comer todos los días. Nosotros decimos "nativo". Les dicen c"criollo" desde las instituciones de muchos lugares por costumbre, pero la palabra está mal empleada. Nosotros decimos que son nuestros maíces nativos.

Y no es lo mismo comer una tortilla de maíz nativo, un elote de nuestros maices, a que comprar un elote que ahora venden en la ciudad que fue hecho con [00:21:00] maíces híbridos o que tengamos que comer tortillas hechas con maíces transgen. Desgraciadamente, en los últimos años, yo creo que no solamente pasa en la sierra, sino en muchos otros lugares del país, se ha incrementado el uso de las tortillerías y entonces ya no sabemos con qué maíz están produciendo esas tortillas, pero no se pueden comparar con las tortillas de nuestros maíces hechas con nuestras propias tecnologías. No?

Entonces, yo creo que el maíz para nosotros, además de ser nuestro alimento principal o el que más consumimos, también nos da identidad. El maíz nos convoca, por ejemplo, a trabajar juntos, cosa que en estados unidos, no lo hacen. Todos ellos contratan migrantes para que hagan su trabajo, no? Y ellos van a producir lo que vayan a producir para vender aquí.

El maíz que se siembra [00:22:00] normalmente es para consumir. Casi no se vende el maíz. Y por ejemplo, ahora que están poniendo precios de garantía, no? Precio garantía las de MXN $6. En nuestras comunidades, el maíz, no lo puedes vender a MXN $6, o sea, por lo menos, lo vendes a MXN $20, si es que lo vendes, porque es el esfuerzo de tu trabajo y también por la misma gente que la comunidad o incluso por los migrantes o por las familias inmigrantes, es valorado como una, un un alimento que es completamente distinto a el maíz que se compra en la tienda, en la CONASUPO o en Diconsa o en cualquier tienda comercial o qué viene de la tortilla? Entonces hay un aprecio especial por nuestros maíces. Eso es importante, pero cada vez se está produciéndo menos. Ahora anteriormente quien tenía maíz era considerado rico. [00:23:00] Desde una perspectiva comparado de hoy, quien tiene maíz es considerado tonto o pobre porque no tiene dinero. Sin embargo, pues sobre todo los campesinos viejos que dicen bueno, pues "si yo tengo maíz, no necesito dinero" para vivir porque tengo el alimento suficiente.

Incluso anteriormente, por ejemplo, cuando la gente tenía que realizar sus cargos comunitarios que no eran pagados ahora en muchas comunidades, han empezado a pagar el cargo. Quien podía ocupar el cargo era un agente mayor, que sus hijos ya habían crecido, pero que además, él tenía maíz para no pedirle favor a nadie de cómo iba a solventar la alimentación de su familia por el año o el tiempo que tuviera que estar al frente del cargo comunitario.

Entonces, digamos que el maíz también hace comunidad? Y con estas políticas, falta de apoyos o de [00:24:00] eliminación de apoyo, el campo mexicano están lastimando también nuestras formas de organización communitaria. Eso.

Chris: Qué fuerte. Sí, me acordé en lo que dijiste Aldo, unas palabras que que escribió el filósofo Ivan Illich y no sé si es exactamente lo que escribió, pero básicamente dijo que durante casi toda la historia de la humanidad, la mayor medida de la pobreza era si uno tenía o no que comprar su alimento, su comida. Es decir, si tenías comprar tu comida en el pasado, era un señal, una medida de de pobreza, de decir que buenas eres pobre si tienes que comprar. Gloria, tienes algo para agregar a ese punto.

Gloria: Ese punto no, no,

Chris: [00:25:00] está bien, está bien. Pues me gustaría también seguir con ese lo que mencionaste Aldo, de los recursos y lo que se llaman remisas y por lo que he visto las estadísticas, no dicen que es más o menos seis porciento de la economía mexicana está compuesta por remesas enviadas por familiares o amigos en estados unidos.

En algunos de los pueblos a los que me han invitado, me han dicho que el pueblo no sobreviviría sin remesas. En otros. Me han dicho que el pueblo sobreviviría mucho mejor si la gente no se fuera. Este es un tema muy complejo y mi pregunto. Si ustedes dos podrían hablar sobre esa complejidad que han visto en sus pueblos y en otros lugares como resultado de las remesas.

Y pues siento que se sale [00:26:00] como ese tema a una pregunta vital o central que es como si una persona puede o no ser responsable de un lugar estando al otro lugar?

Gloria: Yo digo que sí. Las remesas si han influido positivamente porque gracias a ellos ha habido muchos negocios, comercio y siento que si le quitáramos esas remesas, esos negocios se caería, porque el dinero que mucha gente que va a gastar en esos negocios es dinero que sus familiares envían de estados unidos. Gracias a ello, pues compran sus alimentos, los materiales que ocupan desde útiles escolares hasta cosas personales que ocupe. Y si en las remesas, yo siento que sí, estaría complicado porque como hasta ahorita, no hay suficientes oportunidades dentro del país para que pueda satisfacer esa demanda, yo siento que si las [00:27:00] quitáramos, sí, sería un impacto muy fuerte negativamente.

Aldo: Decía yo que el lunes es el día de mercado en Ixtlan. Es la comunidad más grande de esta región. Y este cuando va uno llegando a isl, lo primero que ve uno es la fila en el banco. Es una fila mayor que cualquier otro día. La mayoría de la gente que está formada ahí va a recibir remesas y luego la va a gastar en en el mercado. En el mejor de los casos, pues sería bueno que comprara cosas de la región, pero muchas de las cosas que compran también son procesadas. Vienen de fuera, no? Incluso una cosa que da hasta miedo a veces es ver cómo la la señora se llevan sus paquetes de maruchan, no?

Entonces dice eso es lo [00:28:00] que van a comer los niños. Y sí están cambiándole la alimentación a los niños porque es más fácil poner hervir la sopa que ya viene en esa caja, le echa en agua, se hierve y hasta la comida.

Entonces, si se reciben recursos que sostienen a la familia, pero nos están cambiando la forma de vida, porque pues no puedes sobrevivir como estaban haciendo anteriormente nuestros antepasados, nuestros papás, nuestros abuelos, pero nos están cambiando la vida y nos están haciendo dependientes del dinero. Nos están haciendo individualistas también porque ahora tener dinero, pues puede ser una cosa de prestigio, no?

Pero realmente las remesas no están resolviendo un problema de fondo en la comunidad. Están resolviendo un problema de una sobrevivencia impuesta, no? [00:29:00] Porque te quitan tu forma de ser, te quitan tu forma de vivir comunitaria y te imponen una forma de vida individual que se basa en el dinero y no en las relaciones familiares o las relaciones comunitarias que existían anteriormente.

Entonces, digamos que las remesas te van a ayudar a vivir. Te van a ayudar a comprar cosas, no? Muchas de esas cosas no van a ser locales. O sea, llega el dinero a la comunidad y se va de la comunidad para el que compró cosas fuera de la comunidad y que vino a vender a este lugar, no?

Pero, entonces está ayudando podríamos decir que la economía capitalista no está ayudando a la economía comunitaria. Aun cuando sean gentes de la comunidad las que vendan las cosas, no? Digamos que puede ser que una parte se quede en la comunidad porque el comerciante de la comunidad fue a la ciudad, compró las cosas y las trajo aquí.

El se va a quedar con su ganancia, pero finalmente le está haciendo el trabajo al [00:30:00] capitalista que produjo esas cosas y las llevó a la comunidad a través de ese comerciante. Entonces las remesas se están ayudando a fortalecer el sistema capitalista y a destruir el sistema comunitario.

Chris: Anoche, un amigo me ha contado que hay algunos pueblos aquí en Oaxaca que apenas se juntaron en sus asambleas para platicar sobre la posibilidad que la amenaza del memento de Trump en estados unidos para deportar todos los migrantes.

Bueno, no todos los migrantes, pero los migrantes que no conformen con el mundo de Trump ahi en estados unidos. Y qué pasaría? O sea, la gente en las asambleas están hablando de qué pasaría si eso pasaría? Si, de repente hay cientos, si no miles, de compañeros y [00:31:00] familiares que de repente lleguen de nuevo al pueblo y obviamente sin ese esos fondos? Quizás es un poco de lo que pasó en la pandemia. También hubo muchas historias de gente de del norte allá, volviendo a sus pueblos. Y se empezaron a trabajar en las milpas, pero luego se fueron de nuevo a al norte pues a trabajar.

Gloria: Sí, bueno, si eso digamos si esa amenaza se llegara a cumplir y todos los migrantes regresaran, yo siento que sería muy complicado para el país sostener a todos esos migrantes, porque hasta ahorita no hay tantas oportunidades. Digamos si hay un programa del más conocido sembrando vida, pero está cumpliendo muy poquito el trabajo que debe de cumplir.

Y si te regresaran todos los migrantes nos quedaríamos como que atascados como sería un impacto, yo siento que, negativo, porque no tenemos la posibilidad de de [00:32:00] recibirlos. No tenemos las oportunidades, no tenemos programas, no tenemos, hay muchas cosas que no nos van a favorecer, porque ellos, si ellos regresan, van a ver muchos migrantes, pero sin un sustento, sin algo que los pueda sostener para que tengan una vida más o menos como la que ya tenían cuando estaban allá.

Y porque no solo va a afectar a ellos, sino también sus familias que tienen acá al ver que sus familiares que estaban allá ya van a estar acá.

Chris: Gracias. Gloria. Sí, Aldo.

Aldo: Bueno, algunos empiezan a preguntar a mí. Nosotros vemos que, incluso en estados unidos, hay algunos migrantes que votaron por Trump. Muchos que votaron por Trump. Platicando con algunas personas digamos que los que pagan impuestos y ya tienen su residencia en estados unidos, ven a los migrantes documentados como estorbo, como una competencia [00:33:00] desleal, porque ellos no están obligados a pagar impuestos. Y entonces no.

Porque es parte del modelo, el model modelo capitalista diseñado. Digamos que entre los mismos mexicanos inmigrantes, hay contradicciones, hay discriminación. Digamos un migrante que ya es residente, a veces no va a apoyar a un migrante illegal porque puede quitar el empleo.

Y bueno, esto nos meten en situaciones complejas al final de cuentas, porque, incluso estos migrantes votaron por Donald Trump. Estarían de acuerdo en que deportaran a los migrantes similares.

Es un extremo. Ahora, los migrantes en general, si son deportados, los migrantes indocumentados y son deportados, van afectar la economía también de los estados unidos? No? Porque hay muchas cosas que en estados unidos dejarían de funcionar, si no hay inmigrantes. [00:34:00] O sea, quién va a cuidar a los viejitos, por ejemplo?

Muchos migrantes, sobre todo mujeres se dedican al cuidado de personas enfermas o personas mayores de edad que no tienen familia o que si tienen familia de todas formas, los mantienen prácticamente en el abandono o viven de su pensión y ya no pueden hacer su vida normal porque tienen algún padecimiento, etcétera.

Y necesitan una gente que las corre Normalmente son mexicanos o son migrantes indocumentados los que hacen ese tipo de trabajo. Este sector de la población de estados unidos se debería afectar. Los granjeros que siembran, digamos, para vender los productos en el mercado de estados unidos, la mayoría contratan migrantes no documentados.

Entonces ellos también van a tener un problema de que su producción agrícola va a bajar porque no va a ver migrantes. Y hay otros sectores de la economía en estados unidos que también resultarían afectados. No sé [00:35:00] si Trump no lo está viendo o se hace el que no lo ve o es solamente un amague, como quien dice.

Y esta es como una amenaza que no va a cumplir porque finalmente eso afectaría la economía de los estados unidos. Si llegara a hacerse, aunque fuera de manera parcial, que es lo más probable, pues los migrantes que fueran deportados hacia México, no sabemos si traigan remesas o no. No sabemos si hayan tenido ahorros o no.

Puede ser que algunos sí, puede ser que algunos no. Muchos de los que regresan ya no están acostumbrados a vivir en comunidad o en su comunidad. No están acostumbrados a vivir a realizar las actividades en el campo y preferirían vivir en la ciudad, pero en la ciudad no va a haber empleo. No va a haber suficientes empleos para que ellos puedan hacer una vida menos [00:36:00] rural, digamos en su regreso a México.

Algunos otros dicen bueno, pues si a mí me deporten, pues yo me regreso a sembrar maiz y no pasa nada, pero no creo que sea la mayoría o no creo que sea la totalidad, al menos no los que vayan a regresar a su comunidad.

Quienes han trabajado desde niños en la comunidad y saben realizarlas el trabajo de campo, no van a tener problema, pero quienes ya se acostumbraron a realizar actividades que no son agrícolas y han sido obligados a migrar, pues iban a tener ese problema de que no van a saber que hacer cuando retornen a este país o cuando los obliguen a retornar a este país.

Chris: Si yo recuerdo leyendo un libro hace unos años, y era un poco raro porque el libro era publicado en 1940. Y fue una historia social de la migración llegando en estados unidos en el [00:37:00] siglo anterior y básicamente dijo que si llegaron como los alemanes o una ola de migrantes alemanes. Los que ya estuvieran allá odiaban los alemanes porque los alemanes estaban listos a pagar más renta y aceptar menos ingresos de trabajo. Y luego otro 10 años, pasa no? Y quizás ya hay más alemanes ahora, pero ya vienen los ucráneos y los alemanes están enojados porque los u cráneos están listos para pagar más renta y trabajar por menos. Y luego los los alemanes se van a la periferia o se encuentran nuevos pueblos o ciudades. Se migran, básicamente.

Y es un ciclo que hasta la fecha vemos en lo que dijiste Aldo respeto de la gente que ya tiene residencia en estados unidos, por ejemplo, los mexicanos diciendo que, "pues ya no, ya tengo el mío, [00:38:00] entonces nadie más," no? Ese tiene una historia muy, muy largo.

Y además, la cosa que yo crecía en en Toronto en Canadá. Canadá está conocido y también se promueven el país como un país de multiculturalismo. O sea, la gran mayoría de nuestros papás son de otros países. O sea, es un país de migrantes. Pero, crecimos con este idea nacional que la población del país siempre estuvo disminuyendo, o sea menos y menos gente cada generación. Entonces, por eso teníamos que invitar y aceptar un montón de inmigrantes cada año, o sea, un montón de montón.

Pero leyendo las historias sociales, me di cuenta que, pues esas invitaciones y sentido de estar abierto al otro, no era parte de la compasión del país canadiense.

Era porque [00:39:00] necesitaban cada vez más, entrecomillas "labor barato", o sea, gente que estaban dispuestos a trabajar los trabajos que nadie más querían hacer y por dinero que nadie más querían trabajar. Y entonces el estado tenían que seguir invitando, trayendo gente de afuera para hacer ese trabajo.

Y la pregunta sería, entonces quizás, qué haríamos? Como dijo gloria, para asegurar que hay un trabajo digno, hay una vida digna para la gente. Y lo digo porque cuando hablé con un representante de FIOB que era representante de FIOB en 2009 durante la declaración a no migrar. Y le pregunté entonces, por qué esa declaración no ha salido viral o popular en estados unidos y otros países? Y me dijo "ah, bueno, no, es que en estados unidos, la cosa es que si eres de la parte izquierda de la [00:40:00] política, no podrías criticar nada de la migración." O sea, toda la migración es bonito, no? No hay un espejo a las realidades y pero si te criticas la migración en cualquiera manera, eres automáticamente parte de la derecha o ultra derecha. Eres un hijo de Trump, etcétera.

Aldo: De hecho, por ejemplo, Trump, no podríamos decir que sea un nativo americano, verdad? Los nativos americanos no tienen el pelo anaranjado. Entonces el vino de otro país, vino de Europa. Y bueno a la mejor ahora ya se siente estadounidense y no quiere que otros vayan a ese país de manera ilegal, como a lo mejor sus papás llegaron a los estados unidos a pagar rentas caras y a recibir salarios bajos.

Pero pues él ya se hizo al modo capitalista de estados unidos. Tiene la [00:41:00] nacionalidad de los estados unidos y ahora no quiere que otros migren. Pero tampoco creo que quiera reconocer derechos de los nativos americanos que son quienes han vivido ahí por muchas más generaciones que las de la familia de tronco de muchos otros que se sienten estadounidenses ahora.

Estaba viendo hace unos días un video de como viven, algunas familias en Mongolia. Mongolia es un país en donde todavía hay pastores nómadas que no viven en una ciudad o en una comunidad agraria. Viven en un territorio amplio y van siguiendo a su ganado. Que va cambiando de lugar, defendiendo de la estación del año.

Ellos no tienen necesidad de emigrar. O sea, ellos han hecho su vida así desde hace mucho tiempo por muchas generaciones. E incluso no tienen la necesidad de tener los recursos económicos para [00:42:00] comprar cosas porque no necesitan tantas cosas. Está en una tienda de campaña para poder irse para otro lado que a lo mejor los muebles más básicos para poder vivir adentro de su tienda de campaña y se acabo.

Y eso no quiere decir que sean pobres. El capitalismo mide la pobreza en función de los ingresos económicos. Si ganas menos de al día, pues eres una persona muy pobre. Pero. Pues el dinero no te va a solucionar todos los problemas del mundo. Entonces, creo que tenemos que empezar a mirarnos de otra manera y ver que los recursos económicos no son la única solución para la vida.

Nos han hecho creer eso en los últimos años. Entonces, hoy, quien no tiene dinero es pobre, no? Pero creo que hay otras formas en que hemos vivido la mayor parte de la humanidad en este planeta que no eran como esta forma de vida capitalista que hoy nos están imponiendo, no? Y nos la están imponiendo porque [00:43:00] pues cada vez son menos gente las que quieren controlar la economía mundial.

O sea, nosotros lo vemos. Cada vez son menos compañías tras nacionales las que tienen, por ejemplo, el negocio de las semillas y las semilleros que había en México hasta hace 30 años, ya desaparecieron en estos últimos años. Y ahora los tienen cuatro grandes empresas a nivel mundial. Pues obviamente que ellos quieren tener el negocio de las semillas y si no quieren que nadie más tenga negocio de las semillas o que los campesinos no tengan sus propias semillas para poder sobrevivir, entonces están expropiando la posibilidad de generar una vida de una manera distinta, no? Entonces ellos nos van a obligar o nos quieren obligar a que hagamos la vida como dependiendo de lo que ellos nos puedan vender, y desaparecer esas otras formas de sobrevivir en el planeta.

Yo creo que esas otras formas, aunque muy deterioradas, [00:44:00] muy golpeadas, siguen vigentes en muchos lugares y habrá gente que las quiera reivindicar, nosotros las queremos reivindicar y creemos que hay otra forma de hacer la vida en esta planeta. Hay muchas otras formas de hacer la vida en tu planeta que son.

Chris: Gracias, Aldo. Este Gloria, te gustaría agregar algo?

Gloria: Sí, bueno, igual por parte de lo como lo que afecta también a que la declaración no sea tan famosa, es porque, como dice Aldo, es que estamos tan enfocados en el capitalismo que si por un memento, no nos enfocáramos en ese ámbito del capitalismo, yo siento que, pues todos dirían que tienen una vida digna en sus tierras y se quedarían más, pero como todos estamos enfocados en lo material, en el dinero y todo eso, pues decimos que para qué vamos a dar tanto mención a la declaración, si no es útil, [00:45:00] supuestamente?

Pero es porque hemos tenido tanto esa idea del capitalismo de que siempre queremos ver dinero, todo lo que implica el capitalismo, y nos olvidamos un poco de lo que realmente significa tener la vida digna, porque pues somos esos ricos en muchas cosas, no? Tenemos agua, tenemos tierra. Y podríamos ser felices con eso. Pero igual no nos conformamos con eso. Siempre queremos más porque esas son las ideas que el capitalismo nos ha metido. Mm-hmm.

Chris: Gracias, gloria. Igual, para mí, como aunque he pasado mucho tiempo, visitando y trabajando unos pueblos de Oaxaca, creciendo en un metrópolis urbano, occidental moderno, etcétera, yo tengo que imaginar una vida digna. Yo no crecí en una sociedad donde podían apuntar a un ejemplar de una vida digna.

[00:46:00] En ese libro que escribió de David be David bacon sobre la ola o caravana más reciente de inmigrantes que se dirigen a los estados unidos, esta vez de este Venezuela, se mencionó en 2023 creo, se estima que 200,000 migrantes ingresaron a los estados unidos caras. Teniendo en cuenta esas cifras y las diversas crisis que obligan a las personas a mudarse en nuestros tiempos, qué consejos o comentarios les daría a las personas, ya sean campesinos indígenas o modernos que ven la migración como la única respuesta?

Gloria: Sí. Sí. Bueno, el consejo que yo daría así sería que si tienen las posibilidades, como digo, si tienen.

Aunque no [00:47:00] tengan mucho, no, pero si me nací en una zona donde no hay violencia donde más o menos, si pueden vivir más o menos, si pueden tener una vida digna o a lo que se puede asemejar a una vida digna, pues que se queden ahí. No hay necesidad. Bueno, sí. Sabes que si hay necesidad, pero que no se vean tan forzados a migrar?

Porque pues hay es complicado, es difícil todo lo que van a sufrir toda lo que implica, como digo, también un principio, muchos emigran para mejorar sus vidas, pero igual o mejorar la vida de sus familias. Pero muchos cuando regresan esas familias por las que se fueron, cuando regresan, esa familia ya no la encuentran. Ya está muerta.

Muchos que igual tengo motivos que igual emigraron. Y se fueron para dar mejor vida a sus papás, pero sus papás ya murieron y ellos todavía siguen sin regresar. Y la vida a y se supuestamente le [00:48:00] iban a dar mejor vida, pero nunca sucedió. Simplemente están sobreviviendo, pero nunca, nunca cumplieron ese sueño.

Y yo digo, el consejo que yo les daría es que si tiene la posibilidad de tener una vida digna en sus tierras, pues que se queden ahí y que no vean la migración como el gran sueño, como como todos este lo imaginamos, no?

Aldo: Bueno, yo creo que la migración no es una decisión de las personas que se ven obligadas a migrar. Hay muchos factores. Estados unidos necesita mano de obra barata, como tú decías. Entonces, pues aunque Trump diga que no quiere emigrantes, si quiere migrantes. Y lo que sucede en Venezuela, pues al final de cuentas es parte de las políticas que se hicieron en estados unidos, no? Ahí metieron a ese país en crisis.

Y luego llegó un ticket de los estados unidos [00:49:00] y les dijo a sus paisanos que se inmigraban hacia los estados unidos. Iban a ser bien recibidos. Nunca se imaginaron el calvario que tenían que sufrir en el tránsito para poder llegar a estados unidos. Y cuando llegan a estados unidos, pues tampoco son bien recibidos como les habían ofrecido que sería su bienvenida, no?

Y en México, nosotros vemos ahora en nuestro país, por ejemplo, como se ha incrementado de manera exponencial la violencia en las zonas rurales. Esa violencia no solamente está obligando a la gente a migrar, sino que, pues los está desalojando de sus tierras, no? Y normalmente esto se hace porque, hay otros intereses en esas tierras y las quieren, quieren las tierras, pero las quieren sin gente.

Y entonces se va a implementar el mecanismo de la violencia para que esa [00:50:00] gente se vea obligada a salir y por lo tanto, se vea obligada a migrar a donde sea, porque ya no puede vivir en paz en la comunidad donde nació, donde se acostumbra a vivir, no? Entonces la migración no es un fenómeno natural. Es un fenómeno que ha sido creado por el mismo capital, que lo necesita para sobrevivir como sistema capitalista, y que está quitándole la posibilidad de vivir bien a la gente que vive en lugares muy remotos donde no necesitaban incluso de su existencia como sistema.

Eso.

Chris: Gracias, Aldo. Sí, seguramente las causas de la migración muchas veces vienen del motor de capitalismo de [00:51:00] guerra, plagas y hambre.

Y podemos pensar más en que hay ciertas personas que que tienen que emigrar, que tienen que emigrar. No tienen opción. Y además, cuando se emigran y las noticias del dinero, del prestigio, privilegio, vuelve a los pueblos, a las familias que también el tema puede quedar en asuntos de ambición, envidia, deseo, que la gente que tiene opción puede entender las consecuencias a su propio pueblo, a su propia gente, a los que se quedan o dejan atrás, no? Y bueno, me gustaría en el nombre de nuestros oyentes, agradecerles muchísimo por sus tiempo y [00:52:00] presencia hoy por sus reflexiones y consideraciones por sus trabajos y compromisos en el mundo.

Lo agredezco mucho. Les agradezco mucho. Y hasta la próxima, gracias, Aldo. Gracias, Gloria.

Gloria: Igual, gracias!

Aldo: Pues mucho gusto. Mucho gusto. Gloria. Nos vemos. Chris, si.

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English Transcription

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome Aldo and welcome Gloria to the podcast the end of tourism. Thank you both for being willing to talk with me today about these topics. I'm curious if you two would be willing to give a little introduction or summary about yourselves.

Ah, ado, we didn't hear you.

Aldo: Well, about my trips, well, I don't travel. I hardly have any vacations. But because of work, I have had to go to different places in the world. We could say, basically because of the work I do?

Rather than going to see the places where I have been invited, what I have done is go and talk to the people who are in those places about the problems we have here in the region.

The problems we have in Mexico and [00:01:00] who has allowed me to travel to different places has been the problem of contamination by transgenic corn. So that has made it so that, with that anger that weighed on me in 2001, I have had the opportunity to go to other places to talk a little about that particular problem and many others that are related to it, not the issue of transgenics or the issue of agrochemicals or the issue of corporate control over food, over seeds as well.

So, let's say that in general, most of the trips I have made are related to these accents or to the rights of indigenous peoples as well.

Chris: Thanks, Aldo. And could you tell us where you are today?

Aldo: Eh? Well, today I am in Guelatao and it is my community and I am in the offices of my organization, which is the union of organizations of the Sierra Juarez.

Chris: Thank you very much, [00:02:00] Hello Aldo and Gloria.

Gloria: Yes, the same. I have rarely left the state, but I do know a lot of people who usually emigrate to the United States, which is where most of them live, but they don't emigrate much to other states. But most of them do emigrate to the United States. I have a lot of neighbors, family, and a lot of people from here in Coycoyan. They do emigrate more to the United States.

Chris: Okay. Thank you so much for uh, being on time with us today. So, although it's early in the conversation, my question is about how have you seen the return of migrants to their villages affect the community in your own places or towns?

Gloria: Yes, in how long has it affected the community? That many when they return, well, they already have other ideas, other culture, another way of seeing life and sometimes many no longer [00:03:00] want to participate in the community assemblies or they come with other techniques, let's say, of cultivation and the techniques that they had here before, well, they are already lost and I see more and more how this also affects their personal lives, because many when they return they already return sick, tired.

In the best of cases, many of them return with money, right? And that makes the people who are in the town see that since they did well, they also want to emigrate and then there are more people who want to migrate and they become more and they have the idea that, well, there is an opportunity for them to improve their lives in the United States.

But I say that in general the impact is both positive and [00:04:00] negative, because as I say, many return tired, sick. Many also leave their families here and when they return, their families can no longer find them, or some who leave their parents, when they return their parents have already died or there are situations like that that impact their personal life.

Chris: Thanks, Gloria. Aldo, would you like to respond?

Aldo: Although there aren't many of them here in the community of Guelatao, there isn't as much migration as in other nearby communities. Let's say that one of the things that we see that has affected us is that prices are rising, because they bring money and no longer work in the fields. So, they receive resources for their families.

And that makes them have a greater capacity to pay the waiters, for example, so that they can be the same . So, that makes the rest of the population feel affected, because they do not have the resources to be able to pay what a migrant is paying. Well, that to some extent is affecting corn production as well, in itself, it had already affected it, because many leave and stop working the land. Those who want their family to continue working the land send resources, but let's say that there the costs rise for the rest of the population because they pay higher salaries. So, if someone comes to the community to work, they will charge you more than they charged you before and many cannot pay it.

Then he tells us, "I'm not going to plant anymore, because the boy is too expensive." Right?

And that has a direct impact on the economy of those who do not migrate.

And since there are few migrants too, or I say [00:06:00] since there are few people who stay to work the fields in the community, there are no longer enough people to be able to do what we call gozona.

So let's all work together on the part of each of those who enter this type of work. Well, that is also an impact of migration, right?

Chris: And Gloria, do you think that the same dynamic exists or has happened in your town?

Gloria: No, I say that it is the same, yes, I agree with what they say and yes, it has greatly influenced the people who emigrate if they pay more than those who do not migrate. Yes, that change is very noticeable.

Chris: Thank you. Well, part of my interest or how I started, uh, approaching the immigration issue was partly because of my family. [00:07:00] They were also migrants from Macedonia and Greece, and the other side from England to Canada about 50 years ago. So what I've felt is that the dynamics, the consequences of migration on the people and the people who don't migrate, that there are patterns at the global level, and they are almost, well, very similar.

I found a book in English, but it also existed in Spanish. Eh? It's called The Right Not to Migrate or The Right To Stay Home by David Bacon. And that book, it's titled after a declaration that the people of FIOB or the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations made there in Santiago Juxtlahuaca in La Mixteca,

After days and days of discussing the consequences of migration in the places of the migrants, that is, the native peoples of the migrants, a declaration was made: "the right not to migrate together with the right to migrate." So I'm curious to know if you could talk about those times and the declaration, if you know how it was formed or how it was received in the Mixteca or in the northern mountains of Oaxaca.

Aldo: Well, here in the organization, yes, we have talked about the right not to migrate, because we are interested in strengthening the identity of the people who live in our communities. Well, in the end, we are part of a larger community. It is not only our community, but there are several other communities that belong to the same people, to the Zapotec people, and in that sense, what we are trying to do is [00:09:00] What we have to do is strengthen our communities, strengthen our communality, which is our form of community organization, and for that reason we would prefer that people do not migrate.

But the problem is that there has been a brutal impoverishment of the countryside in general, not only in Mexico. We also see it in other countries, that those who emigrate are mainly people who leave the countryside and go to the United States to work in the fields in the United States, but in conditions that are completely different from how they worked in the community. Even here in Mexico, some go to work in the fields in the north of the country , too . It is in terrible conditions , with many agrochemicals.

People come back, in some cases they come back sick, right? Or they come back with their feet up, they said in the village, because [00:10:00] they are already dead. They come back just to be buried in the community. But well, they practically lived their whole life outside, right?

So, those who leave suffer because they long to be in the community. They want to eat what they eat in the community. They want to listen to the music of the community. They want to live as if they were in the community, but it is no longer there. Those who stay to live outside the community, let's say in the United States, especially, because their children will no longer understand them, because they are educated in a different way in schools that have nothing to do with their culture.

Let's say that they are mentally colonized in schools in the United States. There are very few schools that we could say have the capacity to be intercultural and teach in Spanish and English and [00:11:00] teach the culture of the community and the culture that is experienced in the United States, individualism.

So it is very difficult for a child of immigrants, born in the United States, to return to the community, because he or she has already adapted to another way, to another civilization, to another way of life completely different from the community. And well, that worries us. We are interested in people staying.

We know that it is difficult because there are few economic resources in the communities, but even so, we are making the effort so that people feel proud of their origins and do not have the need to migrate or, in the last case, if they have the need to emigrate, at least they have a reference of what their community is like and take it to wherever they are, [00:12:00] right?

Because sometimes people do it out of necessity. And that necessity takes you to other places, but if you feel proud of your cultural identity, you will take that identity wherever you are. In the case of the mountains, there are people from various communities who make a community where they are. But obviously they won't be able to do it in the same way as if they lived in the community, but at least they take something with them.

You can also take another way of seeing the world, although you won't be able to practice it like you would in your community, right? And in general, let's say the work we do in the organization is focused on strengthening different mechanisms so that people stay.

For example, right now we are working on establishing an agroecology school, so that young people have the tools to [00:13:00] be able to plant the land without depending on herbicides and all the agrochemicals that come with the green revolution and that are the ones normally used in the United States for agricultural production of most of the things that are done there.

And within this agroecology framework, obviously for us the cultural element is fundamental because we cannot do only agriculture outside of our territorial-cultural context. So, all of this has to be included in these initiatives that we are trying to promote.

Chris: Mm, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Aldo. And Gloria, that statement arose in the Mixteca region where you are and I would like to know if you remember the statement, if it was part of the politics or the people of your town?

Gloria: Well, I learned that this statement came about because of the great [00:14:00] injustices that migrants suffer. As it says something from the moment they leave their homes until they get there, let's say in the United States, where they have to work the same and continue to suffer physical and psychological abuse.

And what else would we want from people? Well, no, they wouldn't emigrate, no, but we know that they emigrate due to their needs, but I hope that those who emigrate have those opportunities so that if they want to emigrate as best they can and not go through suffering. Mm-hmm.

The declaration arose in this area of Juxtlahuaca, according to what I have found, I did not know much about this declaration, but because of this I have already checked. And yes, the declaration arose specifically because of the injustices that people suffer from leaving their homes until arriving in the United States.

All the abuses that they [00:15:00] end up suffering along the way and even many of them there, even if they are working there, they also continue to suffer. And for that reason, well, what more would people want than for them not to immigrate, right? What more would we want for all people to have the good fortune of having a dignified life in their country, in their land, so that they do not have to emigrate, but it happens, it happens that if they emigrate, it happens for many reasons that sometimes it is not within our reach to be able to help them, but let's say at least to offer them the opportunities so that they emigrate in the best way possible and do not have so many disadvantages at the time of emigrating.

Chris: Thank you. No, yes, my father's village, for example, was a peasant village in Greece and it is no longer abandoned, but when they left there were 800 people. And today there are about 50. And there are still about two, three peasants, so [00:16:00] I understand well what they are saying and how important it is to create the conditions so that people do not need to migrate if they do not need to.

But I would also like to ask you about the success that has perhaps existed. So, if there was a statement that came out of the truth, it is not very well known, despite the success of the book and those things. It is not very well known, from what I have seen in Mexico and from speaking with some people from FIOB in the United States, but we will get to that in a moment. I wanted to ask you if there are programs or have you seen certain successes within or through those programs, for example, that you mentioned Aldo and Glorias, if there is a change in the towns. If something has changed in those 15 years.

Glory: [00:17:00] Aha, from my side. I say yes. Yes, there has been a change. Maybe not a direct change. There has not been a declaration. Yes, it has helped, but we have not seen it because it is hardly mentioned. But there has been. Thanks to that, programs and projects have been created that have supported migrants, but which many times we are unaware of.

But yes, there is, let's say, the positive impact that this statement has generated.

Aldo: Well, in the case of the Sierra Juárez, the northern mountains of Oaxaca, let's say, there are some communities that have a high rate of migration and well, in some cases, some programs have arrived, for example, like "two for one," where the migrants, let's say, put up part of the resources, the state puts up another part or puts up two parts, let's say the federal government, the state government to do some work in the community.

But that really isn't [00:18:00] solving any problem, not because basically what it's doing is forcing migrants to contribute to doing some better work in their community and when those resources could be used for their families or for something else or to fulfill their community obligations, but not necessarily carrying out the actions that the government is obliged to do, such as social works or things of that sort.

So, I could say that the programs that have appeared in recent years have not helped us much to stop migration. For example, the most advertised program of the last six-year period was Sembrando Vida, right? And although that support was given to some farmers in some communities, not in all of them, we could [00:19:00] say that they were captured so that they would not migrate to the United States, but they stopped planting corn when initially the program was for them to plant more corn.

They made us plant little trees, not trees that in many cases were not even from the region, that were not going to grow well or if they were going to grow well, they were not going to be useful here, because they came from other regions or if they grew, it was no longer going to be possible to grow corn in those places because they would shade the corn.

We live on hillsides. There are no flat places here like in the United States, right? So, let's say that government programs that have benefited to some extent. The migratory flow that has made there less migration, well, they are not seen either. They are not seen very clearly. We see that policies continue to be established to destroy the community fabric , to expel the population . [00:20:00] from the countryside to the cities or to the United States.

Chris: Thanks, Aldo. And you mentioned that your work has a lot to do with the regeneration of corn, and obviously local corn as well. Why is it so important for the people in the face of the consequences of migration?

Aldo: Corn is a very important element for us. We could say that it is the heart of the community because we eat it every day. We say "native." Institutions in many places call it "criollo" out of habit, but the word is misused. We say that it is our native corn.

And it is not the same to eat a tortilla made from native corn, an ear of corn from our corn, than to buy an ear of corn that they now sell in the city that was made with [00:21:00] hybrid corn or that we have to eat tortillas made with transgenic corn. Unfortunately, in recent years, I think it happens not only in the mountains, but in many other places in the country, the use of tortilla factories has increased and so we no longer know what corn they are producing those tortillas with, but they cannot be compared to the tortillas made from our corn with our own technologies. Right?

So, I think that corn, for us, besides being our main food or the one we consume the most, also gives us identity. Corn, for example, calls us to work together, which is something that is not done in the United States. They all hire migrants to do their work, right? And they are going to produce what they are going to produce to sell here.

The corn that is planted [00:22:00] is normally for consumption. Corn is hardly sold. And for example, now that they are setting guaranteed prices, right? Guaranteed price is MXN $6. In our communities, corn, you cannot sell it for MXN $6, or at least, you sell it for MXN $20, if you sell it, because it is the effort of your work and also by the same people in the community or even by migrants or immigrant families, it is valued as a, a food that is completely different from the corn that is bought in the store, at CONASUPO or at Diconsa or in any commercial store or what comes from tortillas? So there is a special appreciation for our corn. That is important, but it is being produced less and less. Now previously, whoever had corn was considered rich. [00:23:00] From a comparative perspective of today, anyone who has corn is considered stupid or poor because he has no money. However, especially the older peasants who say, well, "if I have corn, I don't need money" to live because I have enough food.

Even before, for example, when people had to carry out their community duties, which were not paid in many communities, they started to pay for the position. The person who could occupy the position was an older agent, whose children had already grown up, but who also had corn so that he did not ask anyone for a favor about how he was going to pay for the food of his family for the year or the time that he had to be in charge of the community office.

So, let's say that corn also creates community? And with these policies, lack of support or [00:24:00] elimination of support, the Mexican countryside is also hurting our forms of community organization. That's it.

Chris: That's powerful. Yes, I remembered what you said, Aldo, some words that the philosopher Ivan Illich wrote, and I don't know if it's exactly what he wrote, but he basically said that for almost all of human history, the greatest measure of poverty was whether or not one had to buy one's food. That is, if you had to buy your food in the past, it was a sign, a measure of poverty, to say that you are poor if you have to buy. Gloria, do you have anything to add to that point?

Gloria: Not that point, no,

Chris: [00:25:00] Okay, okay. Well, I would also like to continue with what you mentioned, Aldo, about the resources and what are called remittances, and from what I have seen in the statistics, they do not say that more or less six percent of the Mexican economy is made up of remittances sent by family or friends in the United States.

In some of the villages I have been invited to, I have been told that the village would not survive without remittances. In others, I have been told that the village would survive much better if people did not leave. This is a very complex issue and I wonder if the two of you could talk about that complexity that you have seen in your villages and elsewhere as a result of remittances.

[00:26:00] goes beyond that topic to a vital or central question, which is whether a person can or cannot be responsible for one place while being in another place?

Gloria: I say yes. Remittances have had a positive influence because thanks to them there have been many businesses, commerce and I feel that if we took away those remittances, those businesses would fall, because the money that many people spend in those businesses is money that their relatives send from the United States. Thanks to that, they buy their food, the materials they need from school supplies to personal things they need. And if in remittances, I feel that yes, it would be complicated because as until now, there are not enough opportunities within the country to be able to satisfy that demand, I feel that if we [00:27:00] took them away, yes, it would have a very strong negative impact.

Aldo: I was saying that Monday is market day in Ixtlan. It is the largest community in this region. And when you arrive at the island, the first thing you see is the line at the bank. It is a longer line than any other day. Most of the people who are there are going to receive remittances and then spend them at the market. In the best case scenario, it would be good if they bought things from the region, but many of the things they buy are also processed. They come from outside, right? Even something that is a bit scary sometimes is seeing how the ladies take away your packages of maruchan, right?

So he says that's what [00:28:00] the children are going to eat. And yes, they are changing the children's diet because it's easier to boil the soup that already comes in that box, you pour it in water, it boils and even the food.

So, if we receive resources that support the family, they are changing our way of life, because we cannot survive as our ancestors, our parents, our grandparents did before, but they are changing our lives and making us dependent on money. They are making us individualists too because now having money can be a thing of prestige, right?

But remittances are not really solving a fundamental problem in the community. They are solving a problem of imposed survival, right? [00:29:00] Because they take away your way of being, they take away your way of living in a community and they impose on you an individual way of life that is based on money and not on family relationships or community relationships that existed before.

So, let's say that remittances are going to help you live. They're going to help you buy things, right? Many of those things are not going to be local. That is, the money arrives in the community and leaves the community for those who bought things outside the community and came to sell here, right?

But then it is helping, we could say that the capitalist economy is not helping the community economy. Even if it is people from the community who sell the things, right? Let's say that it may be that a part stays in the community because the community merchant went to the city, bought the things and brought them here.

He's going to keep his profit, but he's ultimately doing the job for the [00:30:00] capitalist who produced those things and brought them to the community through that merchant. So the remittances are helping to strengthen the capitalist system and destroy the community system.

Chris: Last night, a friend told me that there are some towns here in Oaxaca that have just met in their assemblies to talk about the possibility of Trump's threat in the United States to deport all migrants.

Well, not all migrants, but migrants who are not satisfied with Trump's world there in the United States. And what would happen? I mean, people in the assemblies are talking about what would happen if that were to happen? Yes, suddenly there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companions and [00:31:00] relatives who suddenly arrive back to the town and obviously without those funds? Maybe it's a bit of what happened during the pandemic. There were also many stories of people from the north there, returning to their towns. And they started to work in the cornfields, but then they went back north to work.

Gloria: Yes, well, if that threat were to come true and all the migrants returned, I feel that it would be very complicated for the country to support all those migrants, because up until now there are not many opportunities. Let's say there is a program, the more well-known Sembrando Vida program, but it is doing very little of the work that it should be doing.

And if all the migrants were to return, we would be stuck, as it would be a negative impact, I feel, because we do not have the possibility of [00:32:00] receiving them. We do not have the opportunities, we do not have programs, we do not have, there are many things that will not favor us, because they, if they return, they will see many migrants, but without a livelihood, without something that can sustain them so that they have a life more or less like the one they already had when they were there.

And because it will not only affect them, but also their families who are here seeing that their relatives who were there will now be here.

Chris: Thank you. Gloria. Yes, Aldo.

Aldo: Well, some people are starting to ask me. We see that, even in the United States, there are some migrants who voted for Trump. Many who voted for Trump. Talking to some people, let's say that those who pay taxes and already have their residence in the United States, see documented migrants as a hindrance, as competition [00:33:00] unfair, because they are not obliged to pay taxes. And then no.

Because it is part of the model, the designed capitalist model. Let's say that among Mexican immigrants themselves, there are contradictions, there is discrimination. Let's say a migrant who is already a resident, sometimes will not support an illegal migrant because it could take away a job.

And well, this puts us in a complex situation at the end of the day, because even these migrants voted for Donald Trump. They would agree that similar migrants should be deported.

It's an extreme. Now, migrants in general, if they are deported, undocumented migrants and they are deported, will they affect the economy of the United States as well? No? Because there are many things that would stop working in the United States if there were no immigrants. [00:34:00] I mean, who is going to take care of the elderly, for example?

Many migrants, especially women, are dedicated to caring for sick people or elderly people who do not have family or who, if they do have family, are practically abandoned or live on their pension and can no longer lead a normal life because they have some illness, etc.

And they need people to run them. Usually it is Mexicans or undocumented migrants who do this kind of work. This sector of the US population should be affected. Farmers who plant crops, let's say, to sell their products in the US market, most of them hire undocumented migrants.

So they are also going to have a problem with their agricultural production going down because there will be no migrants. And there are other sectors of the economy in the United States that would also be affected. I don't know [00:35:00] if Trump is not seeing it or is pretending not to see it or if it is just a bluff, so to speak.

And this is like a threat that will not be fulfilled because ultimately it would affect the economy of the United States. If it were to be carried out, even partially, which is most likely, then the migrants who were deported to Mexico, we do not know if they bring remittances or not. We do not know if they had savings or not.

Some may, some may not. Many of those who return are no longer accustomed to living in a community or in their community. They are not accustomed to living in the countryside and would prefer to live in the city, but there will not be jobs in the city. There will not be enough jobs for them to live a less [00:36:00] rural life, let's say, when they return to Mexico.

Some others say, well, if they deport me, I'll go back to planting corn and nothing will happen, but I don't think that's the majority or I don't think that's the totality, at least not those who will return to their community.

Those who have worked in the community since they were children and know how to do field work will not have a problem, but those who have become accustomed to doing non-agricultural activities and have been forced to migrate will have the problem of not knowing what to do when they return to this country or when they are forced to return to this country.

Chris: Yeah, I remember reading a book a few years ago, and it was kind of weird because the book was published in 1940. And it was a social history of migration coming into the United States in the [00:37:00] previous century and it basically said that if they came like the Germans or a wave of German migrants. Those who were already there hated the Germans because the Germans were willing to pay more rent and accept less income from work. And then another 10 years, it happens right? And maybe there are more Germans now, but the Ukrainians are coming and the Germans are angry because the Ukrainians are ready to pay more rent and work for less. And then the Germans go to the periphery or they find new towns or cities. They migrate, basically.

And it is a cycle that we see to this day in what you said Aldo regarding people who already have residency in the United States, for example, Mexicans saying that, "well no more, I already have mine, [00:38:00] so no one else," right? That has a very, very long history.

And also, the thing that I grew up in Toronto in Canada. Canada is known and promoted as a country of multiculturalism. I mean, the vast majority of our parents are from other countries. I mean, it is a country of immigrants. But, we grew up with this national idea that the population of the country was always decreasing, meaning fewer and fewer people every generation. So, that is why we had to invite and accept a lot of immigrants every year, meaning, a lot, a lot.

But reading the social stories, I realized that those invitations and sense of being open to others were not part of the compassion of the Canadian country.

It was because [00:39:00] they needed more and more, quote unquote "cheap labor," meaning people who were willing to do the jobs that no one else wanted to do and for money that no one else wanted to work for. And so the state had to keep inviting, bringing in people from outside to do that work.

And the question would be, then perhaps, what would we do? As Gloria said, to ensure that there is decent work, there is a decent life for people. And I say this because when I spoke with a representative of FIOB who was a representative of FIOB in 2009 during the declaration against migration. And I asked him then, why has that declaration not gone viral or popular in the United States and other countries? And he told me "ah, well, no, it's that in the United States, the thing is that if you are on the left side of [00:40:00] politics, you couldn't criticize anything about migration." I mean, all migration is nice, right? There is no mirror to reality, but if you criticize migration in any way, you are automatically part of the right or the extreme right. You are a son of Trump, etc.

Aldo: In fact, for example, Trump, we couldn't say that he's a Native American, right? Native Americans don't have orange hair. So he came from another country, he came from Europe. And well, maybe now he feels like an American and doesn't want others to go to that country illegally, like maybe his parents came to the United States to pay expensive rents and receive low salaries.

But he has already adapted to the capitalist style of the United States. He has [00:41:00] United States citizenship and now he does not want others to migrate. But I also do not think he wants to recognize the rights of Native Americans who have lived there for many more generations than the family of many others who now feel American.

I was watching a video a few days ago about how some families in Mongolia live. Mongolia is a country where there are still nomadic shepherds who do not live in a city or in an agricultural community. They live in a wide territory and follow their livestock, which changes location, defending it from the season of the year.

They don't need to emigrate. I mean, they've lived their life this way for a long time, for many generations. And they don't even need the economic resources to [00:42:00] buy things because they don't need so many things. They're in a tent so they can go somewhere else, maybe with the most basic furniture to be able to live inside their tent, and that's it.

And that doesn't mean they are poor. Capitalism measures poverty based on economic income. If you earn less than a day, then you are a very poor person. But... money is not going to solve all the problems in the world. So, I think we have to start looking at ourselves in a different way and see that economic resources are not the only solution for life.

We have been led to believe this in recent years. So, today, those who do not have money are poor, right? But I think that there are other ways in which most of humanity has lived on this planet that were not like this capitalist way of life that is being imposed on us today, right? And they are imposing it on us because [00:43:00] there are fewer and fewer people who want to control the world economy.

I mean, we see it. There are fewer and fewer national companies that have, for example, the seed and nursery business that existed in Mexico 30 years ago, which has disappeared in recent years. And now, four large companies worldwide have them. Obviously, they want to have the seed business, and if they don't want anyone else to have a seed business or for farmers to not have their own seeds to survive, then they are expropriating the possibility of generating a life in a different way, right? So they are going to force us, or they want to force us, to make our lives depend on what they can sell us, and make those other ways of surviving on the planet disappear.

I believe that these other forms, although very deteriorated, [00:44:00] very battered, are still valid in many places and there will be people who want to claim them, we want to claim them and we believe that there is another way of living on this planet. There are many other ways of living on your planet that are.

Chris: Thanks, Aldo. This Gloria, would you like to add anything?

Gloria: Yes, well, maybe the reason why the declaration is not so famous is because, as Aldo says, we are so focused on capitalism that if for a moment we did not focus on that area of capitalism, I feel that everyone would say that they have a decent life on their lands and they would stay longer, but since we are all focused on the material, on money and all that, we say why are we going to give so much mention to the declaration, if it is not useful, [00:45:00] supposedly?

But it's because we've had this idea of capitalism so much that we always want to see money, everything that capitalism implies, and we forget a little about what it really means to have a decent life, because we are rich in many things, right? We have water, we have land. And we could be happy with that. But we're not satisfied with that. We always want more because those are the ideas that capitalism has put into us. Mm-hmm.

Chris: Thank you, Gloria. Anyway, for me, even though I've spent a lot of time visiting and working in some towns in Oaxaca, growing up in a modern, Western, urban metropolis, etc., I have to imagine a decent life. I didn't grow up in a society where they could point to an example of a decent life.

[00:46:00] In that book that you wrote by David be David Bacon about the most recent wave or caravan of migrants heading to the United States, this time from this Venezuela, it was mentioned in 2023 I believe, there are an estimated 200,000 migrants entering the United States. Given those numbers and the various crises that force people to move in our times, what advice or comments would you give to people, whether they are indigenous peasants or modern people who see migration as the only answer?

Gloria: Yes. Yes. Well, the advice I would give would be that if you have the possibilities, as I say, if you have them.

Even if they don't [00:47:00] have much, no, but if I was born in an area where there is no violence, where more or less, if they can live more or less, if they can have a decent life or something that can be compared to a decent life, then they should stay there. There is no need. Well, yes. You know, there is a need, but they should not be forced to migrate?

Because it is complicated, it is difficult, everything they are going to suffer, everything that it implies, as I say, also a principle, many emigrate to improve their lives, but also to improve the lives of their families. But many, when those families for whom they left return, when they return, they no longer find that family. It is already dead.

Many of us, who have reasons for emigrating, left to give a better life to our parents, but our parents have already died and we have not returned yet. And life was supposed to give us a better life, but it never happened. We are simply surviving, but we have never, ever fulfilled that dream.

And I say, the advice I would give them is that if they have the possibility of having a decent life in their lands, then they should stay there and not see migration as the great dream, as we all imagine it, right?

Aldo: Well, I think that migration is not a decision of the people who are forced to migrate. There are many factors. The United States needs cheap labor, as you said. So, even though Trump says he doesn't want emigrants, he does want migrants. And what is happening in Venezuela, well, at the end of the day, it is part of the policies that were made in the United States, right? That is where they put that country in crisis.

And then a ticket from the United States arrived [00:49:00] and told his fellow countrymen that they were immigrating to the United States. They were going to be welcomed. They never imagined the ordeal they had to endure in transit to get to the United States. And when they get to the United States, they are not welcomed as well as they had been promised would be, right?

And in Mexico, we see now in our country, for example, how violence in rural areas has increased exponentially. This violence is not only forcing people to migrate, but it is also evicting them from their lands, right? And normally this is done because there are other interests in those lands and they want them, they want the land, but they want them without people.

And then the mechanism of violence will be implemented so that these [00:50:00] people are forced to leave and therefore, they are forced to migrate wherever, because they can no longer live in peace in the community where they were born, where they are used to living, right? So migration is not a natural phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that has been created by capital itself , which needs it to survive as a capitalist system , and which is taking away the possibility of living well from people who live in very remote places where they did not even need its existence as a system.

That.

Chris: Thanks, Aldo. Yes, surely the causes of migration often come from the capitalist engine of [00:51:00] war, plagues and hunger.

And we can think more about the fact that there are certain people who have to emigrate, who have to emigrate. They have no choice. And also, when they emigrate and the news of money, prestige, privilege, returns to the villages, to the families, the issue can also be left in matters of ambition, envy, desire, that people who have a choice can understand the consequences for their own town, their own people, for those who stay or leave behind, right? And well, I would like on behalf of our listeners, to thank them very much for their time and [00:52:00] presence today for their reflections and considerations for their work and commitments in the world.

I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you. And until next time, thank you, Aldo. Thank you, Gloria.

Gloria: Same, thanks!

Aldo: Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Gloria. See you later.

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Mi entrevistado en este episodio es Carlos A. Scolari, Catedrático del Departamento de Comunicación de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Barcelona. Ha sido Investigador Principal de diversos proyectos de investigación internacionales y estatales, desde el proyecto H2020 TRANSLITERACY (entre 2015 y 2018) hasta el proyecto LITERAC_IA, que comenzó en 2024 y dirige junto a María del Mar Guerrero. Sus últimos libros son Cultura Snack (2020), La guerra de las plataformas (2022) y Sobre la evolución de los medios (2024). Ahora está trabajando en un libro sobre los fósiles mediáticos.

Notas del Episodio

• Historia de ecologia de los medios

• Historia de Carlos

• Diferencias entre el anglosfero y el hispanosfero

• La coevolucion entre tecnologia y humanos

• La democratizacion de los medios

• Evolucion de los medios

• Alienacion y addiccion

• Como usar los medios conscientemente

Tarea

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Sobre la evolución de los medios

Hipermediaciones (Libros)

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Transcrito en espanol (English Below)

Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido al podcast el fin de turismo Carlos. Gracias por poder hablar conmigo hoy. Es un gran gusto tener tu presencia aquí conmigo hoy.

Carlos: No gracias a ti, Chris, por la invitación. Es un enorme placer honor charlar contigo, gran viajero y bueno, yo nunca investigué directamente el tema del turismo.

Pero bueno, entiendo que vamos a hablar de ecología de los medios y temas colaterales que nos pueden servir para entender mejor, darle un sentido a todo esto que está pasando en el mundo del turismo. Bueno, yo trabajo en Barcelona. No vivo exactamente en la ciudad, pero trabajo, en la universidad en Barcelona, en la zona céntrica.

Y bueno, cada vez que voy a la ciudad cada día se incrementa la cantidad de turistas y se incrementa el debate sobre el turismo, en todas sus dimensiones. Así que es un tema que está la orden del día, no?

Chris: Sí, pues me imagino que aunque si no te gusta pensar o si no quieres pensar en el turismo allá, es inevitable tener como una enseñanza [00:01:00] personal de esa industria.

Carlos: Sí, hasta que se está convirtiendo casi en un criterio taxonómico, no? ...de clasificación o ciudades con mucho turista ciudades o lugares sin turistas que son los más buscados hasta que se llenan de turistas. Entonces estamos en un círculo vicioso prácticamente.

Chris: Ya pues, que en algún memento se que se cambia, se rompe el ciclo, al menos para dar cuenta de lo que estamos haciendo con el comportamiento.

Y, yo entiendo que eso también tiene mucho que ver con la ecología de los medios, la falta de capacidad de entender nuestros comportamientos, actitudes, pensamientos, sentimientos, etcétera. Entonces, antes de seguir por tu trabajo y obras, este me gustaría preguntarte de tu camino y de tu vida.

Primero me pregunto si podrías definir para nuestros oyentes qué es la ecología de los medios y cómo te [00:02:00] interesó en este campo? Cómo llegaste a dedicar a tu vida a este estudio?

Carlos: Sí. A ver un poco. Hay una, esta la historia oficial. Diríamos de la ecología de los medios o en inglés "media ecology," es una campo de investigación, digamos, eh, que nace en los años 60. Hay que tener en cuenta sobre todos los trabajos de Marshall McLuhan, investigador canadiense muy famoso a nivel mundial. Era quizá el filósofo investigador de los medios más famosos en los años 60 y 70.

Y un colega de el, Neil Postman, que estaba en la universidad de New York en New York University un poco, digamos entre la gente que rodeaba estos dos referentes, no, en los años 60, de ahí se fue cocinando, diríamos, lo que después se llamó la media ecology. Se dice que el primero que habló de media ecology que aplicó esta metáfora a los medios, fue el mismo Marshall McLuhan en algunas, conversaciones privadas, [00:03:00] cartas que se enviaban finales dos años 50, a principios de los 60, se enviaban los investigadores investigadora de estos temas?

Digamos la primera aparición pública del concepto de media ecology fue una conferencia en el año 1968 de Neil Postman. Era una intervención pública que la hablaba de un poco como los medios nos transforman y transforman los medios formar un entorno de nosotros crecemos, nos desarrollamos, no. Y nosotros no somos muy conscientes a veces de ese medio que nos rodea y nos modela.

El utilizó por primera vez el concepto de media ecology en una conferencia pública. Y ya, si vamos a principio de los años 70, el mismo Postman crea en NYU, en New York University crea el primer programa en media ecology. O sea que ya en el 73, 74 y 75, empieza a salir lo que yo llamo la segunda generación, de gente [00:04:00] formada algunos en estos cursos de New York.

Por ejemplo Christine Nystrom fue la primera tesis doctoral sobre mi ecology; gente como, Paul Levinson que en el año 1979 defiende una tesis doctoral dirigida por Postman sobre evolución de los medios, no? Y lo mismo pasaba en Toronto en los años 70. El Marshall McLuhan falleció en el diciembre del 80.

Digamos que los años 70 fueron su última década de producción intelectual. Y hay una serie de colaboradores en ese memento, gente muy joven como Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, que después un poco siguieron trabajando un poco todo esta línea, este enfoque. Y ahí hablamos del frente canadiense, eh?

Toda esta segunda generación fue desarrollando, fue ampliando aplicando. No nos olvidemos de Eric McLuhan, el hijo de Marshall, que también fue parte de toda esta movida. [00:05:00] Y si no recuerdo mal en el año 2000, se crea la asociación la Media Ecology Association, que es la Asociación de Ecología de los Medios, que es una organización académica, científica, que nuclea a la gente que se ocupa de media ecology.

Si pensamos a nivel más científico epistemológico, podemos pensar esta metáfora de la ecología de los medios desde dos o tres perspectivas. Por un lado, esta idea de que los medios crean ambientes. Esta es una idea muy fuerte de Marsha McLuhan, de Postman y de todo este grupo, no? Los medios - "medio" entendido en sentido muy amplio, no, cualquier tecnología podría ser un medio para ellos.

Para Marsha McLuhan, la rueda es un medio. Un un telescopio es un medio. Una radio es un medio y la televisión es un medio, no? O sea, cualquier tecnología puede considerarse un medio. Digamos que estos medios, estas tecnologías, generan un [00:06:00] ambiente que a nosotros nos transforma. Transforma nuestra forma, a veces de pensar nuestra forma de percibir el mundo, nuestra concepción del tiempo del espacio.

Y nosotros no somos conscientes de ese cambio. Pensemos que, no sé, antes de 1800, si alguien tenía que hacer un viaje de mil kilómetros (y acá nos acercamos al turismo) kilómetros era un viaje que había que programarlo muchos meses antes. Con la llegada del tren, ya estamos en 1800, esos kilómetros se acortaron. Digamos no? Ahí vemos como si a nosotros hoy nos dicen 1000 kilómetros.

Bueno, si, tomamos un avión. Es una hora, una hora y cuarto de viaje. Hoy 1000 kilómetro es mucho menos que hace 200 años y incluso a nivel temporal, se a checo el tiempo. No? Todo eso es consecuencia, digamos este cambio, nuestra percepción es consecuencia de una serie de medios y tecnologías.

El ferrocarril. Obviamente, hoy tenemos los aviones. Las mismas redes digitales que, un poco nos han llevado esta idea de "tiempo [00:07:00] real," esta ansiedad de querer todo rápido, no? También esa es consecuencia de estos cambios ambientales generados por los medios y las tecnologías, eh? Esto es un idea muy fuerte, cuando McLuhan y Postman hablaban de esto en los años 60, eran fuertes intuiciones que ellos tenían a partir de una observación muy inteligente de la realidad. Hoy, las ciencias cognitivas, mejor las neurociencia han confirmado estas hipótesis. O sea, hoy existen una serie de eh metodología para estudiar el cerebro y ya se ve como las tecnologías.

Los medios afectan incluso la estructura física del cerebro. No? Otro tema que esto es histórico, que los medios afectan nuestra memoria. Esto viene de Platón de hace 2500 años, que él decía que la escritura iba a matar la memoria de los hombres. Bueno, podemos pensar nosotros mismos, no, eh?

O por lo menos esta generación, que [00:08:00] vivimos el mundo antes y después de las aplicaciones móviles. Yo hace 30 años, 25 años, tenía mi memoria 30-40 números telefónicos. Hoy no tengo ninguno. Y en esa pensemos también el GPS, no? En una época, los taxistas de Londres, que es una ciudad latica se conocían a memoria la ciudad. Y hoy eso, ya no hace falta porque tienen GPS.

Y cuando han ido a estudiar el cerebro de los taxistas de Londres, han visto que ciertas áreas del cerebro se han reducido, digamos, así, que son las áreas que gestionaban la parte espacial. Esto ya McLuhan, lo hablaba en los años 60. Decía como que los cambios narcotizan ciertas áreas de la mente decía él.

Pero bueno, vemos que mucha investigación empírica, bien de vanguardia científica de neurociencia está confirmando todas estos pensamientos, todas estas cosas que se decían a los años 60 en adelante, por la media ecology. Otra posibilidad es entender [00:09:00] esto como un ecosistema de medios, Marshall McLuhan siempre decía no le podemos dar significado,

no podemos entender un medio aislado de los otros medios. Como que los medios adquieren sentido sólo en relación con otros medios. También Neil Postman y mucha otra gente de la escuela de la media ecology, defiende esta posición, de que, bueno, los medios no podemos entender la historia del cine si no la vinculamos a los videojuegos, si no lo vinculamos a la aparición de la televisión.

Y así con todos los medios, no? Eh? Hay trabajos muy interesantes. Por ejemplo, de como en el siglo 19, diferentes medios, podríamos decir, que coevolucionaron entre sí. La prensa, el telégrafo. El tren, que transportaba los diarios también, aparecen las agencias de noticias. O sea, vemos cómo es muy difícil entender el desarrollo de la prensa en el siglo XIX y no lo vinculamos al teléfono, si no lo vinculamos a la fotografía, si no lo vinculamos a la radio fotografía, [00:10:00] también más adelante.

O sea, esta idea es muy fuerte. No también es otro de los principios para mí fundamentales de esta visión, que sería que los medios no están solos, forman parte de un ecosistema y si nosotros queremos entender lo que está pasando y cómo funciona todo esto, no podemos, eh, analizar los medios aislados del resto.

Hay una tercera interpretación. Ya no sé si es muy metafórica. No? Sobre todo, gente en Italia como el investigador Fausto Colombo de Milán o Michele Cometa, es un investigador de Sicilia, Michele Cometa que él habla de l giro, el giro ecomedial. Estos investigadores están moviéndose en toda una concepción según la cual, estamos en único ecosistema mediático que está contaminado.

Está contaminado de "fake news" está contaminado de noticias falsas, está contaminado de discursos de odio, etcétera, etc. Entonces ellos, digamos, retoman esta metáfora ecológica para decir [00:11:00] precisamente tenemos que limpiar este ecosistema así como el ecosistema natural está contaminado, necesita una intervención de limpieza, digamos así de purificación, eh?

También el ecosistema mediático corre el mismo peligro, no? Y esta gente también llama la atención, y yo estoy muy cerca de esta línea de trabajo sobre la dimensión material de la comunicación. Y esto también tiene que ver con el turismo, queriendo, no? El impacto ambiental que tiene la comunicación hoy.

Entrenar una inteligencia artificial implica un consumo eléctrico brutal; mantener funcionando las redes sociales, eh, tiktok, youtube, lo que sea, implica millones de servidores funcionando que chupan energía eléctrica y hay que enfriarlos además, consumiendo aún más energía eléctrica. Y eso tiene un impacto climático no indiferente.

Así que, bueno, digamos, vemos que está metáfora de lo ecológico, aplicado los medios da para dos o tres interpretaciones.

Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. Siento que cuando yo empecé tomando ese curso de de Andrew McLuhan, el nieto de Marshall, como te mencioné, cambio mi perspectiva totalmente - en el mundo, en la manera como entiendo y como no entiendo también las nuestras tecnologías, mis movimientos, etcétera, pero ya, por una persona que tiene décadas de estudiando eso, me gustaría saber de de como empezaste. O sea, Andrew, por ejemplo tiene la excusa de su linaje, no de su papá y su abuelo.

Pero entonces, como un argentino joven empezó aprendiendo de ecología de medios.

Carlos: Bueno, yo te comento. Yo estudié comunicación en argentina en Rosario. Terminé la facultad. El último examen el 24 de junio del 86, que fue el día que nacía el Lionel Messi en Rosario, en Argentina el mismo día. Y [00:13:00] yo trabajaba, colaboraba en una asignatura en una materia que era teorías de la comunicación.

E incluso llegué a enseñar hasta el año 90, fueron tres años, porque ya después me fui vivir Italia. En esa época, nosotros leíamos a Marshall McLuhan, pero era una lectura muy sesgada ideológicamente. En América latina, tú lo habrás visto en México. Hay toda una historia, una tradición de críticas de los medios, sobre todo, a todo lo que viene de estados unidos y Canadá está muy cerca de Estados Unidos.

Entonces, digamos que en los años 70 y 80 y y hasta hoy te diría muchas veces a Marshall McLuhan se lo criticó mucho porque no criticaba los medios. O sea el te tenía una visión. Él decía, Neil Postman, si tenía una visión muy crítica. Pero en ese caso, este era una de las grandes diferencias entre Postman y McLuhan, que Marshall McLuhan, al menos en [00:14:00] público, él no criticaba los medios. Decía bueno, yo soy un investigador, yo envío sondas. Estoy explorando lo que pasa.

Y él nunca se sumó... Y yo creo que eso fue muy inteligente por parte de él... nunca se sumó a este coro mundial de crítica a los medios de comunicación. En esa época, la televisión para mucha gente era un monstruo.

Los niños no tenían que ver televisión. Un poco lo que pasa hoy con los móviles y lo que pasa hoy con tiktok. En esa época en la televisión, el monstruo. Entonces, había mucha investigación en Estados Unidos, que ya partía de la base que la televisión y los medios son malos para la gente.

Vemos que es una historia que se repite. Yo creo que en ese sentido, Marshall McLuhan, de manera muy inteligente, no se sumó ese coro crítico y él se dedico realmente a pensar los medios desde una perspectiva mucho más libre, no anclada por esta visión yo creo demasiado ideologizada, que en América Latina es muy fuerte. Es muy fuerte. Esto no implica [00:15:00] bajar la guardia, no ser crítico. Al contrario.

Pero yo creo que el el verdadero pensamiento crítico parte de no decir tanto ideológica, decimos "esto ya es malo. Vamos a ver esto." Habrá cosas buenas. Habrá cosas mala. Habrá cosa, lo que es innegable, que los medios mas ya que digamos son buenos son va, nos transforman. Y yo creo que eso fue lo importante de la idea McLuhaniana.

Entonces mi primer acercamiento a McLuhan fue una perspectiva de los autores críticos que, bueno, sí, viene de Estados Unidos, no critica los medios. Vamos a criticarlo a nosotros a él, no? Y ese fue mi primer acercamiento a Marshall McLuhan.

Yo me fui a Italia en la decada de 90. Estuve casi ocho años fuera de la universidad, trabajando en medios digitales, desarrollo de páginas, webs, productos multimédia y pretexto. Y a finales de los 90, dije quiero volver a la universidad. Quiero ser un doctorado. Y dije, "quiero hacer un doctorado. Bueno. Estando en Italia, el doctorado iba a ser de semiótica." Entonces hizo un [00:16:00] doctorado. Mi tesis fue sobre semiótica de las interfaces.

Ahi tuve una visión de las interfaces digitales que consideran que, por ejemplo, los instrumentos como el mouse o joystick son extensiones de nuestro cuerpo, no? El mouse prolonga la mano y la mete dentro de la pantalla, no? O el joystick o cualquier otro elemento de la interfaz digital? Claro. Si hablamos de que el mouse es una extensión de la mano, eso es una idea McLuhaniana.

Los medios como extensiones del ser humano de sujeto. Entonces, claro ahi yo releo McLuhan en italiano a finales de los años 90, y me reconcilio con McLuhan porque encuentro muchas cosas interesantes para entender precisamente la interacción con las máquinas digitales.

En el a 2002, me mudo con mi familia a España. Me reintegro la vida universitaria. [00:17:00] Y ahí me pongo a estudiar la relación entre los viejos y los nuevos medios. Entonces recupero la idea de ecosistema. Recupero toda la nueva, la idea de ecología de mi ecology. Y me pongo a investigar y releer a McLuhan por tercera vez.

Y a leerlo en profundidad a él y a toda la escuela de mi ecology para poder entender las dinámicas del actual ecosistema mediático y entender la emergencia de lo nuevo y cómo lo viejo lucha por adaptarse.

En el 2009, estuve tres meses trabajando con Bob Logan en the University of Toronto. El año pasado, estuve en el congreso ahí y tuvimos dos pre conferencias con gente con Paolo Granata y todo el grupo de Toronto.

O sea que, tengo una relación muy fuerte con todo lo que se producía y se produce en Toronto. Y bueno, yo creo que, a mí hoy, la media ecology, me sirve muchísimo junto a otras disciplina como la semiótica para poder entender el ecosistema [00:18:00] mediático actual y el gran tema de investigación mío hoy, que es la evolución del la ecosistema mediático.

Mm, digamos que dentro de la media ecology, empezando de esa tesis doctoral del 79 de Paul Levinson, hay toda una serie de contribuciones, que un poco son los que han ido derivando en mi último libro que salió el año pasado en inglés en Routledge, que se llama The Evolution of Media y acaba de salir en castellano.

Qué se llama Sobre La Evolución De los Medios. En la teoría evolutiva de los medios, hay mucha ecología de los medios metidos.

Chris: Claro, claro. Pues felicidad es Carlos. Y vamos a volver en un ratito de ese tema de la evolución de medios, porque yo creo que es muy importante y obviamente es muy importante a ti. Ha sido como algo muy importante en tu trabajo. Pero antes de de salir de esa esquina de pensamiento, hubo una pregunta que me mandó Andrew McLuhan para ti, que ya ella contestaste un poco, pero este tiene que ver entre las diferencias en los [00:19:00] mundos de ecología de medios anglofonos y hispánicos. Y ya mencionaste un poco de eso, pero desde los tiempos en los 80 y noventas, entonces me gustaría saber si esas diferencias siguen entre los mundos intelectuales, en el mundo anglofono o hispánico.

Y pues, para extender su pregunta un poco, qué piensas sería como un punto o tema o aspecto más importante de lo que uno de esos mundos tiene que aprender el otro en el significa de lo que falta, quizás.

Carlos: Si nos focalizamos en el trabajo de Marshall McLuhan, no es que se lo criticó sólo de América Latina.

En Europa no caía simpático Marshall McLuhan en los 60, 70. Justamente por lo mismo, porque no criticaba el sistema capitalista de medios. La tradición europea, la tradición de la Escuela de Frankfurt, la escuela de una visión anti [00:20:00] capitalista que denuncia la ideología dominante en los medio de comunicación.

Eso es lo que entra en América Latina y ahí rebota con mucha fuerza. Quizá la figura principal que habla desde América Latina, que habló mucho tiempo de América latina es Armand Mattelart. Matterlart es un teórico en la comunicación, investigador de Bélgica.

Y él lo encontramos ya a mediados de los años 60 finales de los 60 en Chile en un memento muy particular de la historia de Chile donde había mucha politización y mucha investigación crítica, obviamente con el con con con con el capitalismo y con el imperialismo estadounidense.

Quizá la la obra clásica de ese memento es el famoso libro de Mattelart y Dorfman, eh, eh? Para Leer El Pato Donald, que donde ellos desmontan toda la estructura ideológica capitalista, imperialista, que había en los cics en las historietas del pato Donald.

Ellos dicen esto se publicó a [00:21:00] principio los 70. Es quizá el libro más vendido de la comic latinoamericana hasta el día de hoy, eh? Ellos dicen hay ideología en la literatura infantil. Con el pato Donald, le están llenando la cabeza a nuestros niños de toda una visión del mundo muy particular.

Si uno le el pato Donald de esa época, por lo menos, la mayor parte de las historia del pato Donald, que era, había que a buscar un tesoro y adónde. Eran lugares africana, peruviana, incaica o sea, eran países del tercer mundo. Y ahí el pato Donald, con sus sobrinos, eran lo suficientemente inteligentes para volverse con el oro a Patolandia.

Claro. Ideológicamente. Eso no se sostiene.

Entonces, la investigación hegemónica en esa época en Europa, en Francia, la semiología pero sobre todo, en América latina, era ésa. Hay que estudiar el mensaje. Hay que estudiar el contenido, porque ahí está la ideología [00:22:00] dominante del capitalismo y del imperialismo.

En ese contexto, entra McLuhan. Se traduce McLuhan y que dice McLuhan: el medio es el mensaje. No importa lo que uno lee, lo que nos transforma es ver televisión, leer comics, escuchar la radio. Claro, iba contramano del mainstream de la investigación en comunicación. O sea, digamos que en América latina, la gente que sigue en esa línea que todavía existe y es fuerte, no es una visión muy crítica de todo esto, todavía hoy, a Marshal McLuhan le cae mal, pero lo mismo pasa en Europa y otros países donde la gente que busca una lectura crítica anti-capitalista y anti-sistémica de la comunicación, no la va a encontrar nunca en Marshall McLuhan, por más que sea de América latina, de de de Europa o de Asia.

Entonces yo no radicaría todo esto en un ámbito anglosajón y el latinoamericano.

Después, bueno, la hora de McLuhan es bastante [00:23:00] polisemica. Admite como cualquier autor así, que tiene un estilo incluso de escritura tan creativo en forma de mosaico.

No era un escritor Cartesiano ordenadito y formal. No, no. McLuhan era una explosión de ideas muy bien diseñada a propósito, pero era una explosión de ideas. Por eso siempre refrescan tener a McLuhan.

Entonces normal que surjan interpretaciones diferentes, no? En estados unidos en Canadá, en Inglaterra, en Europa continental o en Latinoamérica o en Japón, obviamente, no?

Siendo un autor que tiene estas características. Por eso yo no en no anclaría esto en cuestiones territoriales. Cuando uno busca un enfoque que no tenga esta carga ideológica para poder entender los medios, que no se limite sólo a denunciar el contenido.

McLuhan y la escuela de la ecología de los medios es fundamental y es un aporte muy, muy importante en ese sentido, no? Entonces, bueno, yo creo que McLuhan tuvo [00:24:00] detractores en Europa, tuvo detractores en América latina y cada tanto aparece alguno, pero yo creo que esto se ido suavizando. Yo quiero que, como que cada vez más se lo reivindica McLuhan.

La gente que estudia, por ejemplo, en Europa y en América latina, que quizá en su época criticaron a McLuhan, todas las teorías de la mediatización, por ejemplo, terminan coincidiendo en buena parte de los planteos de la media ecology. Hoy que se habla mucho de la materialidad de la comunicación, los nuevos materialismos, yo incluyo a Marshall McLuhan en uno de los pioneros des esta visión también de los nuevos materialismos. Al descentrar el análisis del contenido, al medio, a la cosa material, podemos considerar a macl también junto a Bruno Latour y otra gente como pionero, un poco de esta visión de no quedarse atrapados en el giro lingüístico, no, en el contenido, en el giro semiótico e incorporar también la dimensión material de la comunicación y el medio en sí.[00:25:00]

Chris: Muy bien. Muy bien, ya. Wow, es tanto, pero lo aprecio mucho. Gracias, Carlos. Y me gustaría seguir preguntándote un poco ahora de tu propio trabajo. Tienes un capítulo en tu libro. Las Leyes de la Interfaz titulado "Las Interfaces Co-evolucionan Con Sus Usuarios" donde escribes "estas leyes de la interfaz no desprecian a los artefactos, sus inventores ó las fuerzas sociales. Solo se limitan á insertarlos á una red socio técnica de relaciones, intercambios y transformaciones para poder analizarlos desde una perspectiva eco-evolutiva."

Ahora, hay un montón ahí en este paragrafito. Pero entonces, me gustaría preguntarte, cómo vea los humanos [00:26:00] co-evolucionando con sus tecnologías? Por ejemplo, nuestra forma de performatividad en la pantalla se convierte en un hábito más allá de la pantalla.

Carlos: Ya desde antes del homo sapiens, los homínidos más avanzados, digamos en su momento, creaban instrumentos de piedra. Hemos descubierto todos los neandertales tenían una cultura muy sofisticada, incluso prácticas casi y religiosas, más allá de la cuestión material de la construcción de artefactos. O sea que nuestra especie es impensable sin la tecnología, ya sea un hacha de piedra o ya sea tiktok o un smartphone.

Entonces, esto tenemos que tenerlo en cuenta cuando analizamos cualquier tipo de de interacción cotidiana, estamos rodeados de tecnología y acá, obviamente, la idea McLuhaniana es fundamental. Nosotros creamos estos medios. Nosotros creamos estas tecnologías.

Estas tecnologías también nos reformatean. [00:27:00] McLuhan, no me suena que haya usado el concepto de coevolución, pero está ahí. Está hablando de eso.

Ahora bien. Hay una coevolución si se quiere a larguísimo plazo, que, por ejemplo, sabemos que el desarrollo de instrumentos de piedra, el desarrollo del fuego, hizo que el homo sapiens no necesitara una mandíbula tan grande para poder masticar los alimentos. Y eso produce todo un cambio, que achicó la mandíbula le dejó más espacio en el cerebro, etcétera, etcétera. Eso es una coevolución en término genético, digamos a larguísimo plazo, okey.

También la posición eréctil, etcétera, etcétera. Pero, digamos que ya ahí había tecnologías humanas coevolucionando con estos cambios genéticos muy, muy lentos.

Pero ahora tenemos también podemos decir esta co evolución ya a nivel de la estructura neuronal, entonces lo ha verificado la neurociencia, como dije antes. Hay cambio físico en la estructura del cerebro a lo largo de la vida de una persona debido a la interacción con ciertas tecnologías. Y por qué pasa eso?

Porque [00:28:00] la producción, creación de nuevos medios, nuevas tecnologías se ido acelerando cada vez más. Ahi podemos hacer una curva exponencial hacia arriba, para algunos esto empezó hace 10,000 años. Para algunos esto se aceleró con la revolución industrial. Algunos hablan de la época el descubrimiento de América.

Bueno, para alguno esto es un fenómeno de siglo xx. El hecho es que en términos casi geológicos, esto que hablamos del antropoceno es real y está vinculado al impacto del ser humano sobre nuestro ambiente y lo tecnológico es parte de ese proceso exponencial de co evolución.

Nosotros hoy sentimos un agobio frente a esta aceleración de la tecnología y nuestra necesidad. Quizá de adaptarnos y coevolucionar con ella. Como esto de que todo va muy rápido. Cada semana hay un problema nuevo, una aplicación nueva. Ahora tenemos la inteligencia artificial, etc, etcétera.

Pero esta sensación [00:29:00] no es nueva. Es una sensación de la modernidad. Si uno lee cosas escritas en 1,800 cuando llega el tren también la gente se quejaba que el mundo iba muy rápido. Dónde iremos a parar con este caballo de hierro que larga humo no? O sea que esta sensación de velocidad de cambio rápido ya generaciones anteriores la vivían. Pero evidentemente, el cambio hoy es mucho más rápido y denso que hace dos siglos. Y eso es real también.

Así que, bueno, nuestra fe se va coevolucionando y nos vamos adaptando como podemos, yo esta pregunta se la hice hace 10 años a Kevin Kelly, el primer director de la revista Wire que lo trajimos a Barcelona y el que siempre es muy optimista. Kevin Kelly es determinista tecnológico y optimista al mismo tiempo.

Él decía que "que bueno que el homo sapiens lo va llevando bastante bien. Esto de co evolucionar con la tecnología." Otra gente tiene una [00:30:00] visión radicalmente opuesta, que esto es el fin del mundo, que el homo sapiens estamos condenados a desaparecer por esta co evolución acelerada, que las nuevas generaciones son cada vez más estúpidas.

Yo no creo eso. Creo, como McLuhan, que los medios nos reforman, nos cambian algunas cosas quizás para vivir otras quizá no tanto, pero no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de esto para nada.

Chris: Bien, bien. Entonces cuando mencionaste lo de la televisión, yo me acuerdo mucho de de mi niñez y no sé por qué. Quizás fue algo normal en ese tiempo para ver a tele como un monstruo, como dijiste o quizás porque mis mis papás eran migrantes pero fue mucho de su idea de esa tecnología y siempre me dijo como no, no, no quédate ahí tan cerca y eso.

Entonces, aunque lo aceptaron, ellos comprendieron que el poder [00:31:00] de la tele que tenía sobre las personas. Entonces ahora todos, parece a mí, que todos tienen su propio canal, no su propio programación, o el derecho o privilegio de tener su propio canal o múltiples canales.

Entonces, es una gran pregunta, pero cuáles crees que son las principales consecuencias de darle a cada uno su propio programa en el sentido de como es el efecto de hacer eso, de democratizar quizás la tecnología en ese sentido?

Carlos: Cuando dices su propio canal, te refieres a la posibilidad de emitir o construir tu propia dieta mediática.

Chris: Bueno primero, pero puede ser ambos, claro, no? O sea, mi capacidad de tener un perfil o cuenta mía personal. Y luego como el fin del turismo, no? Y luego otro.

Carlos: Sí, a ver. Yo creo que, bueno, esto fue el gran cambio radical que empezó a darse a partir la década del 2000 o [00:32:00] sea, hace 25 años. Porque la web al principio sí era una red mundial en los años 90. Pero claro la posibilidad de compartir un contenido y que todo el mundo lo pudiera ver, estaba muy limitado a crear una página web, etcétera. Cuando aparecen las redes sociales o las Web 2.0 como se la llamaba en esa época y eso se suma los dispositivos móviles, ahí se empieza a generar esta cultura tan difundida de la creación de contenido.

Hasta digamos que hasta ese momento quien generaba contenido era más o menos un profesional en la radio y en la televisión, pero incluso en la web o en la prensa o el cine. Y a partir de ahí se empieza, digamos, a abrir el juego.

En su momento, esto fue muy bien saludado fue qué bueno! Esto va nos va a llevar a una sociedad más democrática. 25 años después, claro, estamos viendo el lado oscuro solamente. Yo creo que el error hace 25 años era pensar solo las posibilidades [00:33:00] buenas, optimistas, de esto. Y hoy me parece que estamos enredados en discursos solamente apocalípticos no?

No vemos las cosas buenas, vemos solo las cosas malas. Yo creo que hay de las dos cosas hoy. Claro, hoy cualquier persona puede tener un canal, sí, pero no todo el mundo crea un canal. Los niveles de participación son muy extraños, o sea, la mayor parte de la población de los usuarios y usuarias entre en las redes. Mira. Mete un me gusta. Quizá un comentario. Cada tanto comparte una foto.

Digamos que los "heavy users" o "heavy producers" de contenido son siempre una minoría, ya sea profesionales, ya sea influencers, streamers, no? Es siempre, yo no sé si acá estamos en un 20-80 o un 10-90 son estas curvas que siempre fue así? No?

Si uno ve la Wikipedia, habrá un 5-10 por ciento de gente que genera contenido mucho menos incluso. Y un 90 por ciento que se [00:34:00] beneficia del trabajo de una minoría. Esto invierte la lógica capitalista? La mayoría vive de la minoría y esto pasaba antes también en otros, en otros sistemas. O sea que en ese sentido, es sólo una minoría de gente la que genera contenido de impacto, llamémoslo así, de alcance mayor.

Pero bueno, yo creo que el hecho de que cualquier persona pueda dar ese salto para mí, está bien. Genera otra serie de problemas, no? Porque mientras que genera contenido, es un profesional o un periodista, digamos, todavía queda algo de normas éticas y que deben cumplir no? Yo veo que en el mundo de los streamers, el mundo de los Tik tokers etcétera, etcétera, lo primero que ellos dicen es, nosotros no somos periodistas.

Y de esa forma, se inhiben de cualquier, control ético o de respeto a normas éticas profesionales. Por otro lado, las plataformas [00:35:00] Meta, Google, todas. Lo primero que te dicen es nosotros no somos medio de comunicación. Los contenidos los pone la gente.

Nosotros no tenemos nada que ver con eso. Claro, ellos también ahí se alejan de toda la reglamentación. Por eso hubo que hacer. Europa y Estados Unidos tuvo que sacar leyes especiales porque ellos decían no, no, las leyes del periodismo a nosotros no nos alcanzan. Nosotros no somos editores de contenidos.

Y es una mentira porque las plataformas sí editan contenido a través los algoritmos, porque nos están los algoritmos, nos están diciendo que podemos ver y que no está en primera página. No están filtrando información, o sea que están haciendo edición. Entonces, como que se generan estas equivocaciones.

Y eso es uno de los elementos que lleva esta contaminación que mencioné antes en el en los ámbitos de la comunicación. Pero yo, si tuviera que elegir un ecosistema con pocos enunciadores pocos medios controlados por profesionales y este ecosistema [00:36:00] caótico en parte contaminado con muchos actores y muchas voces, yo prefiero el caos de hoy a la pobreza del sistema anterior.

Prefiero lidiar, pelearme con y estar buscar de resolver el problema de tener mucha información, al problema de la censura y tener sólo dos, tres puntos donde se genera información. Yo he vivido en Argentina con dictadura militar con control férreo de medios, coroneles de interventores en la radio y la televisión que controlaban todo lo que se decía.

Y yo prefiero el caos de hoy, aún con fake news y todo lo que quieras. Prefiero el caos de hoy a esa situación.

Chris: Sí, sí, sí, sí. Es muy fuerte de pensar en eso para la gente que no han vivido en algo así, no? Osea algunos familiares extendidos han vivido en mundos comunistas, en el pasado en el este de Europa y no se hablan [00:37:00] exactamente así.

Pero, se se hablan, no? Y se se dicen que lo que lo que no tenía ni lo que no tiene por control y por fuerza. Entonces, en ese como mismo sentido de lo que falta de la memoria vivida, me gustaría preguntarte sobre tu nuevo libro. Y sobre la evolución de medios. Entonces me gustaría preguntarte igual por nuestros oyentes que quizás no han estudiado mucho de la ecología de los medios

Para ti qué es la evolución de los medios y por qué es importante para nuestro cambiante y comprensión del mundo. O sea, igual al lado y no solo pegado a la ecología de medios, pero la evolución de los medios,

Carlos: Sí, te cuento ahí hay una disciplina, ya tradicional que es la historia y también está la historia de la comunicación y historia de los medios. [00:38:00] Hay libros muy interesantes que se titulan Historia de la Comunicación de Gutenberg a Internet o Historia de la Comunicación del Papiro a Tiktok.

Entonces, qué pasa? Esos libros te dicen bueno, estaba el papiro, después vino el pergamino, el manuscrito, después en 1450 vino Gutenberg, llegó el libro. Pero eso el libro no te cuentan que pasó con el manuscrito, ni que pasó con el papiro. Y te dicen que llega la radio en 1920 y en 1950 llega la televisión y no te dicen que pasó con la radio, que pasó con el cine.

Son historias lineales donde un medio parece que va sustituyendo al otro. Y después tenemos muchos libros muy buenos también. Historia de la radio, historia de la televisión, historia de internet, historia del periodismo. Como dije antes, retomando una idea, de McLuhan no podemos entender los medios aislados.

Yo no puedo entender la evolución de la radio si no la vinculo a la prensa, a [00:39:00] la televisión y otro al podcast. Okey, entonces digo, necesitamos un campo de investigación, llamémoslo una disciplina en construcción, que es una teoría y también es metodología para poder entender el cambio mediático, todas estas transformaciones del ecosistema de medios a largo plazo y que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino, ver cómo esa red de medios fue evolucionando. Y eso yo lo llamo una teoría evolutiva o una "media evolution"

Y es lo que estoy trabajando ahora. Claro, esta teoría, este enfoque, este campo de investigación toma muchas cosas de la ecología de los medios, empezando por Marshall McLuhan pero también gente de la tradición previa a la media ecology como Harold Innis, el gran historiador, economista de la comunicación y de la sociedad, que fue quizás el intelectual más famoso en Canadá en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Harold Innis que influenció mucho a Marshall McLuhan [00:40:00]

Marshall McLuhann en la primera página de Gutenberg Galaxy, dice este libro no es otra cosa que una nota al pie de página de la obra de Harold Innis Entonces, Harold Innis que hizo una historia de los tiempos antiguos poniendo los medios al centro de esa historia. Para mí es fundamental. Incluso te diría a veces más que McLuhan, como referencia, a la hora de hacer una teoría evolutiva del cambio mediático. Y después, obviamente tomo muchas cosas de la historia de los medios.

Tomo muchas cosas de la arqueología de los medios (media archeology). Tomo cosas también de la gente que investigó la historia de la tecnología, la construcción social de la tecnología. O sea, la media evolution es un campo intertextual, como cualquier disciplina que toma cosas de todos estos campos para poder construir una teoría, un enfoque, una mirada que sea más a largo plazo, que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino que vea la evolución de todo el ecosistema mediático, prestando mucha atención a las relaciones [00:41:00] entre medios, y con esta visión más compleja sistémica de cómo cambian las cosas.

Yo creo que el cambio mediático es muy rápido y necesitamos una teoría para poder darle un sentido a todo este gran cambio, porque si nos quedamos analizando cosas muy micro, muy chiquititas, no vemos los grandes cambios. No nos podemos posicionar... esto un poco como el fútbol. Los mejores jugadores son los que tienen el partido en la cabeza y saben dónde está todo. No están mirando la pelota, pero saben dónde están los otros jugadores?

Bueno, yo creo que la media evolution sirve para eso. Más allá de que hoy estemos todos hablando de la IA generativa. No? Tener esta visión de de conjunto de todo el ecosistema mediático y tecnológico, yo creo que es muy útil.

Chris: Mm. Wow Increíble, increíble. Sí. Sí. Pienso mucho en como las nuevas generaciones o las generaciones más jóvenes en el día de hoy. O sea, [00:42:00] al menos más joven que yo, que la mayoría, como que tiene 20 años hoy, no tienen una memoria vívida de cómo fuera el mundo, sin redes sociales o sin el internet. Y así como me voy pensando en mi vida y como yo, no tengo una memoria de vida como fuera el mundo sin pantallas de cualquier tipo, o sea de tele de compus. No solo de internet o redes.

Carlos: Sí, no, te decia que mi padre vivió, mi padre tiene 90 años y él se recuerda en el año 58, 59, su casa fue la primera en un barrio de Rosario que tuvo televisión y transmitían a partir de la tarde seis, siete de la tarde. Entonces venían todos los vecinos y vecinas a ver televisión a la casa de mi abuela. Entonces cada uno, cada generación tiene sus historias. No?

Chris: Ajá. Ajá. Sí. Pues sí. Y también, como dijiste, para [00:43:00] entender los medios como sujetos o objetos individuales, o sea en su propio mundo, no? Este recuerdo un poco de la metáfora de Robin Wall Kimmerer que escribió un libro que se llama Braiding Sweetgrass o Trenzando Pasto Dulce supongo, en español. Y mencionó que para entender el entendimiento indígena, digamos entre comillas de tiempo, no necesitamos pensar en una línea, una flecha desde el pasado hacia el futuro. Pero, un lago, mientras el pasado, presente, y futuro existen, a la vez, en ese lago.

Y también pienso como en el lugar, el pasado, presente, y el futuro, como todos esos medios existiendo a la vez, como en un lago y obviamente en una ecología de su evolución de sus cambios.

Carlos: Es, muy interesante eso. Después te voy a pedir la referencia del libro porque, claro, [00:44:00] McLuhan siempre decía que el contenido de un medio es otro medio. Entonces, puede pasar que un medio del pasado deja su huella o influye en un medio del futuro. Y entonces ahí se rompe la línea temporal. Y esos son los fenómenos que a mí me interesa estudiar.

Chris: Mmm, mmm, pues Carlos para terminar, tengo dos últimas preguntas para ti. Esta vez un poco alineado con el turismo, y aunque no estas enfocado tanto en en el estudio de turismo. Por mis estudios y investigaciones y por este podcast, he amplificado esa definición de turismo para ver cómo existiría más allá de una industria. Y para mí, el turismo incluye también el deseo de ver una persona, un lugar o una cultura como destino, como algo útil, temporal en su valor de uso y por tanto, desechable. Entonces, me gustaría [00:45:00] preguntarte, si para ti parece que nuestros medios populares, aunque esto es un tiempo, digamos con más libertad de otros lugares o tiempos en el pasado, más autoritarianos o totalitarianos? Si te ves la posibilidad o la evidencia de que nuestros medios digamos como mainstream más usados, están creando o promoviendo un , un sentido de alienación en la gente por efectivamente quedarles a distancia al otro o la otra.

Carlos: Yo ya te dije no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de los medios. Nunca, la tuve. Esto no quita de que los medios y como dijimos antes, tienen problemas. Generan también contaminación. Llamémoslo así si seguimos con la metáfora, ? El tema de alienación viene desde hace [00:46:00] muchísimos años. Ya cuando estudiaba en la universidad, nunca sintonicé con las teorías de la alienación.

El concepto de alienación viene del siglo XIX. Toda una teoría de la conciencia, el sujeto, el proletario, llamémoslo, así que tenía que tomar conciencia de clase. Bueno, las raíces de esa visión del concepto alienación vienen de ahí. Yo, a mí nunca me convenció, justamente. Y acá si interesante.

El aporte de América Latina en teorías de la comunicación siempre fue diferente. Fue reivindicar la resignificación, la resemantización el rol activo del receptor, cuando muchas veces las teorías que venían de Europa o Estados Unidos tenían esta visión del receptor de la comunicación como un ser pasivo.

En ese sentido, la media ecology nunca entró en ese discurso porque se manejaba con otros parámetros, pero digamos que lo que era el mainstream de la investigación de estados unidos, pero también de Europa, siempre coincidían en esto en considerar el receptor pasivo, alienado, [00:47:00] estupidizado por los medios. Y yo realmente nunca, me convenció ese planteo, ni antes ni hoy, ni con la televisión de los 70 y 80, ni con el tiktok de hoy.

Esto no quita que puede haber gente que tenga alguna adicción, etcétera, etcétera. Pero yo no creo que toda la sociedad sea adicta hoy a la pantallita. Deja de ser adicción. Okey. Esto no implica que haya que no tener una visión crítica. Esto no implica que haya que eventualmente regular los usos de ciertas tecnologías, obviamente.

Pero de ahí a pensar que estamos en un escenario apocalíptico, de idiotización total del homo sapiens o de alienación. Yo no lo veo, ni creo que lo los estudios empíricos confirmen eso. Más allá que a veces hay elecciones y no nos gusten los resultados.

Pero ahí es interesante, porque cuando tu propio partido político pierde, siempre se le echa la culpa a los medios porque ganó el otro. Pero cuando tu partido político gana, nadie dice nada de los medios. Ganamos porque somos mejores, [00:48:00] porque tenemos mejores ideas, porque somos más democráticos, porque somos más bonitos.

Entonces, claro te das cuenta que se usan los medios como chivo expiatorio para no reconocer las propias debilidades políticas a la hora de denunciar una propuesta o de seducir al electorado.

Chris: Claro, claro. Ya pues estos temas son vastos y complejos. Y por eso me gusta, y por eso estoy muy agradecido por pasar este tiempo contigo, Carlos.

Pero los temas requieren un profundo disciplina para comprender, o al menos según yo, como alguien que está muy nuevo a estos temas. Entonces, a nuestra época, parece que somos, según yo, arrastrados a una velocidad sin precedentes. Nuestras tecnologías están avanzando y quizás socavando simultáneamente nuestra capacidad de comprender lo que está sucediendo en el mundo. Los usamos como protesta a veces como, como mencionaste, [00:49:00] pero sin una comprensión más profunda de cómo nos usan también.

Entonces tengo la curiosidad por saber qué papel desempeña la ecología de los medios en la redención o curación de la cultura en nuestro tiempo. Cómo podría la ecología de los medios ser un aliado, quizás, en nuestros caminos?

Carlos: Sí, yo creo que esta idea estaba presente, no? En los teóricos de la media ecology, digamos la primera generación.

Ahora que lo pienso, estaba también en la semiótica de Umberto Eco, no? Cuando decía la semiótica más allá de analizar cómo se construye significado, también aporta a mejorar la vida significativa, o sea, la vida cultural, la vida comunicacional, nuestro funcionamiento como sujeto, digamos. Y yo creo que en ese sentido, la media ecology también.

Digamos, si nosotros entendemos el ecosistema mediático, vamos a poder sacarlo mejor [00:50:00] coevolucionar mejor. Vamos a ser más responsables también a la hora de generar contenidos, a la hora de retwittear de manera a veces automática ciertas cosas. Yo creo que es todo un crecimiento de vivir una vida mediática sana, que yo creo que hoy existe esa posibilidad.

Yo estoy en Twitter desde el 2008-2009 y sólo dos veces tuve así un encontronazo y bloqueé a una persona mal educada. Después el resto de mi vida en Twitter, es rica de información de contactos. Aprendo muchísimo me entero de cosas que se están investigando. O sea, también están uno elegir otras cosas.

Y por ejemplo, donde veo que yo hay que hay redes que no me aportan nada, no directamente ni entro. También es eso de aprender a sacar lo mejor de este ecosistema mediático. Y lo mismo para el ecosistema natural. Así como estamos aprendiendo a preocuparnos de dónde viene la comida, [00:51:00] cuánto tiempo se va a tardar en disolver este teléfono móvil por los componentes que tiene. Bueno, también es tomar conciencia de eso. Ya sea en el mundo natural, como en el mundo de la comunicación. Y yo creo que todos estos conocimientos, en este caso, la media ecology nos sirve para captar eso, no? Y mejorar nosotros también como sujetos, que ya no somos más el centro del universo, que esta es la otra cuestión. Somos un átomo más perdido entre una complejidad muy grande.

Chris: Mm. Mm, pues que estas obras y trabajos y estudios tuyos y de los demás nos da la capacidad de leer y comprender ese complejidad, no?

O sea, parece más y más complejo cada vez y nos requiere como más y más discernimiento. Entonces, yo creo que pues igual, hemos metido mucho en tu voluntad y capacidad de [00:52:00] hacer eso y ponerlo en el mundo. Entonces, finalmente Carlos me gustaría a extender mi agradecimiento y la de nuestros oyentes por tu tiempo hoy, tu consideración y tu trabajo.

Siento que pues, la alfabetización mediática y la ecología de los medios son extremadamente deficientes en nuestro tiempo y su voluntad de preguntar sobre estas cosas y escribir sobre ellas es una medicina para un mundo quebrantado y para mi turístico. Entonces, así que muchísimas gracias, Carlos, por venir hoy.

Carlos: Gracias. Te agradezco por las preguntas. Y bueno, yo creo que el tema del turismo es un tema que está ocupa lugar central hoy. Si tú estuvieras en Barcelona, verías que todos los días se está debatiendo este tema. Así que yo creo que bueno, adelante con esa reflexión y esa investigación sobre el turismo, porque es muy pertinente y necesaria.

Chris: Pues sí, gracias. [00:53:00] Igual yo siento que hay una conexión fuerte entre esas definiciones más amplias de turismo y la ecología de medios. O sea, ha abierto una apertura muy grande para mí para entender el turismo más profundamente. Igual antes de terminar Carlos, cómo podrían nuestros oyentes encontrar tus libros y tu trabajo?

Sé que hemos hablado de dos libros que escribiste, pero hay mucho más. Muchísimo más. Entonces, cómo se pueden encontrarlos y encontrarte?

Carlos: Lo más rápido es en en mi blog, que es hipermediaciones.com

Ahí van a encontrar información sobre todos los libros que voy publicando, etcétera, etc. Y después, bueno, yo soy muy activo, como dije en Twitter X. Me encuentran la letra CEscolari y de Carlos es mi Twitter. Y bueno, también ahí trato de difundir información sobre estos [00:54:00] temas.

Como dije antes, aprendo mucho de esa red y trato de también devolver lo que me dan poniendo siempre información pertinente. Buenos enlaces. Y no pelearme mucho.

Chris: Muy bien, muy bien, pues voy a asegurar que esos enlaces y esas páginas estén ya en la sección de tarea el sitio web de El fin del turismo cuando sale el episodio.

Igual otras entrevistas y de tus libros. No hay falta. Entonces, con mucho gusto, los voy compartiendo. Bueno, Carlos, muchísimas gracias y lo aprecio mucho.

Carlos: Muchas gracias y nos vemos en México.

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English Transcription

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast The End of Tourism, Carlos. Thank you for being able to speak with me today. It's a great pleasure to have you here with me today.

Carlos: No, thank you, Chris, for the invitation. It is a great pleasure and honor to chat with you, a great traveler and, well, I have never directly investigated the subject of tourism.

Well, I understand that we are going to talk about media ecology and collateral issues that can help us better understand, give meaning to all that is happening in the world of tourism. Well, I work in Barcelona. I don't live in the city exactly, but I work at the university in Barcelona, in the central area.

Well, every time I go to the city, the number of tourists increases every day and the debate on tourism in all its dimensions increases. So it is a topic that is on the agenda, right?

Chris: Yes, well I imagine that even if you don't like to think or if you don't want to think about tourism there, it is inevitable to have a personal lesson [00:01:00] from that industry.

Carlos: Yes, to the point that it is almost becoming a taxonomic criterion, right? ...of classification or cities with a lot of tourists, cities or places without tourists that are the most sought after until they are filled with tourists. So we are practically in a vicious circle.

Chris: Well, at some point I know that it changes, the cycle breaks, at least to account for what we are doing with the behavior.

And I understand that this also has a lot to do with the ecology of the media, the lack of ability to understand our behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, etc. So, before continuing with your work and deeds, I would like to ask you about your path and your life.

First, I wonder if you could define for our listeners what media ecology is and how you [00:02:00] became interested in this field? How did you come to dedicate your life to this study?

Carlos: Yes. Let's see a little bit. There is one, this is the official history. We would say media ecology, it is a field of research, let's say, that was born in the 60s. We must take into account above all the work of Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian researcher who is very famous worldwide. He was perhaps the most famous media researcher philosopher in the 60s and 70s.

And a colleague of his, Neil Postman, who was at New York University, was a bit, let's say, among the people who surrounded these two references, no, in the 60s, from there it was brewing, let's say, what was later called media ecology. It is said that the first person to talk about media ecology, who applied this metaphor to the media, was Marshall McLuhan himself in some private conversations, [00:03:00] letters that were sent to each other in the late 50s, early 60s, by researchers on these topics?

Let's say the first public appearance of the concept of media ecology was a lecture in 1968 by Neil Postman. It was a public speech that talked about how the media transforms us and how the media transforms us, forming an environment in which we grow, develop, and so on. And we are sometimes not very aware of this environment that surrounds us and shapes us.

He first used the concept of media ecology in a public lecture. And then, if we go back to the early 70s, Postman himself created the first program in media ecology at NYU, at New York University. So, in 73, 74 and 75, what I call the second generation began to emerge, of people [00:04:00] some of whom were trained in these courses in New York.

For example, Christine Nystrom was the first PhD thesis on my ecology; people like Paul Levinson who in 1979 defended a PhD thesis directed by Postman on the evolution of the media, right? And the same thing happened in Toronto in the 70s. Marshall McLuhan died in December 80.

Let's say that the 70s were his last decade of intellectual production. And there are a number of collaborators at that time, very young people like Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, who later continued to work a bit along these lines, along these lines. And there we talk about the Canadian front, eh?

This whole second generation was developing, expanding and applying. Let's not forget Eric McLuhan, Marshall's son, who was also part of this whole movement. [00:05:00] And if I remember correctly, in 2000, the Media Ecology Association was created, which is the Media Ecology Association, which is an academic, scientific organization that brings together people who deal with media ecology.

If we think at a more scientific epistemological level, we can think of this metaphor of media ecology from two or three perspectives. On the one hand, this idea that media create environments. This is a very strong idea of Marsha McLuhan, of Postman and of this whole group, isn't it? The media - "medium" understood in a very broad sense, no, any technology could be a medium for them.

For Marsha McLuhan, the wheel is a medium. A telescope is a medium. A radio is a medium and television is a medium, right? I mean, any technology can be considered a medium. Let's say that these media, these technologies, generate a [00:06:00] environment that transforms us. It transforms our way, sometimes our way of thinking, our way of perceiving the world, our conception of time and space.

And we are not aware of that change. Let's think that, I don't know, before 1800, if someone had to make a trip of a thousand kilometers (and here we are approaching tourism) kilometers was a trip that had to be planned many months in advance. With the arrival of the train, we are already in 1800, those kilometers were shortened. Let's say no? There we see as if today they tell us 1000 kilometers.

Well, yes, we take a plane. It's an hour, an hour and a quarter of a journey. Today, 1000 kilometres is much less than 200 years ago and even in terms of time, time has changed. Right? All of that is a consequence, let's say, of this change, our perception is a consequence of a series of media and technologies.

The railroad. Obviously, today we have airplanes. The same digital networks that have somewhat brought us this idea of "time [00:07:00] real," this anxiety of wanting everything fast, right? That is also a consequence of these environmental changes generated by the media and technologies, eh? This is a very strong idea, when McLuhan and Postman talked about this in the 60s, they were strong intuitions that they had from a very intelligent observation of reality. Today, cognitive sciences, or rather neuroscience, have confirmed these hypotheses. In other words, today there are a series of methodologies to study the brain and we can already see how technologies...

The media even affects the physical structure of the brain. Right? Another thing that is historical is that the media affects our memory. This comes from Plato 2,500 years ago, who said that writing would kill the memory of men. Well, we can think for ourselves, right?

Or at least this generation, who [00:08:00] lived in a world before and after mobile apps. 30 years ago, 25 years ago, I had 30-40 phone numbers in my memory. Today I don't have any. And let's also think about GPS, right? At one time, taxi drivers in London, which is a Latin city, knew the city by heart. And today, that's no longer necessary because they have GPS.

And when they went to study the brains of London taxi drivers, they saw that certain areas of the brain had shrunk, so to speak, which are the areas that manage the spatial part. McLuhan already talked about this in the 60s. He said that changes narcotize certain areas of the mind, he said.

But well, we see that a lot of empirical research, very cutting-edge neuroscience research is confirming all these thoughts, all these things that were said in the 60s onwards, by media ecology. Another possibility is to understand [00:09:00] this as a media ecosystem, Marshall McLuhan always said we cannot give it meaning,

We cannot understand a medium in isolation from other media. It is as if media only acquire meaning in relation to other media. Neil Postman and many other people from the school of media ecology also defend this position, that, well, we cannot understand the history of cinema if we do not link it to video games, if we do not link it to the appearance of television.

And so with all the media, right? Eh? There are some very interesting works. For example, about how in the 19th century, different media, we could say, co-evolved with each other. The press, the telegraph. The train, which also transported newspapers, news agencies appeared. I mean, we see how it is very difficult to understand the development of the press in the 19th century and we don't link it to the telephone, if we don't link it to photography, if we don't link it to radio photography, [00:10:00] also later on.

I mean, this idea is very strong. It is also one of the principles that I consider fundamental to this vision, which would be that the media are not alone, they are part of an ecosystem and if we want to understand what is happening and how all this works, we cannot, uh, analyze the media in isolation from the rest.

There is a third interpretation. I don't know if it's too metaphorical, right? Above all, people in Italy like the researcher Fausto Colombo from Milan or Michele Cometa, he is a researcher from Sicily, Michele Cometa who talks about the turn, the ecomedia turn. These researchers are moving in a whole conception according to which, we are in a unique media ecosystem that is contaminated.

It is contaminated by "fake news" it is contaminated by false news, it is contaminated by hate speech, etc., etc. So they, let's say, take up this ecological metaphor to say [00:11:00] We have to clean this ecosystem just as the natural ecosystem is contaminated, it needs a cleaning intervention, let's say a purification, eh?

The media ecosystem is also in the same danger, isn't it? And these people are also calling attention, and I am very close to this line of work on the material dimension of communication. And this also has to do with tourism, right? The environmental impact that communication has today.

Training an artificial intelligence involves a huge amount of electricity; keeping social networks running, eh, TikTok, YouTube, whatever, involves millions of servers running that suck up electricity and also have to be cooled, consuming even more electricity. And that has a significant impact on the climate.

So, well, let's say, we see that this metaphor of the ecological, applied to the media, gives rise to two or three interpretations.

Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. I feel like when I started taking that course from Andrew McLuhan, Marshall's grandson, as I mentioned, it changed my perspective completely - on the world, on the way I understand and how I don't understand our technologies, my movements, etc. But now, from a person who has been studying this for decades, I would like to know how you started. I mean, Andrew, for example, has the excuse of his lineage, not his father and his grandfather.

But then, as a young Argentine, he began learning about media ecology.

Carlos: Well, I'll tell you. I studied communication in Argentina, in Rosario. I finished college. The last exam was on June 24, 1986, which was the day that Lionel Messi was born in Rosario, Argentina, on the same day. And [00:13:00] I worked, I collaborated in a class in a subject that was communication theories.

And I even taught until 1990, three years, because after that I went to live in Italy. At that time, we read Marshall McLuhan, but it was a very ideologically biased reading. In Latin America, you must have seen it in Mexico. There is a whole history, a tradition of criticism from the media, especially of everything that comes from the United States, and Canada is very close to the United States.

So, let's say that in the 70s and 80s and until today I would tell you that Marshall McLuhan was often criticized because he did not criticize the media. I mean, he had a vision. He said, Neil Postman, yes, he had a very critical vision. But in that case, this was one of the big differences between Postman and McLuhan, that Marshall McLuhan, at least in [00:14:00] public, he did not criticize the media. He said, well, I am a researcher, I send out probes. I am exploring what is happening.

And he never joined in... And I think that was very clever of him... he never joined in this worldwide chorus of criticism of the media. At that time, television was a monster for many people.

Children were not supposed to watch television. A bit like what happens today with cell phones and what happens today with TikTok. At that time, television was the monster. At that time, there was a lot of research in the United States, which was already based on the premise that television and the media are bad for people.

We see that it is a story that repeats itself. I think that in that sense, Marshall McLuhan, very intelligently, did not join that critical chorus and he really dedicated himself to thinking about the media from a much freer perspective, not anchored by this vision that I believe is too ideologized, which is very strong in Latin America. It is very strong. This does not imply [00:15:00] letting down one's guard, not being critical. On the contrary.

But I think that true critical thinking starts from not saying so much ideology, we say "this is already bad. Let's look at this." There will be good things. There will be bad things. There will be things, which is undeniable, that the media, even if we say they are good, will transform us. And I think that was the important thing about the McLuhanian idea.

So my first approach to McLuhan was from the perspective of critical authors who, well, yes, come from the United States, they don't criticize the media. We're going to criticize him, right? And that was my first approach to Marshall McLuhan.

I went to Italy in the 90s. I was out of college for almost eight years, working in digital media, web development, multimedia products, and pretext. And in the late 90s, I said, I want to go back to college. I want to be a PhD. And I said, "I want to do a PhD. Well. Being in Italy, the PhD was going to be in semiotics." So I did a [00:16:00] PhD. My thesis was on semiotics of interfaces.

There I had a vision of digital interfaces that consider, for example, instruments like the mouse or joystick as extensions of our body, right? The mouse extends the hand and puts it inside the screen, right? Or the joystick or any other element of the digital interface? Of course. If we talk about the mouse being an extension of the hand, that is a McLuhanian idea.

The media as extensions of the human being as a subject. So, of course, I reread McLuhan in Italian at the end of the 90s, and I reconciled with McLuhan because I found many interesting things to understand precisely the interaction with digital machines.

In 2002, I moved with my family to Spain. I returned to university life. [00:17:00] And there I began to study the relationship between old and new media. Then I recovered the idea of ecosystem. I recovered the whole new idea, the idea of ecology of my ecology. And I began to research and reread McLuhan for the third time.

And to read him and the entire school of my ecology in depth in order to understand the dynamics of the current media ecosystem and understand the emergence of the new and how the old struggles to adapt.

In 2009, I spent three months working with Bob Logan at the University of Toronto. Last year, I was at the conference there and we had two pre-conferences with people like Paolo Granata and the whole Toronto group.

So, I have a very strong relationship with everything that was and is produced in Toronto. And well, I think that, today, media ecology, along with other disciplines such as semiotics, is very useful to me in order to understand the current media ecosystem [00:18:00] and the main topic of my research today, which is the evolution of the media ecosystem.

Mm, let's say that within media ecology, starting with that 1979 doctoral thesis by Paul Levinson, there is a whole series of contributions, which are somewhat what have been leading to my latest book that came out last year in English from Routledge, called The Evolution of Media and has just come out in Spanish.

What is called Media Evolution? In the evolutionary theory of media, there is a lot of media ecology involved.

Chris: Sure, sure. Well, happiness is Carlos. And we're going to come back to this topic of media evolution in a little bit, because I think it's very important and obviously it's very important to you. It's been like something very important in your work. But before leaving that corner of thought, there was a question that Andrew McLuhan sent me for you, which you already answered a little bit, but it has to do with the differences in the [00:19:00] worlds of Anglophone and Hispanic media ecology. And you already mentioned a little bit about that, but since the times in the 80s and 90s, so I'd like to know if those differences continue between the intellectual worlds, in the Anglophone or Hispanic world.

And so, to extend your question a little, what do you think would be like a more important point or theme or aspect of what one of those worlds has to learn about the other in the meaning of what is missing, perhaps?

Carlos: If we focus on Marshall McLuhan's work, it is not that he was criticized only in Latin America.

Marshall McLuhan was not popular in Europe in the 60s and 70s. For exactly the same reason, because he did not criticize the capitalist media system. The European tradition, the tradition of the Frankfurt School, the school of an anti- capitalist vision that denounces the dominant ideology in the media.

That is what enters Latin America and bounces back there with great force. Perhaps the main figure who speaks from Latin America, who has spoken for a long time about Latin America, is Armand Mattelart. Matterlart is a communication theorist, a researcher from Belgium.

And we found him in the mid-60s, late 60s in Chile at a very particular moment in Chilean history where there was a lot of politicization and a lot of critical research, obviously with the with with with capitalism and with American imperialism.

Perhaps the classic work of that time is Mattelart and Dorfman's famous book, eh, eh? To Read Donald Duck, where they dismantle the entire capitalist, imperialist ideological structure that was in the comics of Donald Duck.

They say this was posted at [00:21:00] early 70s. It is perhaps the best-selling Latin American comic book to date, eh? They say there is ideology in children's literature. With Donald Duck, they are filling our children's heads with a very particular vision of the world.

If you read Donald Duck from that time, at least most of the Donald Duck story, that was, you had to go looking for treasure and where. They were places in Africa, Peru, Inca, in other words, they were third world countries. And there Donald Duck, with his nephews, were smart enough to return to Duckburg with the gold.

Of course. Ideologically. That doesn't hold up.

So, the hegemonic research at that time in Europe, in France, semiology, but above all, in Latin America, was that. You have to study the message. You have to study the content, because that's where the ideology is [00:22:00] dominant of capitalism and imperialism.

In this context, McLuhan comes in. McLuhan is translated and McLuhan says: the medium is the message. It doesn't matter what one reads, what transforms us is watching television, reading comics, listening to the radio. Of course, it went against the mainstream of communication research. That is, let's say that in Latin America, the people who follow this line that still exists and is strong, do not have a very critical view of all this. Even today, Marshall McLuhan doesn't like him, but the same thing happens in Europe and other countries where people who seek a critical anti-capitalist and anti-systemic reading of communication will never find it in Marshall McLuhan, even if they are from Latin America, Europe or Asia.

So I would not place all this in an Anglo-Saxon or Latin American context.

Then, well, McLuhan's time is quite [00:23:00] polysemic. He admits, like any author like him, that he has a writing style that is even so creative in the form of a mosaic.

He was not a neat and formal Cartesian writer. No, no. McLuhan was an explosion of ideas that was very well designed on purpose, but it was an explosion of ideas. That's why it's always refreshing to have McLuhan.

So it's normal that there are different interpretations, right? In the United States, in Canada, in England, in continental Europe, in Latin America or in Japan, obviously, right?

Being an author with these characteristics, I would not anchor this in territorial issues. When one looks for an approach that does not have this ideological burden in order to understand the media, that is not limited to just denouncing the content.

McLuhan and the school of media ecology is fundamental and is a very, very important contribution in that sense, right? So, well, I think that McLuhan had [00:24:00] detractors in Europe, he had detractors in Latin America and every now and then one appears, but I think that this has been softened. I want McLuhan to claim it more and more.

People who study, for example, in Europe and Latin America, who perhaps in their time criticized McLuhan, all the theories of mediatization, for example, end up coinciding in a good part of the approaches of media ecology. Today, when there is much talk about the materiality of communication, the new materialisms, I include Marshall McLuhan in one of the pioneers of this vision of the new materialisms as well. By decentering the analysis of the content, to the medium, to the material thing, we can consider McLuhan also, along with Bruno Latour and other people, as a pioneer, a bit of this vision of not getting caught up in the linguistic turn, no, in the content, in the semiotic turn and also incorporating the material dimension of communication and the medium itself. [00:25:00]

Chris: Okay. Okay, now. Wow, that's a lot, but I really appreciate it. Thanks, Carlos. And I'd like to ask you a little bit more about your own work now. You have a chapter in your book, The Laws of Interface, called "Interfaces Co-evolve With Their Users," where you write, "These interface laws don't disregard artifacts, their inventors, or social forces. They just insert them into a socio-technical network of relationships, exchanges, and transformations in order to analyze them from an eco-evolutionary perspective."

Now, there's a lot there in this little paragraph. But then, I'd like to ask you, how do you see humans [00:26:00] co-evolving with their technologies? For example, our form of performativity on the screen becomes a habit beyond the screen.

Carlos: Even before homo sapiens, the most advanced hominids, let's say at the time, created stone tools. We have discovered that all Neanderthals had a very sophisticated culture, including almost religious practices, beyond the material question of building artifacts. In other words, our species is unthinkable without technology, whether it be a stone axe or TikTok or a smartphone.

So, we have to take this into account when we analyze any kind of daily interaction, we are surrounded by technology and here, obviously, the McLuhanian idea is fundamental. We create these media. We create these technologies.

These technologies also reformat us. [00:27:00] McLuhan, I don't remember him using the concept of coevolution, but it's there. He's talking about that.

Now, there is a coevolution, if you will, in the very long term, which, for example, we know that the development of stone tools, the development of fire, meant that homo sapiens did not need such a large jaw to be able to chew food. And that produces a whole change, which made the jaw smaller, leaving more space in the brain, etc., etc. That is a coevolution in genetic terms, let's say in the very long term, okay.

Also the erectile position, etc., etc. But, let's say that there were already human technologies co-evolving with these very, very slow genetic changes.

But now we can also say that this co-evolution is already at the level of neuronal structure, so it has been verified by neuroscience, as I said before. There is a physical change in the structure of the brain throughout a person's life due to interaction with certain technologies. And why does that happen?

Because [00:28:00] production, creation of new media, new technologies has been accelerating more and more. There we can make an exponential curve upwards, for some this began 10,000 years ago. For some this accelerated with the industrial revolution. Some speak of the time of the discovery of America.

Well, for some this is a 20th century phenomenon. The fact is that in almost geological terms, what we are talking about as the Anthropocene is real and is linked to the impact of human beings on our environment and technology is part of this exponential process of co-evolution.

Today we feel overwhelmed by this acceleration of technology and our need, perhaps to adapt and co-evolve with it. Like this thing where everything goes so fast. Every week there is a new problem, a new application. Now we have artificial intelligence, etc., etc.

But this feeling [00:29:00] It's not new. It's a feeling of modernity. If you read things written in 1800, when the train arrived, people also complained that the world was moving too fast. Where are we going to end up with this iron horse that gives off smoke? So this feeling of rapid change was already experienced by previous generations. But evidently, change today is much faster and more intense than two centuries ago. And that is also true.

So, well, our faith is co-evolving and we are adapting as we can. I asked this question 10 years ago to Kevin Kelly, the first director of Wire magazine, who we brought to Barcelona and who is always very optimistic. Kevin Kelly is a technological determinist and an optimist at the same time.

He said, "It's good that homo sapiens is doing quite well. This co-evolution with technology." Other people have a [00:30:00] radically opposite view, that this is the end of the world, that homo sapiens are doomed to disappear due to this accelerated co-evolution, that the new generations are increasingly stupid.

I don't believe that. I believe, like McLuhan, that the media reforms us, it changes some things for us to live, and others perhaps not so much, but no, I don't have an apocalyptic vision of this at all.

Chris: Okay, okay. So when you mentioned the television, I remember a lot from my childhood and I don't know why. Maybe it was something normal at that time to see the TV as a monster, as you said or maybe because my parents were immigrants but it was a lot of their idea of that technology and they always told me like no, no, don't stay there so close and all that.

So, even though they accepted it, they understood that the power [00:31:00] that television had over people. So now everyone, it seems to me, that everyone has their own channel, not their own programming, or the right or privilege to have their own channel or multiple channels.

So, it's a great question, but what do you think are the main consequences of giving everyone their own program in the sense of what is the effect of doing that, of perhaps democratizing technology in that sense?

Carlos: When you say your own channel, you mean the possibility of broadcasting or building your own media diet.

Chris: Well first, but it can be both, of course, right? I mean, my ability to have a personal profile or account. And then, like, the end of tourism, right? And then another one.

Carlos: Yes, let's see. I think that, well, this was the great radical change that began to occur in the decade of 2000 or [00:32:00] that is, 25 years ago. Because the web at the beginning was a global network in the 90s. But of course the possibility of sharing content and everyone being able to see it was very limited to creating a web page, etc. When social networks or Web 2.0 as it was called at that time appeared and mobile devices were added, that's when this widespread culture of content creation began to be generated.

So, let's say that up until that point, the content creators were more or less professionals in radio and television, but also on the web or in the press or in cinema. And from there, let's say, the game begins to open up.

At the time, this was very well received, it was so good! This is going to lead us to a more democratic society. 25 years later, of course, we are only seeing the dark side. I think that the mistake 25 years ago was to only think about the good, optimistic possibilities of this . And today it seems to me that we are entangled in only apocalyptic speeches, right?

We don't see the good things, we only see the bad things. I think there are both today. Sure, today anyone can have a channel, yes, but not everyone creates a channel. The levels of participation are very strange, that is, the majority of the user population enters the networks. Look. Like. Maybe a comment. Every now and then share a photo.

Let's say that "heavy users" or "heavy producers" of content are always a minority, whether they are professionals, influencers, streamers, right? It's always the case, I don't know if we are at 20-80 or 10-90, are these curves always like this? No?

If you look at Wikipedia, there are 5-10 percent of people who generate content, even less. And 90 percent who [00:34:00] benefit from the work of a minority. Does this reverse the logic of capitalism? The majority lives off the minority and this happened before in other systems as well. So in that sense, it is only a minority of people who generate content of impact, let's call it that, of greater reach.

But well, I think that the fact that anyone can make that leap is fine for me. It creates another set of problems, right? Because while someone is generating content, whether they are a professional or a journalist, let's say, there are still some ethical standards that they must comply with, right? I see that in the world of streamers, the world of Tik tokers, etc., etc., the first thing they say is, we are not journalists.

And in this way, they are inhibited from any ethical control or respect for professional ethical standards. On the other hand, the platforms [00:35:00] Meta, Google, all of them. The first thing they tell you is that we are not a media outlet. The content is provided by the people.

We have nothing to do with that. Of course, they also break away from all regulations there. That's why it had to be done. Europe and the United States had to pass special laws because they said no, no, the laws of journalism don't apply to us. We are not content editors.

And it is a lie because the platforms do edit content through algorithms, because the algorithms are not there, they are telling us what we can see and what is not on the front page. They are not filtering information, in other words, they are editing. So, it seems that these mistakes are generated.

And that is one of the elements that this contamination that I mentioned before brings to the communication field. But I, if I had to choose an ecosystem with few speakers, few media controlled by professionals and this chaotic ecosystem [00:36:00] partly contaminated with many actors and many voices, I prefer the chaos of today to the poverty of the previous system.

I prefer to deal with, fight with and try to solve the problem of having too much information, than the problem of censorship and having only two or three points where information is generated. I have lived in Argentina with a military dictatorship with tight control of the media, colonels intervening in radio and television who controlled everything that was said.

And I prefer today's chaos, even with fake news and everything else you want. I prefer today's chaos to that situation.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very hard to think about for people who haven't lived through something like that, right? I mean, some extended family members have lived in communist worlds, in the past in Eastern Europe, and they don't speak [00:37:00] exactly like that.

But, they talk about it, right? And they say to each other that what they did not have and what they do not have by control and by force. So, in that same sense of what is missing from lived memory, I would like to ask you about your new book. And about the evolution of the media. Then I would like to ask you the same about our listeners who perhaps have not studied much about the ecology of the media.

For you, what is media evolution and why is it important for our changing and understanding of the world? That is, just alongside and not just attached to media ecology, but media evolution,

Carlos: Yes, I tell you, there is a discipline there, already traditional, which is history, and there is also the history of communication and history of the media. [00:38:00] There are very interesting books titled History of Communication from Gutenberg to the Internet or History of Communication from Papyrus to Tiktok.

So, what happens? These books tell you, well, there was papyrus, then came parchment, the manuscript, then in 1450 came Gutenberg, the book. But the book doesn't tell you what happened to the manuscript, or what happened to the papyrus. And they tell you that the radio arrived in 1920 and in 1950 television arrived, and they don't tell you what happened to the radio, what happened to the cinema.

These are linear stories where one medium seems to replace the other. And then we have many very good books as well. History of radio, history of television, history of the internet, history of journalism. As I said before, taking up an idea from McLuhan, we cannot understand the media in isolation.

I cannot understand the evolution of radio if I do not link it to the press, to [00:39:00] television and another to podcasts. Okay, so I say, we need a field of research, let's call it a discipline under construction, which is a theory and is also a methodology to be able to understand media change, all these transformations of the media ecosystem in the long term and that it is not a succession of media, but rather, to see how that media network was evolving. And I call that an evolutionary theory or a "media evolution"

And that's what I'm working on now. Of course, this theory, this approach, this field of research takes a lot of things from media ecology, starting with Marshall McLuhan but also people from the pre-media ecology tradition like Harold Innis, the great historian, economist of communication and society, who was perhaps the most famous intellectual in Canada in the first half of the 20th century. Harold Innis, who greatly influenced Marshall McLuhan [00:40:00]

Marshall McLuhann, on the first page of Gutenberg Galaxy, says that this book is nothing more than a footnote to the work of Harold Innis. So, Harold Innis, who made a history of ancient times, putting the media at the centre of that history. For me, he is fundamental. I would even say that sometimes he is more than McLuhan, as a reference, when it comes to making an evolutionary theory of media change. And then, obviously, I take many things from the history of the media.

I take a lot of things from media archaeology. I also take things from people who have researched the history of technology, the social construction of technology. I mean, media evolution is an intertextual field, like any discipline that takes things from all these fields to be able to build a theory, an approach, a look that is more long-term, that is not a succession of media, but that looks at the evolution of the entire media ecosystem, paying a lot of attention to the relationships [00:41:00] between media, and with this more complex systemic vision of how things change.

I think that the media changes very quickly and we need a theory to be able to make sense of all this great change, because if we only analyse very micro, very small things, we don't see the big changes. We can't position ourselves... this is a bit like football. The best players are those who have the game in their heads and know where everything is. They're not looking at the ball, but they know where the other players are.

Well, I think that media evolution is useful for that. Beyond the fact that today we are all talking about generative AI. Right? Having this overall vision of the entire media and technological ecosystem, I think it is very useful.

Chris: Mm. Wow. Amazing, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot about how the new generations or the younger generations today. I mean, [00:42:00] at least younger than me, which most of them are like 20 years old today, they don't have a vivid memory of what the world would be like without social media or the internet. And as I think about my life and how I am, I don't have a memory of life as if the world were without screens of any kind, I mean TV or computers. Not just the internet or networks.

Carlos: Yes, no, I was telling you that my father lived, my father is 90 years old and he remembers in the year 58, 59, his house was the first in a neighborhood of Rosario that had television and they broadcast from six, seven in the afternoon. So all the neighbors came to watch television at my grandmother's house. So each one, each generation has its stories. Right?

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also, like you said, to [00:43:00] understand media as individual subjects or objects, in other words, in their own world, right? I'm reminded a little bit of Robin Wall Kimmerer's metaphor, who wrote a book called Braiding Sweetgrass, I guess, in Spanish. And she mentioned that to understand the indigenous understanding, let's say in quotes, of time, we don't need to think of a line, an arrow from the past to the future. But, a lake, while the past, present, and future exist, at the same time, in that lake.

And I also think about the place, the past, present, and future, like all those environments existing at the same time, like in a lake and obviously in an ecology of its evolution of its changes.

Carlos: That's very interesting. I'll ask you for the reference to the book later because, of course, [00:44:00] McLuhan always said that the content of a medium is another medium. So, it can happen that a medium from the past leaves its mark or influences a medium from the future. And then the timeline breaks. And those are the phenomena that I'm interested in studying.

Chris: Mmm, mmm, well Carlos, to finish, I have two last questions for you. This time a bit aligned with tourism, and although you are not focused so much on the study of tourism. Through my studies and research and through this podcast, I have amplified that definition of tourism to see how it would exist beyond an industry. And for me, tourism also includes the desire to see a person, a place or a culture as a destination, as something useful, temporary in its use value and therefore disposable. So, I would like to [00:45:00] ask you, if for you it seems that our popular media, although this is a time, let's say with more freedom than other places or times in the past, more authoritarian or totalitarian? Do you see the possibility or evidence that our media, let's say as the most used mainstream, are creating or promoting a, a sense of alienation in people by effectively keeping them at a distance from the other.

Carlos: I already told you no, I don't have an apocalyptic vision of the media. I never did. This doesn't mean that the media, as we said before, has problems. It also generates pollution. Let's call it that if we continue with the metaphor, ? The issue of alienation has been around for [00:46:00] many years. Even when I was studying at university, I never got into theories of alienation.

The concept of alienation comes from the 19th century. A whole theory of consciousness, the subject, the proletarian, let's call it, so it had to become class conscious. Well, the roots of that vision of the concept of alienation come from there. I was never convinced by it, precisely. And here it is interesting.

Latin America's contribution to communication theories has always been different. It has been about claiming the re-signification, the re-semanticization of the active role of the receiver, when many times the theories that came from Europe or the United States had this vision of the receiver of communication as a passive being.

In that sense, media ecology never entered into that discourse because it was handled with other parameters, but let's say that what was the mainstream of research in the United States, but also in Europe, always agreed on this in considering the passive, alienated, [00:47:00] stupefied receiver by the media. And I really was never convinced by that approach, neither before nor today, nor with the television of the 70s and 80s, nor with today's TikTok.

This doesn't mean that there may be people who have some addiction, etc., etc. But I don't think that all of society is addicted to the small screen today. It's no longer an addiction. Okay. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a critical vision. This doesn't mean that we should eventually regulate the use of certain technologies, obviously.

But from there to thinking that we are in an apocalyptic scenario, of total idiocy of homo sapiens or alienation. I do not see it, nor do I believe that empirical studies confirm that. Beyond that, sometimes there are elections and we do not like the results.

But that's interesting, because when your own political party loses, the media is always blamed because the other party won. But when your political party wins, nobody says anything about the media. We won because we are better, [00:48:00] because we have better ideas, because we are more democratic, because we are more beautiful.

So, of course you realize that the media is used as a scapegoat to avoid recognizing one's own political weaknesses when it comes to denouncing a proposal or seducing the electorate.

Chris: Sure, sure. Well, these topics are vast and complex. And that's why I like it, and that's why I'm very grateful to spend this time with you, Carlos.

But the issues require a deep discipline to understand, or at least according to me, as someone who is very new to these issues. So, in our time, it seems like we are, according to me, being dragged along at an unprecedented speed. Our technologies are advancing and perhaps simultaneously undermining our ability to understand what is going on in the world. We use them in protest sometimes as, as you mentioned, [00:49:00] but without a deeper understanding of how they use us as well.

So I'm curious to know what role media ecology plays in redeeming or healing culture in our time. How might media ecology be an ally, perhaps, in our journeys?

Carlos: Yes, I think this idea was present, right? In the media ecology theorists, let's say the first generation.

Now that I think about it, it was also in Umberto Eco's semiotics, wasn't it? When he said that semiotics, beyond analyzing how meaning is constructed, also contributes to improving meaningful life, that is, cultural life, communicational life, our functioning as a subject, let's say. And I think that in that sense, media ecology does too.

Let's say, if we understand the media ecosystem, we will be able to take advantage of it better [00:50:00] and co-evolve better. We will also be more responsible when it comes to generating content, when it comes to retweeting certain things in a sometimes automatic way. I think that it is all a matter of growing up in a healthy media life, and I think that this possibility exists today.

I've been on Twitter since 2008-2009 and only twice have I had a run-in and blocked a rude person. After that, the rest of my life on Twitter is rich in contact information. I learn a lot, I find out about things that are being investigated. I mean, there are also other things to choose from.

And for example, where I see that there are networks that don't give me anything, I don't even go directly. It's also about learning to get the best out of this media ecosystem. And the same for the natural ecosystem. Just as we are learning to care about where our food comes from, [00:51:00] How long will it take for this mobile phone to dissolve because of the components it has? Well, it is also about becoming aware of that. Whether in the natural world, or in the world of communication. And I think that all this knowledge, in this case, media ecology, helps us to understand that, right? And to improve ourselves as subjects, since we are no longer the centre of the universe, which is the other issue. We are one more atom lost in a very large complexity.

Chris: Mm. Mm, well, these works and jobs and studies of yours and others give us the ability to read and understand that complexity, right?

I mean, it seems more and more complex and it requires more and more discernment from us. So, I think that we have put a lot into your will and ability to [00:52:00] do that and put it into the world. So, finally Carlos, I would like to extend my gratitude and that of our listeners for your time today, your consideration and your work.

I feel like, well, media literacy and media ecology are sorely lacking in our time and your willingness to ask about these things and write about them is medicine for a broken world and for me a tourist. So, so thank you so much, Carlos, for coming today.

Carlos: Thank you. I appreciate your questions. And well, I think that the topic of tourism is a central topic today. If you were in Barcelona, you would see that this topic is being debated every day. So I think that well, go ahead with this reflection and this research on tourism, because it is very pertinent and necessary.

Chris: Well, yes, thank you. [00:53:00] I also feel that there is a strong connection between those broader definitions of tourism and media ecology. I mean, it's opened up a very big window for me to understand tourism more deeply. So before we finish, Carlos, how can our listeners find your books and your work?

I know we've talked about two books you've written, but there's so much more. So much more. So how can people find them and find you?

Carlos: The quickest way is on my blog, which is hipermediaciones.com

There you will find information about all the books I publish, etc., etc. And then, well, I am very active, as I said on Twitter X. You can find me under the letter CEscolari and Carlos is my Twitter. And well, there I also try to spread information about these [00:54:00] topics.

As I said before, I learn a lot from that network and I also try to give back what they give me by always putting up relevant information. Good links. And not fighting too much.

Chris: Okay, okay, so I'm going to make sure those links and those pages are already in the homework section of the End of Tourism website when the episode comes out.

The same goes for other interviews and your books. There's no shortage of them. So, I'm happy to share them. Well, Carlos, thank you very much and I appreciate it very much.

Carlos: Thank you very much and see you in Mexico.

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This essay was originally published by the good people over at Gods & Radicals Press under their journal A Beautiful Resistance. Check out their incredible work and support them however you can! Great gratitude for the team there for publishing my work.

“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”

- Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

What is the sound of less and how would you know if you heard it? Would it arise merely from lowering the dial, from the supposed silence that follows? What kinds of resonant hums would ring out? If the autotuned noise pollution of our days dissipated long enough that our ears adjusted to the melodies murmuring beyond it, what might we hear? Among the whispering, trilling, warbling and crooning, a different question erupts: who might we hear?

The vast majority of our human ancestors lived within ecospheres of sound that were principally sung by elemental, animal and vegetal kin. The rhythms of rivers, the crows of winged ones, the susurrations of wind through grass, the voices of four-leggeds. Little of the sonic resonance of our forebears’ days was heralded by humans, at least in comparison to our times. Their music often emanated from birdsong, hisses and howls, clicks and croaks, heartbeats, wind whispers, and incantations from the deep blue below.

For countless generations, human harmonies conjured the remembrance and relationships of those who sustained us. They were often offerings and invocations made for wild and divine others. Those masters of ceremony usually carried a small repertoire of stories and songs that themselves were evocations of their place. The village ceremonies coaxed them from the soil, from memory, from the furrow, inviting people to remember where and whom they came from.

Their songs were rarely if ever written down, inherited by and guarded on the tutored tongues of each new generation. This isn’t to say they weren’t recorded, not in the sense of affixing them to a man-made medium. Rather, the medium was the human. Such songs were rehearsed, recanted, and remembered, calling forth the roots of the word “record”, which signal a “restoration of heart.” Such songs were cherished, practiced and remembered as the memory of a people in place.

The Spells

Compared to the Babylonian towers of song we have access to today, such anthems were probably few in number. How might those elder enchanters (i.e. etymologically “those who sing”) have come to their music when ‘looking something up’ or making a copy isn’t possible and never has been? What begins to happen to a people’s ancestral auditory memory when libraries and recording devices begin to replace cultural and ancestral memory? What is lost when the sounds of our other-than-human kin are fully eclipsed or erased by those of the human? What form does the sonic shape of that absence take?

We can try to tongue the grooves in our mouths for signs. We might taste how those hollows itch when we hear timeworn chants, mantras, and music. We might unbridle the throat when we sing with our whole beings and bodies. We might in turn note how the breath of our ancestors took shape, speaking and singing to and not just of the wild world around them. Without the aid of the internet, playlists or catalogs, without headphones, blueteeth or even vinyl, with the only speaker box being our bodies, we could throw listening parties for long forgotten sets.

In places muted by the machinations of modernity, we can ask how the answer to the question of sustainability might properly include less. In a greenwashed world, the dilemma of “what to sustain?” casts two spells: one, that we can only sustain what already exists, and two, that we don’t require less of what needs sustaining. The former whispers, “we don’t need new ways of listening, only new songs.” The latter says, “keep the hits, but keep them playing 24/7.”

Could it be that to sustain the relational resonance required to compose the worlds we wish to live in, our ears require listening to less? Not less listening, but listening to what “less” sounds like in our world. What if, in harmonizing older ways of being, in listening to elder, lyrical lineages, we’d be able to hear more? Not more of the same. More of what (and whom) has been silenced by the techno-sonic cultures of our times? What if we replaced the question of “what do we need to sustain?” with “how can we sustain less?”

Deep Time Murmurations

Imagine, if you can, that for the duration of your entire life, you only have access to a few albums of music. Imagine, for a moment, that they don’t have eighty-minute time limits. Imagine that the verses are only ever sung and never recorded, never “played back.” They’re always performed and listened to live and in that sense alive. Imagine that some, but not all of these songs are reserved resolutely for weddings, funerals, births, initiations, agricultural seedings or harvests. These are the only times in your life that you’d hear them.

Imagine that this handful of treasured tunes is sung to you in your mother’s belly, as you are carried into this world, as you drink her milk, as you slowly grow into your adult human body, as you become a spouse and later parent and grandparent, still. By this point, you know these songs by heart. They synchronize yours to your people and theirs to yours, rooting you in place and place in you.

You hear them sung at the ceremonies, the cadence slightly shifting as each new generation of voices arises. When appropriate, you sing along, witnessing their choral consequences cast upon the community over time. You recognize their lilts not just as songs, but as psalms and dirges, calling forth the lived memory of those who came before you, the lyrical lineage that binds you to them and them to you through tune, tongue, and terra. This is how music resonates among your people, through your life and into your death.

What if those songs hold codes and conditions for how to live well, for what it means to be both a steward and a guest among your people? What if they are the ciphered result of countless generations of kin ensuring that you learn from their mistakes?

What if their being sung is the signal – the bronze bell invitation – for the wild, the divine and the dead themselves to show up, to be sung to (and not just of) in a hymnal homecoming wherein they can recognize themselves? What if this is how music was understood in other times, and what if the desire and need to record instead of remember compromises all of that?

Against Access

These provocations are laid at your eyes, stranger, in part, because most of us are utterly inundated by noise. Concurrently enriched and polluted. As of 2024, “More music is being released (in a single day) than was released in the calendar year of 1989,” says former chief economist of Spotify. Today, our voices and chords are silenced by a staggering surplus of song and speech. “Access” to tracks, playlists, samples, instruments, lessons and concerts, all of which are understood as products or services in our time, has become synonymous with freedom and equality. Like many, I am grateful for such privilege and connection. Music has saved my life on more than one occasion, as perhaps it has yours.

At the same time, the quasi-religious mission of access has also become a way to ensure that what gets sustained in our time is nothing less than the status quo setlist of Everything Now, a supermarket selection of anything that’s ever been recorded. And yet, if the privileged access that most modern people enjoy today can’t be extended to everyone everywhere, if we can’t make Spotify Premium free for all or ensure that every single person can play a trumpet, then access was never sustainable in the first place. This is the museumization of music, whereby the exhibition glass case is your screen, and the principal effect on the life of the song is to reduce it in scale and scope to all others, as long as you watch this advertisement first.

In our time, what access does is sustain our ability to hold steady on a runaway train. Music moves us. It acts as sanctuary, as refuge. We can wonder, though, alongside such gratitude, if this shelter we’re cradled in doesn’t also immobilize us from slamming on the brakes. To paraphrase the central tenet of philosopher Bayo Akomolafe’s post-activism, what if the anthems we orchestrate to lead us out of the echo chamber of our times are ensuring our permanent residence there? What if the sanctuary of sound that so sustains us in dark days is an asylum, where the overmedication of music ensures no one can hear the sound of less? Moreover, with all the white noise of our screened-in worlds, how would we know?

The Consequences of More

This is not a rebuke of the incredible moment in which we live that allows so many to choose their instrument, genre or voice. Nor is it an endorsement of it (despite the personal praise and awe for being born into such a time with the privilege that our times can endow). Instead, this is a plea for wonder around what is lost by mandating more, ad infinitum. It invokes philosopher Byung Chul Han’s claim that “the pathology of today’s society is the excess of positivity. It is a ‘too much,’ not a ‘too little,’ that is making us sick.”

So, let’s return for a moment to imagining a life with only a handful of albums or songs and consider different contexts. Let’s consider the loss of less in our lives. Assume for a moment we’re not in some imaginary past, but the herenow – twenty-first century modernity. Ask yourself: what has social media and hypermobility done to my ability to care and commune with my people, in person? What has having thousands of online “friends” done to the quality of my friend-ships? Are they still moored in port together, their crews singing to life in a local bar, or are they all out to sea, each sailing alone through the storms of an archipelago age? What has my ability to register for a hundred different learning traditions done to my ability to properly honour one? What has my desire to live in a hundred different places done to my capacity to be of one? What about my privilege to eat at a restaurant any day of the week, with a menu from any part of the world – what has that done to my capacity to cook?

These questions are not rhetorical. They aren’t written to induce guilt about the world you’ve been born into and your place in it. They are asking for your deep consideration, consternation, and a way of imagining other worlds of being (and being together).

The Possibilities of Less

With these provocations in mind, let’s return to music. What has the cultural programming inducing us to play other people’s music done to our ability to sing our own songs? How many among us can recognize, let alone sing the songs of our old ones? What happens when even our ability to listen to the music of a stranger or a friend is muted by the noise of our time? What then becomes of community and our capacity to commune?

If you could only listen to a handful of albums for the rest of your life, which would they be? How would you choose, knowing that your tastes would likely change as you get older, as they already have? What if you could only listen to them a few times a year? How would the quality of your listening change?

Would you then sing more often, when that sonic sustenance wasn’t just a click away? Moreover, would you sing alone or would there be a choir? Would you sing only your songs or would you cross the threshold into the songscapes of another? What might such a chorus begin to sound like, if not a communion?

These questions are laid at your eyes, stranger, so that they might be asked, so that they might be heard, so that the wrung resonance that results might be something akin to remembrance. This is a call for less: the ability to sustain less that feeds and fosters more. That is, more of what might be needed, as opposed to simply desired. It might mean moving out of the content of our listening and towards its context – a kind of echolocation that not only emits the full spectrum of the way things are, but the muffled movements of how it could be otherwise.

And so the questions extend as they bend: what if what requires sustaining is something we can’t immediately identify? What if what needs sustaining is something that we’ve forgotten, mostly by trying to sustain what we’ve been given? How would we go about remembering?

The Sound of Sustain

If “sustain” were a sound, perhaps it would not be ours. Perhaps, it would not be human. A terse translation might only become available upon our willingness to compose less. Until then, however, we can recall the verbal spirit of “sustain,” which still resonates as “to hold, hold upright, to bear, endure.”

If we can listen carefully enough to the word and to how the world can only sustain so much, the sounds that surround it might be asking us to let go. Then, we might hear our yearning for the human, the individual and the programmed platitudes that resound at the center of the song, we might finally hear them decomposing, descending into the place where all life goes. A kind of prayer for the unsustainable.

To break these sonic spells, we can ask what "less" sounds like, how it resonated in the aural relationships between our ancestors, the lands that sustained them and their wild neighbors. Imagining the lives of those whose place-borne and bound melodies orchestrate a biocultural harmony with home, we don’t romanticize the past, we remember the enduring commitment to the world that is required to sustain it. In so doing, we remember possible futures.

If music holds a keynote in our collective redemption, it might do so by having less of it conjured. Less playlists, speakers, recording devices, shows and more deep listening through limit, locality, and attunement. Less, not loss, composing polyphonic paths toward a communal chorus of repair.

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This essay was originally published by the good people over at Gods & Radicals Press under their journal A Beautiful Resistance. Check out their incredible work and support them however you can! Great gratitude for the team there for publishing my work.

Mi entrevistado en este episodio es Ernest Cañada. Es coordinador de Alba Sud y docente de la Universidad de Barcelona. Investiga en torno al trabajo, los conflictos socioecológicos y las alternativas en el desarrollo turístico. Ha publicado: Viajar a todo tren. Turismo, desarrollo y sostenibilidad (Icaria, 2005, con Jordi Gascón); Turismo en Centroamérica: un nuevo escenario de conflictividad social (Enlace Editorial, 2010); Turismo placebo. Nueva colonización turística: del Mediterráneo a Mesoamérica y El Caribe. Lógicas espaciales del capital turístico (Enlace Editorial, 2011, con Macià Blàzquez); El turismo en el inicio del milenio: una lectura crítica a tres voces (FTR, 2012, con Jordi Gascón y Joan Buades); Turismos en Centroamérica. Un diagnóstico para el debate (Enlace Editorial, 2013); Turismo comunitario en Centroamérica. Experiencias y aprendizajes (Enlace Editorial, 2014).

Notas del Episodio

• Alba Sud y su historia

• El despojo en Nicaragua

• El surgimiento de turismo en Costa Rica como una herramienta neoliberal

•  El Malestar en la Turistificación: Pensamiento Crítico Para Una Transformación de Turismo

• El fin de turismo barato y el policrisis de hoy

• Postcapitalismo y terminos complementarios

• Monstruos peores

• Aprender poner limites

• La pluralidad de posibilidades de turismos postcapitalistas

Tarea

• El malestar en la turistificación. Pensamiento crítico para una transformación del turismo - Icaria Editorial

• Alba Sud - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter

• #TourismPostCOVID19. Turistificación confinada

• Ernest Cañada - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter

Transcripcion en espanol (English Below)

Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido Ernest, al podcast del fin de turismo.

Ernest: Muchas gracias. Muy encantado estar aquí.

Chris: igual es un gran honor poder hablar finalmente contigo. Mi pregunto si, pues, para empezar, si podrías decirnos de este, dónde hablas hoy y cómo es el mundo allá por ti?

Ernest: Yo habitualmente resido en Barcelona, entre Barcelona y Mallorca, porque estoy entre la universidad de las Islas Baleares y Alba Sud, y en estos momentos estoy en Buenos Aires que estoy trabajando en una investigación sobre experiencias de gestión distinta, fuera de las lógicas del capitalismo. Y esto nos llevo a identificar distintas experiencias. Y ahora estoy empezando una investigación con el Hotel Bauen, a lo que fue el Hotel Bauen y a cerrado y la cooperativa que lo gestionó durante 20 años,

Es parte el proceso que estamos haciendo, identificación [00:01:00] de experiencias diversas plurales que tienen que ver con como pensar la posibilidad de organizar el turismo bajo otros modos y esto nos elevado por caminos distintos de América Latina, de España. Y ahora estoy aquí.

Chris: Pues gracias Ernest. Y si vamos a estar hablando de ese tema pero más allá de las vision que que hay, que existe, que podemos imaginar sobre un turismo post-capitalista o algo alrededor, algo así. Pero antes de meternos en eso, pues tú y yo hemos estado en contacto durante los últimos dos años, en parte debido a tu trabajo en el ámbito de los estudios críticos de turismo y a tu proyecto Alba Sud que en algunos de nuestros invitados anteriores incluidos de Ivan Murray, Robert Fletcher y Macia Blasquez ha participado.

Me encantaría que pudieras contarme un poco [00:02:00] sobre Alba Sud, Ernest, su misión, su historia y su situación actual

Ernest: Con mucho gusto. Ah, mira, Alba Sud nace en 2008. Legalmente lo habíamos legalizado antes por si algún grupo de compañeros por si algún día nos hacía falta, pero formalmente empieza a funcionar el año 2008 y empieza a funcionar en Managua, Nicaragua, que era donde yo residía en ese momento.

Y fundamentalmente fue un acuerdo de personas que nos dedicábamos a la investigación y a la comunicación para trabajar con análisis críticos y al mismo tiempo propositivos en torno al turismo. Esto fue algo que fue original desde el principio, esta doble preocupación, por cómo pensar los impactos, los efectos que tenía el desarrollo turístico bajo el capitalismo y que tipo de dinámicas de violencia estructural y directa generaban y al mismo tiempo, cómo pensar posibilidades de salir de ese [00:03:00] marco de esas lógicas. Y eso fue un sello que desde el principio empezamos.

Con los años Alba Sud fue creciendo, integrándose como una red de investigadoras e investigadores en turismo. Ahora tenemos presencia en 10 países en España, en Francia, en Europa, y luego en América latina, en la República Dominicana, en México, en El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brasil, Uruguay y Argentina.

Entonces es una red que conformamos gentes que nos dedicamos a distintos ámbitos de la análisis turístico y que compartimos espacios de trabajo y análisis e intervención política. Para nosotros, Alba Sud es un centro de investigación, pero no es un centro académico si nos preocupa menos las dinámicas académicas, aunque hay una parte de nuestro equipo de personas que colaboran que están en la universidad, distintas universidades.

Lo que nos preocupa es cómo generar [00:04:00] conocimiento que sea útil para las comunidades, para las organizaciones comunitarias, para las asociaciones civiles, para sindicatos, para cuando es posible la administración pública. Es decir, intentamos generar conocimiento, análisis sistematización, propuestas que de alguna manera contribuyen a hacer visible las cosas que funcionan mal, que son un desastre que generan dolor en este mundo en relación con el turismo y al mismo tiempo, a pensar horizontes de esperanza.

Este es un poco el propósito. Para ello, nos dotamos de eso de un equipo amplio de personas que colaboran unas más estrechamente con el día a día, otras que puntualmente colaboran y montamos básicamente nuestros trabajos se articula en torno a una web, la www.AlbaSud.Org, y lo estructuramos en trabajos de investigación que salen después en un formato [00:05:00] escrito por distintas formas, que luego te cuento un trabajo, además de la forma de la investigación, vinculado a la formación a poner a generar procesos de diálogo que nos permitan escuchar, reflexionar conjuntamente, poniendo en el mismo nivel personas que vienen de la academia con personas que tienen experiencias concretas de trabajo. Y finalmente, un ámbito más de incidencia política, más de acompañamiento organizaciones y de acompañarles para incidir políticamente.

En el ámbito de la investigación, luego lo expresamos, básicamente a través de unos artículos cortos que hacemos, publicamos alrededor de 100, 110, 120 al año, que son artículos cortos de 2000-2500 palabras, que sabemos que son muy usados en las universidades, como material de discusión.

Y un poco del propósito es este que se hiervan como pequeñas artículos bien escritos o intentamos que estén bien [00:06:00] escritos, que estén en un lenguaje simple, que la complejidad no tiene que ver con las palabrotas académicas que usamos, sino la profundidad del pensamiento que incorporan, pero que tienen que estar poder ser leídas por mucha gente.

Tenemos esto. Luego, pusimos en marcha un sello editorial propio que es Alba Sud Editorial, en el cual tenemos una colección de libros, una de informes y recientemente una de policy brief más dirigidos a recomendaciones de política. Y básicamente Alba Sud eso. Es un espacio de encuentro entre personas que no nos resignamos a pensar que el desarrollo turístico necesariamente tenga que comportar esto, que estamos acompañando las resistencias, las luchas de los muchos males y violencias que genera este desarrollo capitalista a través del turismo y que al mismo tiempo, intentamos construir lo que decía antes "horizontes de esperanza" que nos permitan estimular la lucha y la resistencia, [00:07:00] pensando en en futuros más deseables que es creo que en estos momentos también necesitamos.

Chris: Gracias, Ernest. Sí. Pues por lo que he visto, lo que he leído, lo que he encontrado ahi en el sitio de Alba Sud. Pues es, es una organización y sitio único en el mundo. Y pues yo tengo mucho honor de estar contigo hoy hablando de estas cosas y especialmente contigo como el fundador, Y entonces, para agregar, para profundizar un poco más de la historia, de tu historia, la próxima pregunta viene de nuestro amigo mutuo compañero Macía Blasquez a quien entrevisté en la temporada cuatro. Europa. Y el pregunta, "afirma que tú has sido entre muchas otras cosas activista en Centroamérica, como nos dijiste, y entonces él quiere saber cómo han cambiado tus opiniones y tu carrera de este [00:08:00] entonces?"

Ernest: Buena pregunta.

Ah, yo empecé a trabajar en Centroamérica acompañando. Bueno, primero pasé seis años que iba y venía. Estaba medio año en Centroamérica más o menos a otro medio en España. Y finalmente me quedé a trabajar en Nicaragua con una organización que se le llamaba "Luciérnaga" ahora "Ilegalizada," dedicada a la comunicación.

Y desde ahí empezamos a organizar campañas de comunicación en distintos temas que tenían que ver con las necesidades y los derechos de la mayoría de la gente y de como estaban sufriendo procesos de despojo de posesión. Y trabajamos en torno a temas que tenían que ver con la salud y los derechos sexuales o reproductivos o la soberanía alimentaria. Y en una de estas, organizamos una campaña que duró cuatro años de investigación y comunicación sobre turismo.

En un contexto, estoy hablando del año [00:09:00] 2004-2008, en el cual Nicaragua se estaba abriendo al turismo en esos momentos. Y entonces identificábamos claramente los altos niveles de violencia que eso podía comportar con procesos de desplazamiento.

Y había que acompañar a las comunidades en esas dinámicas, y que además eran compartidas en El Salvador, en Guatemala, en Honduras, en Costa Rica y al mismo tiempo, empezar a pensar posibilidades de "si era posible utilizar el turismo bajo el control de las propias comunidades." Esa fue mi mi inserción en el mundo fundamentalmente del turismo.

Y a partir de ahí, después de trabajar unos cuatro años en Luciérnaga y pusimos en marcha Alba Sud y en parte recuperamos en Alba Sud esa especialización vinculado con el turismo. Pensábamos, y es algo que hemos reflectado muchas veces con Ivan Murray que también le entrevistaste que no nos estábamos dando cuenta desde el mundo de las [00:10:00] izquierdas de la importancia que tenía el turismo para el funcionamiento al capitalismo.

Y a veces cuando decíamos que nos necesitábamos al turismo, la gente lo tomaba como algo como irrelevante, como algo superficial, incluso casi jocoso como te gusta viajar, verdad? Y entonces era como, como no darse cuenta de, por un lado, como sobre todo desde la aplicación de los programas neoliberales, cómo el el turismo estaba ayudando a expandir los procesos de desarrollo capitalista, pero al mismo tiempo, como tenía una segunda función muy importante que era, cómo ayudaba a a estabilizar los desórdenes que provocaba ese mismo programa neoliberal?

Recuerdo que me impresionó mucho trabajando en Costa Rica cuando me di cuenta que el año 1985, cuando se aplican los programas de ajuste estructural, [00:11:00] una de las cosas que se hace es desmontar el CNP, que era el consejo nacional de producción, que era lo que permitía durante bastantes años, que el campesinado costarricense tuviera la seguridad de que los granos básicos, frijoles, arroz, maíz tenía donde venderlos con precios estables. Y esto le daba seguridad al campesinado.

Esto el año en el marco de la aplicación de esas políticas neoliberales que eran de hecho un chantaje, decir bueno, en un contexto de crisis de la deuda o aplicas determinadas programas políticos para liberalizar el comercio o no tienes apoyo en ese contexto, la contrapartida de achicar el estado y reducirlo.

Y uno de los ejes de disminución del gasto público fue, por ejemplo, desmontar el CNP, este consejo nacional de producción. Y a cambio, lo que se pedía al campesinado estimularlo en la producción [00:12:00] de cultivos que tuvieran supuestamente mejor inserción en el mercado internacional para atraer la llegada de divisas.

Y ahí se promovía la vainilla, la curcuma, la pimienta, productos que al final no acabaron de funcionar. Pero al mismo tiempo se promovió el turismo rural como un mecanismo para que el campesinado, por una parte, aportara con esa desarrollo de servicios turísticos divisas, al mismo tiempo le permitiera estabilizarse y no comprometerse en una dinámica que tenía que ver con el sufrimiento que estaban viviendo, que estaban generando procesos migratorios muy grandes.

Entonces, con Iván, una de las cosas que reflexionábamos es, esto del turismo empieza a ser muy importante para el capitalismo. Y después de la crisis de 2008 creo que tuvimos bastante conciencia de que la dinámica de solución que encuentre el capitalismo para su [00:13:00] reproducción en parte tiene que ver con la expansión del turismo.

Y esto lo hemos visto después de la crisis de la COVID con la pandemia que tuvimos en la cual... recuerdo perfectamente una llamada que nos hicimos con Iván, decíamos no nos puede pasar en 2020 lo mismo que nos pasó en 2008, que no nos dimos cuenta hasta mucho después de lo que estaba ocurriendo. Y por tanto, dijimos "paremos todas las publicaciones que tenemos pendientes y pidamos a todo el equipo amplio que está en torno de Alba Sud, pongámonos a reflexionar y analizaron que nos equivoquemos, pero pongámonos a analizar que cambios supone esto."

Y en ese memento, alguna gente se reía de nosotros. Decía que seamos futurologia, que si habíamos convertido Alba Sud en una bola de cristal y que pretendíamos invocar el futuro. Y de hecho, lo que intentábamos hacer era el análisis desde la economía política para entender qué es lo que nos venía encima y de alguna manera, respondiendo a la pregunta que nos hacía [00:14:00] Macia, yo creo que lo que ha cambiado mi pensamiento es la intuición.

O sea lo que antes era una intuición de que debíamos trabajar, generando conocimiento fuera de las lógicas de la reproducción académica y teníamos que generar conocimiento vinculado a los problemas sentidos por la gente más desfavorecida, que esa institución estaba en lo cierto y que había un espacio para hacer eso y que era necesario hacerlo.

Y que este era un espacio que debíamos construir en relación con el mundo de las universidades de la academia, pero independiente de él, pero también independiente de las empresas, que es lo que vimos que también les había ocurrido algunas ONGs que durante años trabajaron tratando de generar algún tipo de pensamiento en torno de turismo, pero que rápidamente habían caído en una cierta trampa de pensar que era posible incidir en las empresas, generar dinámicas de responsabilidad, etcétera. Y nosotros pensamos que la cosa no iba por ahí, que la cosa tenía que ver con cómo [00:15:00] fortalecíamos otros actores para que pudieran combatir, resistir y construir cosas fuera de los marcos del capitalismo.

Entonces, yo creo que, no sé si cambiaron muchas las cosas en términos de pensamiento, pero si se consolidó una convicción de lo que empezamos a hacer de una forma un poco intuitiva, se acabó convirtiendo en un espacio de investigación, de colaboración, de acompañamiento, de formación, de ciencia política para para un montón de gente que está vinculado con el turismo.

Chris: Yeah. Gracias, Ernest. Pues yo siento que esa intuicion ha abierto un montón en los últimos años. Y hay un montón de gente en muchos lados, normalmente los lugares turisteados o sobreturisteados dando cuenta y dando cuenta no solo de [00:16:00] las consecuencias, pero de los patrones y pues, a dónde vamos con los patrones o canales de turismo convencional, pero también, como dijiste, en el turismo, como un gran factor dentro de la expansión y destrucción del capitalismo en nuestro tiempo.

Entonces, a través de Alba Sud y Icaria Editorial en España, ustedes han publicado recientemente una antología titulada El Malestar en la Turistificación: Pensamiento Crítico Para Una Transformación de Turismo. Hay toneladas de capítulos fascinantes, tengo que decir, de excelentes autores y investigadores, incluidos trabajos que hacen referencia Silvia Federici y David Harvey, Pierre Biourdeau, Donna Haraway, Foucault, Graeber, y Ursula Le Guin, entre otros. [00:17:00] Estoy curioso, Ernest, cuál fue el impulso detrás de la creación de este antología?

Ernest: Muchas veces, buena parte de las cosas que hacemos o que impulsamos de que son más grandes, vienen de una llamada telefónica con Ivan Murray y nos llamamos decimos, "tenemos que hacer esto, tenemos que hacerlo otro."

Y de estas llamadas, lo que acabamos, y luego es algunos elevándolas a cabo. En este caso concreto, recurrentemente, teníamos una reflexión que cada vez era menos interesante leer sobre el turismo o que nos interesaba menos leer sobre turismo y que para entender el turismo, necesitábamos leer otras cosas. Y incluso la gente que nos dedicamos a los análisis críticos del turismo, nos dábamos cuenta de que estábamos leyendo mucho solamente entre nosotros.

Y que de alguna manera estábamos reproduciendo lo mismo que le pasaba la academia vinculada al turismo. Es una academia muy endogámica, [00:18:00] muy auto concentrada que discute los mismos temas que se cita unos a otros y nos dábamos cuenta que de alguna manera, los que nos dictábamos a la crítica y a la propuesta fuera de esos marcos, teníamos el riesgo de no estar captando parte de la complejidad que tenía el desarrollo turístico en la medida que este se estaba haciendo cada vez más grande y que estaba penetrando en más esferas de la vida. Y ahí la idea fue, necesitamos hacer cuando compartíamos con Iván y luego se sumó Clément Marie dit Chirot, que es un profesor de la Universidad de Angers, que colabora también con con Alba Sud.

De ahí surgió la idea de decir bueno, nos compartíamos tú que estás leyendo, que te está interesando. Y ahí empezamos a compartir autores y autoras. Y nació la idea deberíamos hacer algo con esto. Hicimos un primer seminario en Barcelona sobre la obra de David Harvey y en Lefevbre de qué nos pueden aportar estos dos autores a la comprensión [00:19:00] actual del desarrollo turístico.

Y fue un seminario por eso el libro en parte, a veces la gente dice, por qué tanto Harvey y tanto Lefevbre, porque el origen del libro tenía que ver con este primer seminario que fue una prueba, un ensayo, de cómo podemos hacer que autores que no necesariamente han hablado sobre turismo, cómo podemos hacer que dialogan con nuestro objeto de de análisis?

Y ahí hicimos un poco el mismo llamado que habíamos hecho en 2020 en cuando empezamos a trabajar en torno de la pandemia, que eso se convirtió en dos libros. Uno que fue Turistificación Confinada y otro Turismos de Proximidad, que fue el mismo proceso de empezar a preguntar a nuestros colegas, amigos, compañeros y compañeras, en qué estaban trabajando, que estaban viendo que estaban...

Pues hicimos lo mismo, empezar a preguntar en nuestro entorno del equipo de Alba Sud, personas que colaboran, qué autores estaban leyendo que les interesaba y que no hubieran hablado antes de turismo? Y como [00:20:00] podíamos hacer el ejercicio de llevarlos a los análisis turísticos con el fin de robustecerlos, de hacerlos más sólidos, de incorporar dimensiones que si solamente nos fijábamos en lo que veníamos leyendo y escribiendo sobre el turismo, a lo mejor se nos estaban escapando. Por supuesto, nos quedaron un montón de trabajos de referencias fuera de este marco, es decir nos salía un volumen con 25 capítulos y nos podía haber salido perfectamente un segundo volumen, que es algo que no descartamos, pero no en términos inmediatos por el cantidad de trabajo que también supone.

Pero si logramos poner en diálogo una serie de personas que nos permitían, de alguna manera, enriquecer el análisis turístico y brindar a gente que se estaban metiendo en determinados temas desde el ámbito de la comprensión, de lo como funciona el turismo, encontrar referencias teóricas, críticas con el capitalismo que le pudieran ayudar a [00:21:00] como mínimo, abrir caminos, entender qué lecturas podríamos hacer a partir de ellas.

Seguro que hay autoras o autores que podrían haber tenido otro tipo de lectura, pero es la que hicieron las personas que colaboran con nosotros y de alguna manera era una de las posibles lecturas. Y bueno, ese es el origen del libro y la motivación.

Chris: Ajá. Y me gustaría preguntarte sobre, pues, tu capítulo sobre Eric Ollin Wright, pero antes de eso, me gustaría preguntarte qué tipo de reflexiones te sorprendiste más fuera de tus propios investigaciones?

Ernest: Sí, Ivan, Clemente y yo no solo lemos, sino que editamos y discutimos todos los capítulos.

Tuvimos que rechazar lamentablemente también algunos. En algunos casos, había gente que nos mandó escritos que eran más complejos que el propio autor. Elegimos necesitamos que se entienda o en otros casos, la lectura no nos interesaba mucho. [00:22:00] No fue que aceptáramos todo, en este proceso.

Y para mí, uno de los descubrimientos fue Jason Moore y el trabajo que hizo Iván con él para pensar o plantear la hipótesis del fin del turismo barato. Esto ha dado lugar un proyecto de investigación en el que estamos en la Universidad de Las Islas Baleares, con el grupo CRIGUST en el que estoy trabajando, pensando decir, bueno, qué significa este escenario de emergencias crónicas, esta dinámica, la cual el capitalismo ha funcionado a partir de la lógica de disponer de naturalezas baratas... qué significa si esto empieza a acabarse? Y hasta qué punto este modelo de desarrollo turístico que hemos tenido las últimas décadas en realidad no está objeto a demasiadas tensiones? Está demasiado en crisis y habría que tal vez plantear la hipótesis del fin del turismo barato, pero la [00:23:00] apertura de nuevos escenarios y sobre esta hipótesis estamos estamos desarrollando un proyecto de investigación y de alguna manera también ha servido para nosotros desde Alba Sud para pensar los escenarios de esta dinámica de reactivación. Decir no, no todo es igual a lo que venía siendo antes. Yo creo que para entender el memento actual del desarrollo turístico a nivel global, hay que situarnos en dos crisis:

ya antes mencionamos el programa neoliberal y como el neoliberalismo incorpora el turismo con un mecanismo de expansión por al mismo tiempo de estabilización. Pero las dos últimas crisis la de 2008 y 2020 generan un salto de escala en términos de turistificación, un proceso turistificación global como nunca habíamos vivido, siendo un salto exponencial, en parte porque después de la crisis de 2008 se produce una situación en la cual las vías que habían optado a través de los préstamos [00:24:00] bancarios, la construcción, hipotecas, etcétera, colapsa y no es posible seguir reproduciendo el capital a través de esas vías. Y esto necesita encontrar otros mecanismos a traves de los cuales el capital se puede reproducir. Ahí, david Harvey ha hablado muchas veces de la importancia que tiene la urbanización de China en este proceso de salida de la crisis de 2008.

Nosotros entendemos que, además de esto, el papel del turismo es clave. No es casualidad que una empresa como Airbnb nazca en 2008, que se produzca esta expansión del turismo urbano. Es decir, tiene que ver con esta lógica. Y la pandemia de alguna manera lo que hace es detener, pero al mismo tiempo, una salida, una reacción de los capitales muy agresiva por recuperar lo que no han ganado en los años anteriores.

Y por tanto, se produce como una vuelta de tuerca más en esta dinámica.

En este punto, para eso no es útil el pensamiento de Jason Moore, que yo lo leo fundamentalmente [00:25:00] como aportación de Iván Murray en esta obra que hacemos, en el malestar de la turistificación. Esta hipótesis del fin del turismo barato que planteamos a partir de la relectura de Jason Moore, lo que nos permite pensar es, o interpretar más bien , la dinámica de redituación es igual que la anterior a la crisis o hay algo cualitativamente distinto? Y hay algo cualitativamente distinto, porque estamos ante un escenario de riesgo para este desarrollo capitalista vinculado a las naturalezas baratas.

Y ahí es donde nos damos cuenta que, en parte hay un efecto champagne, que cerca las reactuaciones no has podido viajar durante dos años y cuando hay la apertura, la gente sale. Pero más allá de esto y que nos expresa en estos últimos años de una forma desmesurada de tenemos turismo en los destinos más purificados, turismo de todo tipo, desde lujo a despedidas de [00:26:00] soltero o de soltero, que no alquilan ni una habitación, que sencillamente pasan de noche el viernes y el sábado de fiesta y se va en el domingo y ya está. O sea, tenemos de todo.

Y ahí es donde recupero a Jason Moore y la ideas del fin de las del turismo barato, este riesgo de fin de turismo barato, lo que nos empezamos a dar cuenta es que empieza a ver una mayor competencia entre territorios, entre ciudades, por atraer un turismo de mayor poder adquisitivo. Se dan cuenta que hemos salido de la crisis y hay una serie de emergencias crónicas o lo que algunos le llaman policrisis que siguen estando presentes, que tienen que ver con el cambio climático, con la crisis de combustibles o la crisis energética y la crisis de materiales con las interrupciones a las cadenas globales de suministros, con las tensiones geopolíticas.

Y todo esto nos ponen alerta de los riesgos que tiene el [00:27:00] desarrollo turístico. Si estamos en un escenario muy vulnerable. Además, después de la salida, empezamos a ver que hay un nivel de destrucción de los ecosistemas enorme, que no decir, esta lógica de crecimiento constante es inviable, porque hemos superado con mucho la capacidad del planeta y en ese contexto también vemos otro naturaleza barata que empieza a ser cuestionada, que es el trabajo, es decir la idea de la renuncia, de la dimisión, y uno de los grandes problemas que tienen las empresas en estos momentos es la falta de personal, gente que no quiere trabajar ahí y que busca trabajo en otros sitios.

Entonces, en ese contexto que llamamos de emergencias crónicas que además se retroalimentan unas con otras, lo que empezamos a ver es que los capitales, a través de las autoridades públicas en distintos territorios, empiezan a competir por atraer un turista de mayor poder adquisitivo. Buscan cómo concentrar esa franja de segmento [00:28:00] turístico que va a ser menos sensibles a situaciones de crisis, que va a seguir viajando y cómo traerlo.

Y implica un programa de gasto público enorme en términos de infraestructuras para traerlos en términos de promoción internacional, términos de macro-eventos para consolidar esa atracción. El problema es que, por definición, los turistas de mayor poder adquisitivo son mucho menos que la clase media o las clases trabajadoras en las que se ha sentado el turismo en las últimas décadas.

Y por tanto, esa competencia entre territorios, por atraer ese segmento turístico de mayor poder adquisitivo, se incrementan. Es una competencia feroz por atraer a ese tipo de turistas y yo creo que estamos en este en este contexto. Y yo creo que no nos hubiéramos dado cuenta si una de las hipótesis posibles que formulamos a partir del libro en Malestar en la Turistificación no fuera precisamente esta [00:29:00] idea que extraemos de Jason Moore sobre el fin de las naturalezas baratas.

La otra hipótesis tiene que ver con el trabajo que desarrolla a partir de Erik Ollin Wright sobre las posibilidades y cómo de transformar el sistema capitalista, hablando también desde el turismo, que es algo que Erik Ollin Wright nunca hizo, pero no sé si querías que habláramos ahora de él o o como quieres que lo planteemos.

Chris: Pues sí, sí, me encantaría si podrías platicar un poco sobre Erik Ollin Wright, porque escogiste el específicamente, pero también para empezar, porque el capítulo que escribiste está titulado como un Turismo Postcapitalista: Siguiendo Los Pasos de Erik Ollin Wright.

Entonces, antes de meternos en sus obras y su trabajo me gustaría preguntarte, pues, cómo defines Postcapitalismo?

Ernest: Yo parto un posicionamiento anticapitalista. Y no tengo ninguna duda. Si me [00:30:00] opongo a a este modelo de producción, creo que nos lleva el desastre tanto en términos humanos como planetarios. Desde esa posición de esa convicción anticapitalista, lo que plantea es la necesidad de encontrar salidas que nos lleven a otro escenario.

Podríamos llamarle socialismo. Podríamos llamarle ecosocialismo. No lo sé. Me interesa más pensar la posibilidad de pensar horizontes que escapen del capitalismo. Este es el posicionamiento. A veces hay gente que duda, porque una cosa o la otra. No una cosa o la otra. Si partimos del anticapitalismo para intentar construir algo fuera del capitalismo, pero no es algo tampoco mecánico, es algo que construimos. No es una fase superior del capitalismo. Después del capitalismo podría ser formas de violencia y de explotación mucho mayores. Es algo que tenemos que construir. Entonces, la idea es no resistimos, confrontamos con las lógicas capitalistas y desde [00:31:00] intentamos construir algo distinto, algo que podemos llamarle metafóricamente del momento postcapitalismo, pero no es contradictorio una posición con la otra.

A partir de ahí, yo, sinceramente, estoy en este camino de buscar como pensar las posibilidades de transformación. Esto lo tenía claro. Y cuando me acerco a distintos autores, Erik Ollin Wright no era un autor que me resultaba especialmente simpático. Venía de una tradición socialdemócrata. Venía del marxismo analítico, que era algo que no especialmente me seducía.

Si me interesaba una cosa especialmente de su obra, que era el rigor metodológico en las formas de analizar la sociedad. Esto me a atrevía especialmente. Es decir, salir fuera de las metáforas y del lenguaje a veces tan obtuso del marxismo y empezar a construir utilizando las mejores herramientas de las que disponemos en un determinado memento desde las ciencias [00:32:00] sociales.

Esto reconozco que era algo que sí que me atraía, pero no es necesariamente todo el pensamiento de Erik Ollin Wright y Erik Ollin Wright me interesa partir de leer Utopía Reales y después Como Ser Anticapitalista en el Siglo XXI, por la visión que tiene. El lo que hace es un intento de recuperar distintas tradiciones de la izquierda para pensar un programa de acción complementario.

Y a mi, esta idea me seduce especialmente, cómo pensamos en términos complementarios. Es decir cómo la acción de uno es la que uno puede hacer, la que uno desea hacer o la que las condiciones le han marcado, pero no son mejores ni peores que las que hace el otro compañero que está desde otra trinchera y como dejamos de competir por cuál es la mejor idea y empezamos a reconocernos que unos están intentando transformaciones desde el ámbito, de la lucha política parlamentaria, otros lo hacen desde del mundo sindical, otros desde del mundo [00:33:00] ecologistas y otros de cooperativismo. Reintegrar, repensar conjuntamente esas distintas tradiciones de acción de la izquierda.

Me parecía que era algo necesario. Discrepo en una posición de Erik Ollin Wright que no acabo compartir, que es esta idea de negar la posibilidad de la revolución. Y me explico, Erik Ollin Wright dice en parte como buen social demócrata, lo que viene a decir es, después de las experiencias históricas, es fácilmente reconocible que cuando hemos tomado el poder después de un proceso revolucionario, las dinámicas que hemos generado después casi han sido peores que contra lo que combatíamos. Y probablemente tenga razón.

Y yo he vivido 11 años en Nicaragua y sé de lo que estoy hablando. Se de qué significa los supuestos nuestros cuando están en el poder. Entonces, cuidado con esta idea, la simple toma del poder en [00:34:00] nombre de una bandera, de una determinada cristalización ideológica es ya un futuro deseable y mejor. Cuidado porque efectivamente generamos monstruos peores.

Pero lo que discrepo con Erik Ollin Wright es que, si bien, en sí misma la toma del poder no te garantiza una sociedad ni mucho más justa, ni mucho más equitativa, sino que al final, muchas veces lo que te encuentras son dinámicas de estabilización de nuevos grupos que ascienden al poder y desde ahí ejercen el control.

Pero lo que sí, quiero que no podemos renunciar a la idea de la movilización social, incluso de la toma del poder político como un mecanismo defensivo, como un mecanismo de respuesta ante el desorden que genera el capitalismo. En estos contextos, aunque fuera para salvaguardar dinámicas democráticas, aunque fuera para salvaguardar, creo que no podemos renunciar a la herramienta [00:35:00] revolución, pensado probablemente en términos defensivos no ofensivos, si no pensando que vamos a cambiar y vamos a generar un mundo mejor a partir de la toma del poder inmediata. Pero sí, salvaguardarlo como un mecanismo defensivo ante la lógica del avance del desorden que genera el capitalismo, la posibilidad de restaurar ciertos equilibrios a través de procesos revolucionarios.

Creo que esta es la idea que recuperamos de Walter Benjamin cuando dicen que a veces se marca como la revolución, como la locomotora de la historia y el dice más bien, es el freno de mano. Es decir, es ante el despeñadero pensar en esto. Bueno, esto mi distancia de esta posición tan categórica de Erik Ollin Wright, pero en cambio, me parece interesante cómo construir una posibilidad de un mundo post capitalista a partir de cuatro grandes estrategias o vías de lo que ella denomina erosión del [00:36:00] capitalismo. O sea si no es posible darle la vuelta de inmediato, probablemente habrá que pensar en un tránsito a largo plazo en el cual este orden capitalista he agujereado desde distintos ámbitos de intervención y fundamentalmente desde el estado y desde fuera del estado.

Y él plantea esta idea del desmantelar, domesticar, huir y resistir como formas de intervención. Y yo lo que hago en el capítulo es subir, bueno, si el turismo es tan importante en el capitalismo, cómo podríamos pensar estas categorías, estas dinámicas de ejes de intervención que contribuyen a erosionar el capitalismo de ir agujereándolo, de ir creando nuevas lógicas, aunque sean frágiles, aunque sean temporales, pero como mostrar, y como de algún modo ir asentando y que iba creciendo áreas de funcionamiento social que no reproducen las lógicas del capitalismo, sino que [00:37:00] avancen en otras direcciones. Y esto en un largo proceso que nos vaya avanzando, que nos permite avanzar.

Y yo lo que intento hacer es cómo podría ser esto desde el turismo? Y ahí implica, por una parte, la intervención desde el estado, es decir por un lado, desde el estado, entendiendo al estado cómo la cristalización de una determinada correlación de fuerzas en un determinado memento. Podríamos pensarlo en términos de, bueno, es la reproducción de, es el mecanismo que tienen las clases dominantes para reproducir bien. Yo quiero más bien siguiendo otros autores de la tradicion marxista, como Poblanzas y otros más bien entendiendo como una cristalización de una determinada correlación de fuerzas. Y esto puede cambiar.

Bien, desde esa perspectiva, pensar como desde el estado, podemos intervenir abriendo dinámicas que funcionen fuera de las lógicas del capitalismo. Una de ellas que no significa que sean necesariamente anticapitalistas, que a veces ayudan a [00:38:00] estabilizar el mismo capitalismo, pero pueden ser leídas de múltiples maneras.

Una de ellas tiene que ver con esta idea de ponerle límites al capital, introduciendo mecanismos de control, de regulación, de fiscalidad. Es decir desde la inspección del trabajo hasta la fiscalidad hasta las tonificaciones en determinadas ciudades de qué se puede hacer, si podemos permitir más hoteles o no podemos permitirlos, cierto?

Todo esta dimensión de "desde el estado," cómo ponemos mecanismos de limitación y contención al desarrollo de capital turístico? Otra vía, otra estrategias, como desde el mismo estado, generamos igual que por ejemplo, hemos hecho en algunos países en el ámbito de la salud o en el ámbito de la educación, cómo establecemos programas públicos que garanticen el acceso a las vacaciones, al descanso, etc. de una parte de la población, con programas de turismo social, [00:39:00] con creación de infraestructuras, desde parques urbanos a mejora transporte público, acompañamiento los programas de la economía social y solidaria, el cooperativismo.

Es decir cómo desde el estado generamos dinámicas que contribuían a garantizar el acceso de los sectores más desfavorecidos a vacaciones. La tercer eje de intervención de que plantea Erik Ollin Wright tiene que ver con la idea de resistir resistir fuera del estado, es decir, resistir en el combate a este desorden que genera el capitalismo, el capital turístico.

Y esto implica resistir desde dentro de las empresas con las organizaciones sindicales, pero tremendas de fuera desde los movimientos comunitarios, ecologistas, vecinales, es decir, ponerle límites al capital, no solamente esperando lo que va a hacer el estado con políticas públicas, sino que hacemos de forma organizada colectivamente dentro y fuera de las empresas.[00:40:00]

Y la cuarta dimensión de esta proceso de entender mecanismos de erosión del capitalismo y en este caso, del capitalismo de base turística, sería la idea de huir. Hay que salir ya hoy y aquí de este mundo capitalista. Y esto implica crear cooperativas, ensayar formas de organización distinta que nos permitan garantizar vacaciones, descanso, formas diversas de construir el ocio que pueden incluir el desplazamiento.

Y esto podemos hacerlo fundamentalmente desde las organizaciones comunitarias, desde el ámbito de las cooperativas, pero también desde fuera del mercado. Es decir, si la tutela del estado y si la tutela del mercado. Es decir, reorganización del ocio popular sin pasar por el mercado. Esto que en algunos países llamamos domingueros, dominguiar, hacer uso del día del señor para [00:41:00] descansar o tocarnos las narices o leer debajo un árbol.

Es esta idea de hacer lo que queramos de forma autoorganizada, en colectivo o individualmente. Es decir, abrir estos espacios. Entonces yo creo que estas cuatro dimensiones es lo que nos permite pensar la posibilidad de una transformación del turismo bajo otras lógicas. Y aquí creo que hay que introducir un matiz porque a veces siento que hay una cierta confusión, como si todo fuera un problema de palabras. Es decir que nos negamos a utilizar la palabra turismo porque es una palabra que es capital.

Bueno, nosotros, lo que reivindicamos fundamentalmente es el tiempo libre, el tiempo liberado del trabajo. Esto es lo que nosotros reivindicamos. Y creo que eso es lo que tenemos derecho a el tiempo que liberamos del trabajo para poder hacer lo que necesitemos en términos de descanso, de alimento de nuestro pensamiento, de goce, de desarrollo, de posibilidades.[00:42:00]

Esto es lo que nos interesa. Y esto se puede organizar en el propio lugar de residencia en tu espacio próximo de residencia en términos de ocio, de entretenimiento, de recreación. Pero si implica desplazamiento, es cuando empezamos a hablar de turismo y este turismo, podemos organizarlo que implica ocio más desplazamiento.

Esto podemos organizarlo, que es como hemos hecho hasta ahora, bajo las lógicas del capitalismo para reproducir el capital o podemos organizar este ocio con desplazamiento para satisfacer necesidades humanas. Y ahí es donde creo que tenemos el centro de la propuesta. Es decir, cómo pensar que una práctica humana, una práctica social no pueda ser solamente definida por las lógicas de reproducción del capital, sino que tenemos que poder desarrollarla bajo otras lógicas. Y esta es la reivindicación.

Es decir, no resignarnos a que solamente el [00:43:00] capital organice nuestras vidas. Hay una frase de David Harvey que tiene toda la razón cuando dice no hay ninguna idea moralmente buena que el capitalismo no pueda compartir en algo horroroso.

Y tiene toda la razón. El capitalismo tiene la capacidad para hacer esto, pero nosotros también pensamos que al mismo tiempo, no hay ninguna práctica social que no podamos organizar bajo otras lógicas distintas a las del capitalismo, que un mundo socialista, un mundo ecosocialista, podría ser organizado bajo otras lógicas y eso tiene que empezar ya ahora y aquí. No esperar a que venga una revolución y no sabemos cómo saldremos de ésa, sino que tenemos que empezar a organizarlo ya ahora y aquí. Yo creo que esta es la segunda hipótesis con la que construimos a partir de este libro del Malestar en la Turistificacion, que creo que, como mínimo a mí, hay muchísimas más lecturas del libro.

Pero a [00:44:00] mí esta idea que extraemos de Jason Moore en torno al fin del turismo barato y la disyuntiva entre elitizacion o empezamos a pensar propuestas de transformación que den respuesta a las necesidades de la mayoría social, esta segunda hipótesis es lo que creo que sale con más fuerza de este libro. O como mínimo es mi lectura.

Estoy seguro que otras compañeras y otros compañeros han hecho otras lecturas del del libro y les está estimulando para hacer otras cosas. Y creo que esa es la potencia que tiene el libro, que es empezar a robustecer el pensamiento crítico en turismo con abriendo nosotros posibilidades.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Wow,

Gracias, Ernest. Este yo creo que para mucho de nosotros, más ustedes que tiene mucho más tiempo en las investigaciones, los límites o el límite es la palabra, es el concepto [00:45:00] central de cómo podemos pensar, distintamente cuando estabas hablando de esas cosas, yo pensé, casi no hay límites a los instituciones que tenemos en el mundo capitalista moderna, solo los límites que los instituciones ponen en uno mismo. Pero luego tenemos que invertir lo que está pasando en el sentido de poner límites en las instituciones y luego poner en pausa las límites que son impuestos a nuestras lógicas, nuestras capacidades o maneras de pensar el mundo, de entender al mundo, pero también de pensar de otros mundos.

Y entonces, poner un límite en cuántas vuelos puede llegar en un lugar en un día o cuántos hoteles podemos construir, etcétera. Cuántos turistas podemos tener? Pero al final cuando yo pienso en eso, a veces pienso como los pueblos en México y Oaxaca en donde vivo que algunos son pueblos ecoturísticos y tienen economías relativamente cerradas o relativamente mucho más [00:46:00] cerradas que las ciudades y eso y que tienen la capacidad, que si se hacen, se ponen los límites y se dice vamos a aceptar toda x cantidad de gente en este año porque entendemos que Los recursos o la naturaleza alrededor va a sufrir sino. Pero también se este. Hay otras preguntas, eh, como de la influencia social, el intercambio de capital entre gente de culturas distintas que viene con expectativas.

Pero entonces quizás empezamos con la la cuestión de resistencia, porque a México, como muchos otros países que dependen en gran medida de las economías turísticas, las formas de resistencia política, no todas, pero algunas sí, que se emprenden contra esas economías a menudo apuntan a los turistas como los principales beneficiarios o cupables. Parece haber una fuerte resistencia a nombrar a la población local como dependiente y defensora de estas [00:47:00] economías. Si vamos a construir una resistencia política que abarque las necesidades económicas de todas las personas dentro de un lugar, cómo podemos ir más allá de esta crítica, yo digo superficial, que tiene la capacidad de esencializar a los extranjeros y infantalizar a los locales.

Ernest: Yo creo que, bueno, has dicho un montón de cosas que me sugieren en reacción. Ah, pero para empezar por el final, yo diría que muchas veces nos encontramos con formas des legitimación de las protestas diciendo bueno, todos somos turistas, como si tuviéramos que tener un comportamiento virtuoso, decir apelando una cierta coherencia individual en todos nuestros comportamientos.

De hecho, lo que están haciendo con este tipo de críticas, es sencillamente negar la legitimidad de las reivindicaciones, decir, señalando la contradicción como si todo fuera un problema individual [00:48:00] de comportamientos individuales. Y cuando lo que nos estamos diciendo es esto es un problema político, no de una persona en concreto, sea turista o sea población local que resiste y luego hace turismo, si el problema dejémonos ya de moralismo y de buscar ciudadanos virtuosos moralmente. Y empecemos a plantear que ambas son las estructuras políticas que pongan límites a este capital turístico. Yo creo que el grueso de la pelea es salir de esta idea de la responsabilidad individual de quedar atrapados en estas ideas de responsabilidad que tampoco sin desmerecerla, es decir es otro campo de intervención, pero el centro no puede ser la decisión individual y la coherencia individual en relación a nuestros comportamientos. Tiene que ver con dinámicas estructurales y lo que hay que cambiar son dinámicas de conjunto y para eso se falta hacer política con mayúsculas, ,implica movilización, pero para [00:49:00] cambiar estructuras.

Cuál es el problema que a veces en esta maraña de capitales, que haces más difícil de identificar quién es el responsable de estas políticas o de estas violencias? Si quienes al final del último, que toma decisiones detrás de estos fondos de inversión. En cambio, el turista lo tenemos cerca y puede ser efectivamente blanco del malestar, porque es el que tienes más cerca. Entonces, y yo creo que desde los medios de comunicación, se nos intenta situar en ese terreno, a cuando se pone en circulación la idea de turismofobia, que empieza sobre todo en Barcelona y que luego circula a nivel internacional.

Es una campaña dirigida a quitar la legitimación al movimiento vecinal que está protestando. No hay turismofobia. Puede haber alguien que de un día te caiga mal a alguien, pero no es un problema contra una persona. Lo que pasa es que a veces al que tienes cerca, el que te molesta es el turista, [00:50:00] es la parte final de ese proceso y es mucho más difícil señalar a las autoridades públicas, locales, nacionales, internacionales que han diseñado esos marcos de representación, a las empresas escondidas en esas dinámicas financieras.

Entonces yo creo que es un proceso contradictorio, pero que, al mismo tiempo, no debemos renunciar a él. Es decir, aquí la cuestión no tiene que ver con como eres más o menos coherente, más o menos responsable, siendo población local, receptora o siendo turista o siendo muchas cosas a la vez. No tiene tanto que ver con eso, sino como reorganizamos el sistema de organizar el sistema turístico.

Esta es la clave. Aquí está el problema. Y esto implica ponerle límites. Y como bien decías en tu primera parte, la intervención, si yo creo que la palabra límites adquirido, una connotación política fundamental. Las últimas manifestaciones que se están organizando [00:51:00] en España, en la que tuvimos hace dos, dos fines de semana en Barcelona, o la que va a ver este domingo en Palma, especialmente pongámosle límites al turismo.

Pero esta demanda de ponerle límites y al mismo tiempo que le ponemos límites, tenemos que saber que hay una parte de la población que en España es de un 30 porciento, pero que la Union Europea gira en torno también otro 30% con niveles también muy desiguales, pero que cuando lo miramos desde América Latina, es mucho más, más de la mitad de la población que no puede hacer vacaciones. Es decir que estamos en esa discusión pero por otra parte, tenemos una parte de la población que no tiene infraestructuras que le permiten hacer vacaciones, sea desde que legalmente, no le permiten tener esas vacaciones en buenas condiciones, que no hay infraestructuras para que puedan pagárselas, que faltan programas públicos de calidad de turismo social que le [00:52:00] permitan disponer de esas infraestructuras.

Entonces, yo creo que la dinámica es doble, es por uno de que ponerle límites al capital. Y hay que hacerlo como parte de una reflexión y de una intervención política no individual en términos morales, pero que al mismo tiempo, hay que plantear un horizonte de deseo. Queremos algo, queremos disfrutar del tiempo libre.

Queremos disfrutar de un tiempo libre de calidad. Una de las formas posibles, no la única puede ser el turismo, que implicar este ocio más desplazamiento. Y para hacer esto y poder gozar de conocer otros espacios, otros lugares fuera de mi realidad cotidiana. Para hacer esto, necesitamos infraestructuras sociales que nos permiten hacerlo.

Y yo creo que ahí está la batalla, por un lado, ponerle límites al capital y por otro lado, expandirnos. Ofreciendo un mundo deseable. Queremos disponer de tiempo libre. [00:53:00] Queremos desarrollarnos en nuestro tiempo libre. Queremos que nuestro tiempo libre lo podamos organizar en la proximidad en nuestra casa, en nuestros alrededores, pero puntualmente también viajando.

Y eso significa disponer de infraestructuras públicas y también de mecanismos porque el dinero y el mercado va a ser la única forma de decidir quien vuela y quien no vuela. Si tenemos que ir un mundo con muchos menos vuelos, serán los que puedan pagarlos o podemos organizarlo de otro modo.

Cuántas veces puedes volar al año? Cuántas veces puedes hacer por cuánto tiempo? Como podemos, si le imp, implica un un ejercicio que a veces, cuando lo planteas, parece que esta gente no vive en el mundo, que la realidad es otra efectivamente. Ocurre esto, pero para avanzar en esta dirección, necesitamos horizontes de esperanza, horizontes que nos digan debemos ir para allá, no solamente como pérdida de privilegios, no [00:54:00] solamente por restringirnos porque el planeta se desmonta, sino porque queremos vivir mejor y queremos vivir mejor todos.

Entonces, yo creo que esta conjunción, porque si no tenemos otro problema que tiene que ver con el crecimiento de la extrema derecha en un mundo de inseguridades en un mundo de amenazas, quién está ofreciendo seguridades, aunque sea con discursos racistas xenófobos de culpar al penúltimo, culpando al último.

Es decir en este contexto, cómo podemos organizar dinámicas que a la vez que le ponemos límites a este desarrollo turístico capitalista, estemos ofreciendo seguridades, seguridades en términos de el control implica también mejores de condiciones de trabajo. Y el control sobre esto es también para poder organizar el turismo de otra manera que tú no pierdas tu trabajo, sino que podamos organizarlo de otra manera y que podamos satisfacer las necesidades [00:55:00] que tiene mucha más gente.

Yo creo que la cosa va por ahí entre la resistencia y la propuesta de un mundo deseable también en el turismo.

Chris: Ya ya igual subió mi mente como esa noción de el ocio, el tiempo de ocio son momentos también fuera de trabajo que en un análisis puede decir que el trabajo es un tipo de esclavitud moderna, a veces no, pero a veces sí, muchas veces creo y que tiempo de ocio o descanso es un tiempo también para organizarse.

Organizar la comunidad. Organizar por otros mundos o contra lo que tienes, eh? Pero el turismo parece que también ha sido como un herramienta contra eso. O sea, ya tienes tu tiempo descanso. Pero mira, mira, mira las playas de Cuba...

Ernest: No es exclusivo del turismo. Es decir, cuando hablamos de turismo, estamos hablando de ocio, más desplazamiento. [00:56:00] Si no nos desplazamos, resulta que este ocio que hacemos desde nuestra casa es el mas emancipatorio del mundo. Es decir, estar en casa viendo Netflix es lo mejor, estar yendo al centro comercial a pasear porque hubiese en un mundo de inseguridades de mierda.

Es decir, en este contexto, esto no es algo exclusivo del turismo. También desde el ocio, tenemos estas dinámicas de alineación y de mercantilizacion. Entonces, necesitamos salir de las palabras para construir escenarios que nos permitan satisfacer necesidades y expandir posibilidades, capacidades de la gente de explorar y vivir mejor.

Pero hay muchos ejemplos que te permiten de manera diversa y es parte de lo que decíamos al principio de la conversación de en lo que estamos trabajando en Alba Sud de intentarse sistematizar un montón de estas experiencias que han [00:57:00] probado aspectos distintos de transformación, de salir de estas lógicas y avanzar en otras direcciones.

Y quiero que el problema es que muchas veces la academia no ha puesto atención en estas posibilidades. Y en cambio, en la vida, en la vida cotidiana, hay muchas más cosas que se están haciendo que no hace falta que nos pongamos a inventar que también, pero empecemos también por reconocer y recuperar muchas de las cosas que están en nuestra propia historia y también en nuestro alrededor, en en estos otros contextos que podemos encontrar experiencias ricas en estas otras formas y las encontraremos en el ocio y las encontraremos en el turismo.

Pero a veces tengo la sensación de que cuando solamente identificábamos el turismo como un proceso de mercantilizacion, nos estamos pegando un tiro al pie. El turismo, igual que muchas otras cosas, puede ser eso y efectivamente es una dinámica de reproducción del capital que [00:58:00] genera violencia, violencia estructural y directa.

Nos tenemos que resignar a que solamente pueda ser eso. Podríamos imaginar cómo construimos eso de otra manera y para imaginar, empecemos por reconocer lo que está en otro alrededor que ya está funcionando de otras maneras y que a lo mejor algunas de estas experiencias son frágiles, son limitadas, tienen contradicciones, fracasan, pero muestran que durante un tiempo ha sido posible organizar esto.

La próxima fracasaremos mejor. Y a la siguiente, lo haremos perfecto. Es decir, es un proceso constante de tensión, de organización, de intento de generar cambios que nos permitan construir una vida digna, que también pasa por recuperar ese tiempo libre que lo podremos organizar de maneras distintas. Y ahí podríamos o no incluir el turismo en función de nuestras necesidades y posibilidades.

Chris: Gracias, Ernest. Gracias por ofrecer eso y [00:59:00] clarificar. Entonces, si podemos imaginar otros mundos, otras formas de caminar y caminar juntos, podemos comenzar a dar pasos hacia esos caminos. Si pudieras imaginar un otro mundo de esa manera, libre de las limitaciones contemporáneas de las fronteras estatales, la hospitalidad industrial y las expectativas extractivas cómo sería para ti, Ernest?

Ese viaje que tanto deseas hacer sería una peregrinación? Sería posible solo una vez en tu vida? Cómo sería ese viaje para ti?

Ernest: Claro, yo diferenciaría y pensaría en que necesariamente sea plural. Es decir, que las opciones sean múltiples. No hay una respuesta, no hay una forma de organizar otro turismo. Hay o deben haber muchas formas. En función de las muchas necesidades que tenga la gente. El otro día, en una entrevista, a preguntar cómo hacías vacaciones tú cuando eras adolescente? Como pensando en [01:00:00] cómo encontrar ese anexo en lo que ahora me preocupa y yo digo, lo que hacía era pasarme en los veranos en la biblioteca.

Y lo que deseaba era tener infraestructuras públicas de calidad en la que pudieras leer sin ruido, constantemente. Y quería infraestructuras públicas que me permitieran hacer eso. Y creo que una forma de organizar tu tiempo libre tiene que ver con que dispongamos de infraestructuras públicas que nos permitan organizarlo.

Y ahí, no hay una sola forma, ni una sola necesidad. La mía tiene que ver con esto o ha tenido que ver con esto en un determinado momento de mi vida y para otros es otra y para otros es una distinta. Entonces yo me imagino no un camino, sino me imagino unos muchos caminos que pueden responder a formas y necesidades distintas.

Si me imagino programas robustos potentes de calidad de turismo social en el que [01:01:00] la gente pueda acceder al mar, puede acceder a la montaña, puede acceder a espacios que en la cercanía y tomando en cuenta a los límites del planeta, podamos movilizarnos masivamente para dormir fuera de nuestra casa, viendo las experiencias, pero que no solamente en infraestructuras o espacios natural, sino que también implique un programa pedagógico pensado para cómo desarrollar potencialidades, como ver esas distintas apuestas.

Pero veo esto y también veo con deseo, las apropiaciones que hace a la gente los parques públicos, como la gente se toma al parque y celebra fiestas y organiza actividades. Creo que necesitamos pensar en términos plurales. Es decir no hay unas vacaciones. A lo mejor en la vida, necesitaremos tener disponer de la posibilidad de organizar nuestros tiempos de trabajo de manera distinta, que nos permitan viajar más tiempo que en lugar de hacer lo que no tendría [01:02:00] sentido es pensar que podemos universalizar viajes de Alemania al Caribe por cuatro días.

Eso no tiene ningún sentido, pero estamos seguros de que ya no podremos conocer otros territorios. A lo mejor será menos veces en la vida. Será por más tiempo. Será combinando trabajo con espacios de ocio con espacios. Es decir, creo que lo que debemos abrirnos es a la pluralidad de posibilidades de organizar esta parte de nuestro tiempo libre que hemos asociado con el desplazamiento.

De alguna manera, yo creo que lo que necesitamos son horizontes por los que merezca la pena, no solamente resistir, sino movilizarse para avanzar hacia ellos. Queremos vivir mejor y tenemos derecho a vivir mejor. Tenemos que resistir todas las mierdas y todas las cabronadas que nos hace el capital. Pero al mismo tiempo, tenemos que poder aspirar a una [01:03:00] vida organizada bajo otras lógicas. Ahí es donde creo que que está la clave algo por lo que merezca la pena luchar.

Chris: Gracias, Ernest por esas palabras muy importantes y tus reflexiones en el día dehoy, desde mí, mi parte y mi corazón y la parte de los oyentes también. Entonces, por último, Ernest, cómo podrían nuestros oyentes saber más sobre tu trabajo y Alba Sud y donde se pueden comprar el Malestar en la Turistificacion?

Ernest: Al bas sud?

Tenemos nuestra página web AlbaSud.Org. Ahí, todas nuestras publicaciones son de descarga gratuita. Tenemos una sección de formación en la que vamos recuperando todos los videos de los debates actividades que organizamos. Si la página web, la herramienta. Disponemos de un boletín que mandamos mensualmente.

Estamos en redes [01:04:00] sociales varias, en Facebook, en Twitter, en Linkedin, disponemos de un canal en Telegram. Por ahí se pueden informar de lo que hacemos, de las actividades de las convocatorias y con Icaria que tenemos varios libros publicados, dependiendo del lugar en España, es posible en cualquier librería.

Si no lo tienen, pedirlo y lo llevan. Y en muchos otros lugares, creo que hay que pedirlo directamente por la editorial. Es decir, en algunos países de América Latina, Icaria tiene distribución comercial normal. En otros es más difícil, pero en la página web de Icaria Editorial se pueden conseguir estos trabajos. Y si no lo encuentran, que nos escriban que algo resolveremos.

Chris: Muy bien, pues voy a asegurar que todos esos enlaces están ya en el sitio de Fin de Turismo cuando lanza el episodio y una vez más Ernest, desee que tendríamos más tiempo para [01:05:00] platicar, pero seguramente en otra ocasión. Fue un gran honor, oportunidad de hablar contigo y espero que podemos hacerlo de nuevo en algún momento.

Ernest: Con mucho gusto. Encantado de poder conversar contigo. Y estoy realmente seguro de que vamos a continuar caminando juntos. Muchas gracias.

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English Transcription

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome Ernest, to the end of tourism podcast.

Ernest: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Chris: It's a great honor to finally be able to talk to you. I wonder if, to start with, you could tell us about this, where you speak today and what the world is like there for you?

Ernest: I usually live in Barcelona, between Barcelona and Mallorca, because I am between the University of the Balearic Islands and Alba Sud, and at the moment I am in Buenos Aires working on research into different management experiences, outside the logic of capitalism. And this led us to identify different experiences. And now I am starting a research with the Hotel Bauen, what was the now closed Hotel Bauen and the cooperative that managed it for 20 years,

It is part of the process that we are doing, identifying [00:01:00] diverse plural experiences that have to do with how to think about the possibility of organizing tourism under other modes and this has taken us along different paths from Latin America, from Spain. And now I am here.

Chris: Well, thank you Ernest. And yes, we are going to talk about this topic, but beyond the visions that exist, that we can imagine about post - capitalist tourism or something around it, something like that. But before we get into that, you and I have been in contact for the last two years, partly due to your work in the field of critical tourism studies and your Alba Sud project, in which some of our previous guests, including Ivan Murray, Robert Fletcher and Macia Blasquez, have participated.

I would love for you to tell me a little bit [00:02:00] about Alba Sud, Ernest, its mission, its history and its current situation.

Ernest: With pleasure. Oh, look, Alba Sud was founded in 2008. We had legalized it before in case some group of colleagues needed it one day, but it formally began to operate in 2008 and it began to operate in Managua, Nicaragua, which was where I lived at the time.

And it was basically an agreement between people who were dedicated to research and communication to work with critical and at the same time propositional analysis around tourism. This was something that was original from the beginning, this double concern, about how to think about the impacts, the effects that tourism development had under capitalism and what kind of dynamics of structural and direct violence they generated and at the same time, how to think about possibilities of getting out of that [00:03:00] framework of those logics. And that was a hallmark that we started with from the beginning.

Over the years, Alba Sud has grown, becoming a network of tourism researchers. We now have a presence in 10 countries in Spain, France, Europe, and then in Latin America, in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.

So it is a network made up of people who are dedicated to different areas of tourism analysis and who share work spaces and analysis and political intervention. For us, Alba Sud is a research centre, but it is not an academic centre and we are less concerned about academic dynamics, although there is a part of our team of people who collaborate who are at the university, different universities.

What we are concerned about is how to generate [00:04:00] knowledge that is useful for communities, for community organizations, for civil associations, for unions, and for public administration when possible. That is, we try to generate knowledge, analysis, systematization, proposals that in some way contribute to making visible the things that do not work well, that are a disaster that generate pain in this world in relation to tourism and at the same time, to think of horizons of hope.

This is the purpose. To do this, we have a large team of people who collaborate more closely on a day-to-day basis, others who collaborate occasionally, and we basically put together our work, which is organized around a website, www.AlbaSud.Org, and we structure it into research papers that are later published in a format [00:05:00] written in different ways, which I will then tell you about. In addition to the form of research, work is linked to training to generate dialogue processes that allow us to listen, to reflect together, putting people who come from the academy on the same level as people who have specific work experiences. And finally, a more political influence area, more of accompanying organizations and accompanying them to influence politically.

In the field of research, we then express it, basically through short articles that we write, we publish around 100, 110, 120 a year, which are short articles of 2000-2500 words, which we know are widely used in universities, as discussion material.

And a bit of the purpose is this, that they are boiled down as small, well-written articles, or we try to make them well [00:06:00] written, that they are in simple language, that the complexity has nothing to do with the academic swear words that we use, but the depth of the thought that they incorporate, but that they have to be able to be read by many people.

We have this. Then, we started our own publishing house, Alba Sud Editorial, in which we have a collection of books, a collection of reports and recently a collection of policy briefs aimed more at policy recommendations. And basically Alba Sud is that. It is a meeting space between people who do not resign ourselves to thinking that tourism development necessarily has to involve this, who are supporting the resistance, the struggles against the many evils and violence generated by this capitalist development through tourism and who at the same time, try to build what I said before "horizons of hope" that allow us to stimulate struggle and resistance, [00:07:00] thinking about more desirable futures, which I think is what we also need at this time.

Chris: Thank you, Ernest. Yes. Well, from what I've seen, what I've read, what I've found on the Alba Sud website. Well, it is, it is a unique organization and site in the world. And so, I have a great honor to be with you today talking about these things and especially with you as the founder. And so, to add, to go a little deeper into the story, into your story, the next question comes from our mutual friend, colleague Macía Blasquez, whom I interviewed in season four. Europe. And he asks, "He claims that you have been, among many other things, an activist in Central America, as you told us, and so he wants to know how your opinions and your career have changed since then ?"

Ernest: Good question.

Ah, I started working in Central America as an accompanist. Well, first I spent six years going back and forth. I spent half a year in Central America more or less with another media outlet in Spain. And finally I stayed to work in Nicaragua with an organization called "Luciérnaga" now "Ilegalizada," dedicated to communication.

And from there we began to organize communication campaigns on different topics that had to do with the needs and rights of the majority of people and how they were suffering processes of dispossession of possession. And we worked around topics that had to do with health and sexual or reproductive rights or food sovereignty. And in one of these, we organized a campaign that lasted four years of research and communication on tourism.

In context, I'm talking about the year [00:09:00] 2004-2008, when Nicaragua was opening up to tourism at that time. And then we clearly identified the high levels of violence that this could entail with displacement processes.

And it was necessary to accompany the communities in these dynamics, which were also shared in El Salvador, in Guatemala, in Honduras, in Costa Rica, and at the same time, to begin to think about possibilities of "if it was possible to use tourism under the control of the communities themselves." That was my insertion into the world of tourism, fundamentally.

And from there, after working for about four years at Luciérnaga, we started Alba Sud and in part we recovered in Alba Sud that specialization linked to tourism. We thought, and it is something that we have reflected on many times with Ivan Murray, who you also interviewed, that we were not realizing from the world of [00:10:00] left of the importance that tourism had for the functioning of capitalism.

And sometimes when we said that we needed tourism, people took it as something irrelevant, as something superficial, even almost humorous, like you like to travel, right? And then it was like, how could we not realize, on the one hand, especially since the implementation of neoliberal programs, how tourism was helping to expand the processes of capitalist development, but at the same time, how it had a second very important function , which was how it helped to stabilize the disorders caused by that same neoliberal program?

I remember that I was very impressed when I worked in Costa Rica when I realized that in 1985, when the structural adjustment programs were implemented, [00:11:00] one of the things that was done was to dismantle the CNP, which was the national production council, which was what allowed for many years, the Costa Rican peasantry to have the security that basic grains, beans, rice, corn had somewhere to sell them at stable prices. And this gave security to the peasantry.

This was in the context of the application of neoliberal policies that were in fact blackmail, saying, well, in the context of a debt crisis, either you implement certain political programs to liberalize trade or you have no support in that context, the counterpart of shrinking the state and reducing it.

And one of the axes of the reduction of public spending was, for example, to dismantle the CNP, this national production council. And in exchange, what was asked of the peasantry was to stimulate them in the production [00:12:00] of crops that supposedly had better insertion in the international market to attract the arrival of foreign currency.

And there, vanilla, turmeric, and pepper were promoted, products that in the end did not work out. But at the same time, rural tourism was promoted as a mechanism for the peasantry, on the one hand, to contribute foreign currency with the development of tourist services, and at the same time to allow them to stabilize and not get involved in a dynamic that had to do with the suffering they were experiencing, which was generating very large migration processes.

So, with Ivan, one of the things we were reflecting on was that this tourism thing is starting to be very important for capitalism. And after the crisis of 2008, I think we became quite aware that the dynamics of the solution that capitalism finds for its [00:13:00] reproduction partly has to do with the expansion of tourism.

And we have seen this after the COVID crisis with the pandemic that we had in which... I perfectly remember a call that Iván and I had, we said that the same thing that happened to us in 2008 cannot happen to us in 2020, that we did not realize until much later what was happening. And so, we said "let's stop all the publications that we have pending and ask the entire broader team that is around Alba Sud, let's think about it and analyze that we are wrong, but let's analyze what changes this means."

And at that time, some people laughed at us. They said that we should be futurologists, that we had turned Alba Sud into a crystal ball and that we were trying to invoke the future. And in fact, what we were trying to do was the analysis from political economy to understand what was coming our way and in some way, answering the question that [00:14:00] Macia asked us, I think that what has changed my thinking is intuition.

In other words, what used to be an intuition was that we had to work, generating knowledge outside the logic of academic reproduction and we had to generate knowledge linked to the problems felt by the most disadvantaged people, that this institution was right and that there was a space to do that and that it was necessary to do it.

And that this was a space that we had to build in relation to the world of universities and academia, but independent of it, but also independent of companies, which is what we saw had also happened to some NGOs that for years worked trying to generate some kind of thinking around tourism, but that had quickly fallen into a certain trap of thinking that it was possible to influence companies, generate dynamics of responsibility, etc. And we thought that this was not the way to go, that it had to do with how [00:15:00] we strengthened other actors so that they could fight, resist and build things outside the framework of capitalism.

So, I think that, I don't know if many things changed in terms of thinking, but a conviction was consolidated about what we began to do in a somewhat intuitive way, it ended up becoming a space for research, collaboration, support, training, political science for a lot of people who are linked to tourism.

Chris: Yeah. Thanks, Ernest. Well, I feel that this insight has opened up a lot in recent years. And there are a lot of people in many places, usually touristy or over-touristy places, realizing and realizing not only [00:16:00] the consequences, but the patterns and, well, where we are going with the patterns or channels of conventional tourism, but also, as you said, in tourism, as a great factor in the expansion and destruction of capitalism in our time.

So, through Alba Sud and Icaria Editorial in Spain, you have recently published an anthology called The Discontents of Touristification: Critical Thinking for a Transformation of Tourism. There are tons of fascinating chapters, I have to say, by excellent authors and researchers, including works referencing Silvia Federici and David Harvey, Pierre Biourdeau, Donna Haraway, Foucault, Graeber, and Ursula Le Guin, among others. [00:17:00] I'm curious, Ernest, what was the impetus behind the creation of this anthology?

Ernest: A lot of times, a lot of the things that we do or push that are bigger, come from a phone call with Ivan Murray and we call each other and say, "We have to do this, we have to do that."

And what we ended up doing with these calls is some of us taking them forward. In this particular case, we had a recurring reflection that it was becoming less and less interesting to read about tourism or that we were less interested in reading about tourism and that to understand tourism, we needed to read other things. And even those of us who are dedicated to critical analysis of tourism realized that we were only reading a lot about each other.

And that in some way we were reproducing the same thing that was happening to the academy linked to tourism. It is a very endogamous academy, [00:18:00] very self-concentrated that discusses the same topics that are cited to each other and we realized that in some way, those of us who were dedicated to criticism and proposals outside of those frameworks, had the risk of not capturing part of the complexity that tourism development had to the extent that it was becoming increasingly larger and was penetrating more spheres of life. And there the idea was, we need to do when we shared with Iván and then Clément Marie dit Chirot joined, who is a professor at the University of Angers, who also collaborates with Alba Sud.

That's where the idea came from to say, well, we shared with you what you're reading, what you're interested in. And that's where we started to share authors. And the idea was born that we should do something with this. We held a first seminar in Barcelona on the work of David Harvey and in Lefebvre on what these two authors can contribute to the current understanding [00:19:00] of tourism development.

And it was a seminar, that's why the book was partly written. Sometimes people say, why so much Harvey and so much Lefebvre, because the origin of the book had to do with this first seminar, which was a test, an essay, on how can we get authors who have not necessarily spoken about tourism, how can we get them to dialogue with our object of analysis?

And there we made a bit of the same call that we had made in 2020 when we started working on the pandemic, which became two books. One was Confined Touristification and the other was Proximity Tourism, which was the same process of starting to ask our colleagues, friends, partners, what they were working on, what they were seeing...

Well, we did the same thing, we started asking around the Alba Sud team, people who collaborate, what authors were they reading that interested them and who hadn't talked about tourism before? And how [00:20:00] could we do the exercise of bringing them to the tourism analyses in order to strengthen them, to make them more solid, to incorporate dimensions that if we only focused on what we had been reading and writing about tourism, we might have missed. Of course, we were left with a lot of reference works outside this framework, that is to say, we had a volume with 25 chapters and we could have easily come up with a second volume, which is something we don't rule out, but not in immediate terms because of the amount of work that it also entails.

But if we managed to put a series of people in dialogue that allowed us, in some way, to enrich the tourism analysis and provide people who were getting into certain topics from the field of understanding how tourism works, to find theoretical references, criticisms of capitalism that could help them [00:21:00] at least, open paths, understand what readings we could make from them.

There are certainly authors who could have had another kind of interpretation, but it is the one that the people who collaborate with us did and in some way it was one of the possible interpretations. And well, that is the origin of the book and the motivation.

Chris: Yeah. And I'd like to ask you about, well, your chapter on Eric Ollin Wright, but before that, I'd like to ask you what kind of insights you were most surprised by outside of your own research?

Ernest: Yes, Ivan, Clemente and I not only read, but edit and discuss all the chapters.

Unfortunately, we had to reject some of them as well. In some cases, there were people who sent us writings that were more complex than the author himself. We chose those that needed to be understood or in other cases, we weren't very interested in reading them. [00:22:00] It wasn't that we accepted everything in this process.

And for me, one of the discoveries was Jason Moore and the work that Ivan did with him to think about or raise the hypothesis of the end of cheap tourism. This has given rise to a research project that we are working on at the University of the Balearic Islands, with the CRIGUST group in which I am working, thinking about saying, well, what does this scenario of chronic emergencies mean, this dynamic, in which capitalism has functioned based on the logic of having cheap nature... what does it mean if this starts to end? And to what extent is this model of tourism development that we have had in recent decades actually not subject to too many tensions? It is too much in crisis and we should perhaps raise the hypothesis of the end of cheap tourism, but [00:23:00] opening of new scenarios and based on this hypothesis we are developing a research project and in some way it has also served us at Alba Sud to think about the scenarios of this dynamic of reactivation. To say no, not everything is the same as it was before. I believe that to understand the current moment of tourism development at a global level, we must place ourselves in two crises:

We have already mentioned the neoliberal program and how neoliberalism incorporates tourism as a mechanism of expansion while at the same time stabilizing. But the last two crises, in 2008 and 2020, generate a leap in scale in terms of touristification, a process of global touristification like we have never experienced before, being an exponential leap, partly because after the 2008 crisis, a situation occurs in which the paths that had been chosen through bank loans , construction, mortgages, etc., collapse and it is not possible to continue reproducing capital through those paths. And this requires finding other mechanisms through which capital can be reproduced. There, David Harvey has spoken many times about the importance of the urbanization of China in this process of emerging from the 2008 crisis.

We understand that, in addition to this, the role of tourism is key. It is no coincidence that a company like Airbnb was born in 2008, that this expansion of urban tourism took place. In other words, it has to do with this logic. And the pandemic in some way stops it, but at the same time, it is an exit, a very aggressive reaction by capital to recover what it has not earned in previous years.

And so, this dynamic is like another twist.

At this point, Jason Moore's thinking is not useful for that, which I read fundamentally [00:25:00] as Iván Murray's contribution to this work that we are doing, in the malaise of touristification. This hypothesis of the end of cheap tourism that we propose based on the rereading of Jason Moore, what it allows us to think is, or rather to interpret, is the dynamic of profitability the same as before the crisis or is there something qualitatively different? And there is something qualitatively different, because we are facing a risk scenario for this capitalist development linked to cheap nature.

And that's where we realize that, in part, there is a champagne effect, that close to the reopenings you haven't been able to travel for two years and when there is the opening, people go out. But beyond this and what has been expressed to us in recent years in an excessive way, we have tourism in the most purified destinations, tourism of all kinds, from luxury to bachelor or bachelorette parties , who don't even rent a room, who simply spend the night on Friday and Saturday partying and leave on Sunday and that's it. In other words, we have everything.

And that is where I go back to Jason Moore and the idea of the end of cheap tourism, this risk of the end of cheap tourism, what we are beginning to realise is that we are beginning to see greater competition between territories, between cities, to attract tourism with greater purchasing power. They realise that we have emerged from the crisis and there are a series of chronic emergencies or what some call polycrises that are still present, which have to do with climate change, with the fuel crisis or the energy crisis and the crisis of materials with the interruptions to global supply chains, with geopolitical tensions.

And all of this alerts us to the risks that [00:27:00] tourism development has. We are in a very vulnerable scenario. In addition, after the exit, we began to see that there is an enormous level of destruction of ecosystems, not to mention, this logic of constant growth is unviable, because we have far exceeded the capacity of the planet and in that context we also see another cheap nature that is beginning to be questioned, which is work, that is, the idea of resignation, of resignation, and one of the great problems that companies have at the moment is the lack of personnel, people who do not want to work there and who look for work elsewhere.

So, in this context of what we call chronic emergencies that also feed off each other, what we are beginning to see is that capitals, through public authorities in different territories, are beginning to compete to attract tourists with greater purchasing power. They are looking for ways to concentrate that segment of the tourist segment [00:28:00] that will be less sensitive to crisis situations, that will continue to travel, and how to bring them back.

And it involves a huge public spending programme in terms of infrastructure to attract them in terms of international promotion, in terms of macro-events to consolidate that attraction. The problem is that, by definition, tourists with higher purchasing power are much less than the middle class or the working classes on which tourism has been based in recent decades.

And so, that competition between territories to attract that tourist segment with greater purchasing power increases. It is a fierce competition to attract that type of tourist and I think we are in this context. And I think we would not have realized it if one of the possible hypotheses that we formulated based on the book in Malaise in Touristification was not precisely this [00:29:00] idea that we extract from Jason Moore about the end of cheap nature.

The other hypothesis has to do with the work that he developed based on Erik Ollin Wright on the possibilities and how to transform the capitalist system, also speaking from tourism, which is something that Erik Ollin Wright never did, but I don't know if you wanted us to talk about it now or how you want us to put it.

Chris: Well yes, yes, I would love if you could talk a little bit about Erik Ollin Wright, because you specifically chose him, but also to start, because the chapter that you wrote is titled Postcapitalist Tourism: Following in the Footsteps of Erik Ollin Wright.

So, before we get into your works and your work, I would like to ask you, how do you define Postcapitalism?

Ernest: I start from an anti-capitalist position. And I have no doubts. If I [00:30:00] oppose this model of production, I think it will lead us to disaster both in human and planetary terms. From that position of that anti-capitalist conviction, what is raised is the need to find solutions that will lead us to another scenario.

We could call it socialism. We could call it eco-socialism. I don't know. I'm more interested in thinking about the possibility of thinking about horizons that escape capitalism. This is the position. Sometimes there are people who doubt, because it's one thing or the other. Not one thing or the other. If we start from anti-capitalism to try to build something outside of capitalism, but it's not something mechanical either, it's something we build. It's not a higher phase of capitalism. After capitalism there could be much greater forms of violence and exploitation. It's something we have to build. So, the idea is that we don't resist, we confront capitalist logic and from [00:31:00] we try to build something different, something that we can call metaphorically the post-capitalist moment, but one position is not contradictory to the other.

From there, I, honestly, am on this path of looking for how to think about the possibilities of transformation. This was clear to me. And when I approached different authors, Erik Ollin Wright was not an author that I found particularly sympathetic. He came from a social democratic tradition. He came from analytical Marxism, which was something that did not particularly appeal to me.

One thing that interested me in particular in his work was the methodological rigor in the ways of analyzing society. This was what I was particularly daring about. That is, going beyond the metaphors and the sometimes obtuse language of Marxism and starting to build using the best tools that we have at a given moment from the social sciences .

I admit that this was something that did attract me, but it is not necessarily all of Erik Ollin Wright's thinking, and Erik Ollin Wright interested me starting from reading Real Utopias and then How to Be Anticapitalist in the 21st Century, because of the vision he has. What he does is an attempt to recover different traditions of the left in order to think of a complementary action program.

And I am particularly seduced by this idea, how we think in complementary terms. That is to say, how one's action is what one can do, what one wants to do or what the conditions have dictated, but it is neither better nor worse than what the other comrade who is in another trench does, and how we stop competing over which is the best idea and begin to recognize that some are trying to make changes from the sphere of parliamentary political struggle, others do it from the union world, others from the world [00:33:00] environmentalists and others from the cooperative movement. To reintegrate and rethink together these different traditions of action on the left.

I thought it was necessary. I disagree with Erik Ollin Wright's position, which I do not fully agree with, which is this idea of denying the possibility of revolution. And let me explain, Erik Ollin Wright says, partly as a good social democrat, what he is saying is, after historical experiences, it is easily recognizable that when we have taken power after a revolutionary process, the dynamics that we have generated afterwards have been almost worse than what we were fighting against . And he is probably right.

And I have lived 11 years in Nicaragua and I know what I am talking about. I know what our assumptions mean when they are in power . So, be careful with this idea , the simple seizure of power in [00:34:00] The name of a flag, of a certain ideological crystallization is already a desirable and better future. Be careful because we actually generate worse monsters.

But what I disagree with Erik Ollin Wright about is that, although taking power in itself does not guarantee a society that is much more just or much more equitable, in the end, what you often find are dynamics of stabilization of new groups that rise to power and from there exercise control.

But I do want to say that we cannot give up the idea of social mobilization, even of taking political power as a defensive mechanism, as a response mechanism to the disorder generated by capitalism. In these contexts, even if it were to safeguard democratic dynamics, even if it were to safeguard, I think we cannot give up the tool [00:35:00] revolution, probably thought of in defensive, not offensive terms, but thinking that we are going to change and generate a better world from the immediate seizure of power. But yes, safeguard it as a defensive mechanism against the logic of the advance of the disorder generated by capitalism, the possibility of restoring certain balances through revolutionary processes.

I think this is the idea that we recover from Walter Benjamin when he says that sometimes it is marked as the revolution, as the locomotive of history and he says rather, it is the handbrake. That is to say, it is in the face of the precipice to think about this. Well, this distances me from this very categorical position of Erik Ollin Wright, but instead, it seems interesting to me how to build a possibility of a post-capitalist world from four great strategies or paths of what she calls the erosion of [00:36:00] capitalism. In other words, if it is not possible to turn it around immediately, we will probably have to think about a long-term transition in which this capitalist order has made holes from different areas of intervention and fundamentally from the state and from outside the state.

And he raises this idea of dismantling, domesticating, fleeing and resisting as forms of intervention. And what I do in the chapter is to raise, well, if tourism is so important in capitalism, how could we think about these categories, these dynamics of axes of intervention that contribute to eroding capitalism by making holes in it, by creating new logics, even if they are fragile, even if they are temporary, but as if to show, and how to somehow establish and grow areas of social functioning that do not reproduce the logic of capitalism, but rather [00:37:00] move in other directions. And this is a long process that will advance us, that will allow us to move forward.

And what I am trying to do is, how could this be from a tourism perspective? And that implies, on the one hand, intervention from the state, that is, on the one hand, from the state, understanding the state as the crystallization of a certain correlation of forces at a certain moment. We could think of it in terms of, well, it is the reproduction of, it is the mechanism that the dominant classes have to reproduce well. I would rather follow other authors of the Marxist tradition, such as Poblanzas and others, rather understanding it as a crystallization of a certain correlation of forces. And this can change.

Well, from that perspective, thinking about how, from the state, we can intervene by opening dynamics that work outside the logic of capitalism. One of them does not necessarily mean that they are anti-capitalist, which sometimes help [00:38:00] to stabilize capitalism itself, but they can be read in multiple ways.

One of them has to do with this idea of putting limits on capital, introducing mechanisms of control, regulation, taxation. That is to say, from labour inspection to taxation to the toning down of certain cities, what can be done, whether we can allow more hotels or not, right?

This whole dimension of "from the state," how do we put mechanisms of limitation and containment in place for the development of tourism capital? Another way, another strategy, like from the state itself, we generate, just as, for example, we have done in some countries in the area of health or in the area of education, how do we establish public programs that guarantee access to vacations, rest, etc. for a part of the population, with social tourism programs, [00:39:00] with the creation of infrastructure, from urban parks to improved public transport, support for social and solidarity economy programs, and cooperatives.

That is to say, how we, as a state, generate dynamics that contribute to guaranteeing access to vacations for the most disadvantaged sectors. The third axis of intervention proposed by Erik Ollin Wright has to do with the idea of resisting outside the state, that is, resisting in the fight against this disorder generated by capitalism, by tourist capital.

And this implies resistance from within companies with union organizations, but tremendous resistance from outside, from community, environmental, and neighborhood movements, that is, putting limits on capital, not only waiting for what the state is going to do with public policies, but doing so in a collectively organized way inside and outside companies. [00:40:00]

And the fourth dimension of this process of understanding the mechanisms of erosion of capitalism and in this case, of tourist-based capitalism, would be the idea of fleeing. We must leave this capitalist world here and now. And this implies creating cooperatives, try out different forms of organisation that allow us to guarantee holidays, rest, and different ways of constructing leisure time that may include travel.

And we can do this fundamentally from community organizations, from the cooperative sphere, but also from outside the market. That is, under the protection of the state and under the protection of the market. That is, reorganizing popular leisure without going through the market. This is what in some countries we call Sunday-goers, Sunday-going, making use of the Lord's day to [00:41:00] rest or scratch our noses or read under a tree.

It is this idea of doing what we want in a self-organized way, collectively or individually. In other words, opening up these spaces. So I think that these four dimensions are what allow us to think about the possibility of a transformation of tourism under other logics. And here I think we need to introduce a nuance because sometimes I feel that there is a certain confusion, as if everything were a problem of words. In other words, we refuse to use the word tourism because it is a capital word.

Well, what we fundamentally demand is free time, time freed from work. This is what we demand. And I think that is what we have the right to, the time that we free from work to be able to do what we need in terms of rest, nourishment for our thoughts, enjoyment, development, possibilities. [00:42:00]

This is what interests us. And this can be organised in the place of residence itself, in your immediate residential space in terms of leisure, entertainment, recreation. But if it involves travel, that is when we start talking about tourism and this tourism, we can organise it as involving leisure plus travel.

We can organize this, as we have done until now, under the logic of capitalism to reproduce capital, or we can organize this leisure time with movement to satisfy human needs. And that is where I think we have the core of the proposal. That is, how to think that a human practice, a social practice cannot be defined only by the logic of capital reproduction, but that we have to be able to develop it under other logics. And this is the demand.

That is, not resign ourselves to the fact that only the [00:43:00] capital to organize our lives. There is a phrase by David Harvey that is absolutely right when he says that there is no morally good idea that capitalism cannot share in something horrible.

And he is absolutely right. Capitalism has the capacity to do this, but we also think that at the same time, there is no social practice that we cannot organize under logics other than those of capitalism, that a socialist world, an ecosocialist world, could be organized under other logics and that has to start now and here. We should not wait for a revolution to come and we do not know how we will get out of it, but we have to start organizing it now and here. I think that this is the second hypothesis that we built on from this book, The Discomfort in Touristification, which I think, at least for me, there are many more readings of the book.

But for me , this idea that we get from Jason Moore about the end of cheap tourism and the dilemma between elitism or starting to think of proposals for transformation that respond to the needs of the social majority, this second hypothesis is what I think comes out most strongly from this book. Or at least that is my reading of it.

I am sure that other colleagues have read the book in other ways and it is stimulating them to do other things. And I think that is the power of the book, which is to begin to strengthen critical thinking in tourism by opening up possibilities for ourselves.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Wow,

Thank you, Ernest. I think that for many of us, especially those of you who have been doing research for a long time, limits or the limit is the word, it is the central concept [00:45:00] of how we can think differently when you were talking about these things, I thought, there are almost no limits to the institutions that we have in the modern capitalist world, only the limits that the institutions put on us. But then we have to reverse what is happening in the sense of putting limits on the institutions and then put on hold the limits that are imposed on our logic, our capacities or ways of thinking about the world, of understanding the world, but also of thinking about other worlds.

And then, putting a limit on how many flights can arrive in a place in a day or how many hotels we can build, etc. How many tourists can we have? But in the end when I think about that, sometimes I think like the towns in Mexico and Oaxaca where I live, some are ecotourism towns and have relatively closed economies or relatively much more [00:46:00] closed than the cities and that and they have the capacity, that if they are done, they set limits and say we are going to accept all x amount of people this year because we understand that the resources or the nature around will suffer if not. But also this. There are other questions, eh, like social influence, the exchange of capital between people from different cultures who come with expectations.

But then perhaps we start with the question of resistance, because in Mexico, like many other countries that rely heavily on tourist economies, the forms of political resistance, not all of them, but some of them, that are undertaken against those economies often target tourists as the primary beneficiaries or culprits. There seems to be a strong resistance to naming the local population as dependent on and defenders of these [00:47:00] economies. If we are going to build a political resistance that encompasses the economic needs of all people within a place, how can we move beyond this, I would say superficial, critique that has the capacity to essentialize foreigners and infantilize locals?

Ernest: I think that, well, you have said a lot of things that suggest a reaction to me. Ah, but to start at the end, I would say that many times we find ways of delegitimizing protests by saying well, we are all tourists, as if we had to have virtuous behavior, by appealing to a certain individual coherence in all our behaviors.

In fact, what they are doing with this type of criticism is simply denying the legitimacy of the claims, that is, pointing out the contradiction as if everything were an individual problem [00:48:00] of individual behaviors. And when what we are saying is that this is a political problem, not of a specific person, be it a tourist or a local population that resists and then goes on holiday, if the problem is, let's stop with moralism and looking for morally virtuous citizens. And let's start to consider that both are the political structures that put limits on this tourist capital. I believe that the bulk of the fight is to get out of this idea of individual responsibility of being trapped in these ideas of responsibility that also without discrediting it, that is to say it is another field of intervention, but the center cannot be the individual decision and the individual coherence in relation to our behaviors. It has to do with structural dynamics and what needs to be changed are group dynamics and for that we need to do politics with capital letters, it implies mobilization, but to [00:49:00] change structures.

What is the problem that sometimes, in this tangle of capital, makes it more difficult to identify who is responsible for these policies or this violence? Yes, those who, at the end of the day, make the decisions behind these investment funds. On the other hand, we have the tourist close by and can be effectively the target of the discontent, because he is the closest to you. So, and I believe that from the media, they try to place us in that terrain, when the idea of tourismophobia is put into circulation, which begins above all in Barcelona and then circulates internationally.

It is a campaign aimed at removing the legitimacy of the neighbourhood movement that is protesting. There is no tourismophobia. There may be someone who one day you dislike, but it is not a problem against a person. What happens is that sometimes the one who is close to you, the one who bothers you is the tourist, [00:50:00] It is the final part of this process and it is much more difficult to point the finger at the public, local, national and international authorities that have designed these representation frameworks, at the companies hidden in these financial dynamics.

So I think it is a contradictory process, but at the same time we should not give up on it. That is to say, the question here is not about how you are more or less coherent, more or less responsible, being a local population, a host or a tourist or being many things at the same time. It is not so much about that, but about how we reorganize the system of organizing the tourism system.

This is the key. Here is the problem. And this implies putting limits on it. And as you said in your first part, the intervention, yes, I believe that the word limits has acquired a fundamental political connotation. The latest demonstrations that are being organized [00:51:00] in Spain, the one we had two, two weekends ago in Barcelona, or the one that will take place this Sunday in Palma, especially let's put limits on tourism.

But this demand to set limits and at the same time that we set limits, we have to know that there is a part of the population that in Spain is 30 percent, but that the European Union also revolves around another 30% with very unequal levels, but that when we look at it from Latin America, it is much more, more than half of the population that cannot take vacations. That is to say that we are in that discussion but on the other hand, we have a part of the population that does not have infrastructures that allow them to take vacations, either because legally, they are not allowed to have those vacations in good conditions, that there are no infrastructures so that they can pay for them, that there is a lack of quality public programs of social tourism that allow them [00:52:00] to have those infrastructures.

So, I think the dynamic is twofold: one is to put limits on capital. And this has to be done as part of a reflection and a political intervention that is not individual in moral terms, but at the same time, we have to set a horizon of desire. We want something, we want to enjoy our free time.

We want to enjoy quality free time. One of the possible ways, but not the only one, may be tourism, which involves this leisure plus travel. And to do this and be able to enjoy getting to know other spaces, other places outside of my daily reality. To do this, we need social infrastructures that allow us to do so.

And I think that's where the battle lies: on the one hand, putting limits on capital and on the other hand, expanding. Offering a desirable world. We want to have free time. [00:53:00] We want to develop in our free time. We want to be able to organize our free time in our home, in our surroundings, but occasionally also by traveling.

And that means having public infrastructures and also mechanisms because money and the market will be the only way to decide who flies and who doesn't. If we have to go to a world with far fewer flights, it will be those who can afford them or we can organize it in another way.

How many times can you fly a year? How many times can you do it for how long? How can we, if it is imp, it implies an exercise that sometimes, when you raise it, it seems that these people do not live in the world, that reality is effectively different. This happens, but to advance in this direction, we need horizons of hope, horizons that tell us we must go there, not only as a loss of privileges, not [00:54:00] only to restrict ourselves because the planet is falling apart, but because we want to live better and we all want to live better.

So, I think that this conjunction, because if we don't have another problem that has to do with the growth of the extreme right in a world of insecurities, in a world of threats, who is offering security, even with racist xenophobic speeches of blaming the penultimate, blaming the last.

That is to say, in this context, how can we organize dynamics that, while we put limits on this capitalist tourism development, we are offering security, security in terms of control that also implies better working conditions. And control over this is also to be able to organize tourism in a different way so that you don't lose your job, but we can organize it in a different way and we can satisfy the needs [00:55:00] that many more people have.

I think that the issue is somewhere between resistance and the proposal of a desirable world also in tourism.

Chris: Well, the idea of leisure time, leisure time, is also moments outside of work, that in an analysis can be said to be a type of modern slavery, sometimes not, but sometimes yes, many times I believe, and that leisure time or rest is also a time to get organized.

Organizing the community. Organizing for other worlds or against what you have, eh? But tourism seems to have also been a tool against that. I mean, you already have your time off. But look, look, look at the beaches in Cuba...

Ernest: It's not exclusive to tourism. I mean, when we talk about tourism, we're talking about leisure, more travel. [00:56:00] If we don't travel, it turns out that this leisure that we do from our home is the most emancipatory in the world. I mean, being at home watching Netflix is the best, going to the mall to walk around because there would be a world of shitty insecurities.

That is to say, in this context, this is not something exclusive to tourism. In leisure, we also have these dynamics of alignment and commodification. So, we need to go beyond words to build scenarios that allow us to satisfy needs and expand possibilities, people's capacities to explore and live better.

But there are many examples that allow you in a diverse way and it is part of what we were saying at the beginning of the conversation about what we are working on at Alba Sud, trying to systematize a lot of these experiences that have [00:57:00] tested different aspects of transformation, to get out of these logics and move in other directions.

And I want to say that the problem is that many times the academy has not paid attention to these possibilities. And instead, in life, in everyday life, there are many more things that are being done that we don't need to start inventing, but we should also start by recognizing and recovering many of the things that are in our own history and also around us, in these other contexts where we can find rich experiences in these other forms and we will find them in leisure and we will find them in tourism.

But sometimes I have the feeling that when we only identify tourism as a process of commodification, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Tourism, like many other things, can be that and it is indeed a dynamic of capital reproduction that [00:58:00] generates violence, structural and direct violence.

We have to resign ourselves to the fact that this is all it can be. We could imagine how we build this in another way, and to imagine, we must begin by recognizing what is elsewhere around us that is already working in other ways, and that perhaps some of these experiences are fragile, limited, have contradictions, fail, but they show that for a time it has been possible to organize this.

Next time we will fail better. And the next time, we will do it perfectly. In other words, it is a constant process of tension, of organization, of trying to generate changes that allow us to build a decent life, which also involves recovering that free time that we can organize in different ways. And here we could or could not include tourism depending on our needs and possibilities.

Chris: Thank you, Ernest. Thank you for offering that and [00:59:00] clarifying. So if we can imagine other worlds, other ways of walking and journeying together, we can begin to take steps toward those paths. If you could imagine an other world like that, free from the contemporary constraints of state borders, industrial hospitality, and extractive expectations, what would that look like for you, Ernest?

Would that trip you so much want to make be a pilgrimage? Would it be possible only once in your life? What would that trip be like for you?

Ernest: Of course, I would differentiate and think that it is necessarily plural. That is, that the options are multiple. There is no one answer, there is no one way to organize another type of tourism. There are or should be many ways. Depending on the many needs that people have. The other day, in an interview, I was asked how you spent your holidays when you were a teenager? As if thinking about [01:00:00] how to find that link to what now worries me and I say, what I did was spend the summers in the library.

And what I wanted was to have quality public infrastructures where you could read quietly, constantly. And I wanted public infrastructures that would allow me to do that. And I think that one way of organizing your free time has to do with having public infrastructures that allow us to organize it.

And there is no single way, nor a single need. Mine has to do with this or has had to do with this at a certain moment in my life and for others it is another and for others it is a different one. So I imagine not one path, but I imagine many paths that can respond to different forms and needs.

If I imagine robust and powerful quality social tourism programs in which [01:01:00] people can access the sea, they can access the mountains, they can access spaces that are close by and taking into account the limits of the planet, we can mobilize en masse to sleep outside our homes, seeing the experiences, but not only in infrastructures or natural spaces, but also involving an educational program designed to develop potential, how to see these different bets.

But I see this and I also see with desire the appropriations that people make of public parks, how people take over the park and celebrate parties and organize activities. I think we need to think in plural terms. That is to say, there is no such thing as a vacation. Perhaps in life, we will need to have the possibility of organizing our work time in a different way, which allows us to travel for longer than doing what would not make sense to think that we can universalize trips from Germany to the Caribbean for four days.

That doesn't make any sense, but we are sure that we will no longer be able to visit other territories. Maybe it will be less often in our lives. It will be for longer. It will be combining work with leisure time with spaces. In other words, I think that what we should open ourselves up to is the plurality of possibilities of organizing this part of our free time that we have associated with travel.

In some way, I think that what we need are horizons that are worth not only resisting, but mobilizing to move towards them. We want to live better and we have the right to live better. We have to resist all the shit and all the bastards that capital does to us. But at the same time, we have to be able to aspire to a [01:03:00] life organized under other logics. That is where I believe the key lies, something worth fighting for.

Chris: Thank you, Ernest, for those very important words and your reflections today, from me, my part and my heart and the part of the listeners as well. So, finally, Ernest, how could our listeners find out more about your work and Alba Sud and where they can buy Malaise in Touristification?

Ernest: To the south bass?

We have our website AlbaSud.Org. There, all our publications are free to download. We have a training section where we upload all the videos of the debates and activities we organize. Yes, the website is the tool. We have a newsletter that we send out monthly.

We are on various social networks , on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, we have a Telegram channel. There you can find out about what we do, the activities of the calls and with Icaria, where we have several books published, depending on where you are in Spain, it is possible in any bookstore.

If they don't have it, ask for it and they will bring it. And in many other places, I think you have to ask for it directly from the publisher. That is, in some Latin American countries, Icaria has normal commercial distribution. In others it is more difficult, but these works can be found on the Icaria Editorial website. And if they can't find it, they can write to us and we will sort something out.

Chris: Okay, so I'll make sure all those links are already on the Fin de Turismo site when the episode launches and once again Ernest, I wish we had more time to [01:05:00] talk, but probably another time. It was a great honor, opportunity to talk to you and I hope we can do it again sometime.

Ernest: With pleasure. I am delighted to be able to talk to you. And I am really sure that we will continue walking together. Thank you very much.

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Mi huesped en este episodio es Claude Guislain, un antropólogo peruano que pasa la mayor parte de su tiempo con pueblos indígenas en Perú, Colombia y Brasil. Con su primera investigación sobre el uso de la ayahuasca y el chamanismo por parte de los occidentales en Iquitos (2005-2007), inició el viaje que lo llevó a dedicar su vida a tender un puente entre la sabiduría indígena y el mundo moderno. A lo largo de más de quince años dedicados casi exclusivamente a apoyar tanto a curanderos indígenas como a pacientes y exploradores occidentales, ha estado al servicio de los procesos de curación de cientos de personas. Ha estado trabajando y formándose con los Shipibo desde 2013, ayudando a la familia López a construir su propio centro. Fue facilitador y asesor en relaciones indígenas en el Templo del Camino de la Luz (2015-2023). Trabaja y aprende con un mamo Arhuaco desde 2012, con un Jaguar del yurupari del Tubú desde 2016 y con el pueblo Yawanawa de Brasil desde 2018.

Hoy es asesor y miembro del Comité Técnico del Fondo de Conservación de Medicinas Indígenas y colabora también con ICEERS, y otras organizaciones, inspirándolas y ayudándolas a tejer sus esfuerzos y dones con los procesos indígenas de base.

Notas del Episodio

• La historia y esperanza de Claude

• La idealizacion de los pueblos indigenas

• El renacimiento psicodelico

• Curacion y cantos

• Contradicciones en el turismo psicodelico

• La deforestacion, la demanda y la continuidad del conocimiento

• Conservacion biocultural

• ICEERS & MSC

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Claude Guislain - Facebook - Instagram

Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund

International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service

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Transcripcion en Espanol (English Below)

Chris: Bienvenido Claude, al podcast El Fin del Turismo.

Claude: Chris. Muchas gracias.

Chris: Me gustaría saber si podrías explicar un poco de dónde te encuentras hoy y cómo el mundo aparece para ti?

Claude: Buena pregunta. Estoy, ahora mismo estoy en Rio de Janeiro, donde vivo. Soy peruano y también estudié antropología y dedico mucho mi tiempo a los pueblos indígenas, sobre todo en Brasil, en Colombia y en Perú y he estado trabajando en las Amazonas durante muchos años. Y como veo el mundo hoy, desde aquí, pues con mucha preocupación, evidentemente, pero también por lo que hago con alguna esperanza,

Chris: Yeah y pues en esa cuestión de lo que haces y de lo que hemos hablado antes, parece que es un gran camino, un camino de ya [00:01:00] décadas y décadas. Y me gustaría, si podemos viendo un un poco más de ese camino. Podrías comentar un poco de cómo llegaste en este gran momento sea por tus viajes, a otros países, a otros mundos, a otros maestros y maestras.

Claude: Sí, claro, a ver cómo te explico. Llevo unos 20 años trabajando con lo indigena en general, pero sobre todo con el tema de espiritualidad, plantas maestras como la ayahuasca y esas cosas, y llegue ahí como, creo que, como la mayoría de personas que hoy en día llegan ahí a la selva, o a buscar estas medicinas como se les llaman, que es una, una cierta o una profunda insatisfacción por nuestra propia cultura, por la respuesta que nuestra propia sociedad [00:02:00] nos puede dar existenciales, diría yo.

Es como siempre hay una pregunta que uno se dice, "No tiene que haber algo más. No puede ser eso solamente." Esa propuesta, digamos de occidente, no puede ser solamente eso, debe haber algo más, verdad? Entonces eso me embarcó a mí en una búsqueda desde, no sé cuando tenía por ahí unos veinti, veinti y pocos años.

Que me llevó a experimentar estas medicinas como la ayahuasca, el San Pedro, los hongos, no por una cosa lúdica, ni ni evasiva, sino por el contrario, con una curiosidad por otras formas de saber y conocer, . Entonces yo me acerqué a estas medicinas, con curiosidad de entender cómo los pueblos indígenas saben lo que saben. Cuál es el origen de su [00:03:00] conocimimomento verdad?

Entonces, estudié antropología. Me alejé de la academia rápidamente porque, me pareció mucho más interesante lo que me enseñaban los abuelos que para la antropología eran mis informantes, verdad? Era como, tenía que a mi informante tal, el informante tal. Y me di cuenta que no, que no eran mis informantes, sino que eran maestros y aprendía mucho más con ellos que lo que me enseñaba los libros, o las clases, o los seminarios, verdad?

Entonces decidí mas dedicarme a seguirlos a ellos y a seguir aprendiendo con ellos, y ver de qué manera los podía ayudar a ellos. Estos abuelos, estos sabios indígenas. Y eso me llevó a un camino maravilloso de que hoy en día le llamo "la gente puente," no? O sea, gente que estamos en ese lugar de interface, entre el conocimimomento, la sabiduría que nos queda de los pueblos [00:04:00] indígenas y el mundo occidental, el mundo moderno.

Y en ese nuevo tipo de encuentro que está surgiendo hace una década o tal vez dos décadas. Es este nuevo tipo de encuentro de nuestros mundos, verdad? Que hasta hoy era, siempre había sido extremadamente problemático, sino asesino, verdad? La manera con nuestro mundo occidental se encontraba con los mundos indígenas era pues y destructor. Hoy en día nos encontramos en una manera diferente, en el que muchos jóvenes y adultos y gente del norte global llegan en busca de conocimiento, de sabiduría, de cura, de sanación, de alternativas, buscando respuestas que nuestra propia civilización no nos puede dar. Habiendo un hambre, una sed de sentido por algo mayor, pues mucha gente empieza a ir allá con otros ojos, con un [00:05:00] respeto que no creo que había existido antes. Y eso trae cosas positivas y cosas negativas, evidentemente.

Parece ser que estamos mal. Hay una gran maldición, que, como todo lo que toca, occidente eventualmente se vuelve en un gran desastre. parece como un súper bonito, súper maravilloso, ilusorio, nos enamora, nos seduce, pero después al poco tiempo nos vamos dando cuenta de las de las terribles consecuencias que traemos, verdad?

Pero algo, no sé, algo también está cambiando, algo está mudando. Hay como una cierta madurez de ambos lados, tanto de los del lado indígena como del lado no indígena para encontrarnos desde un lugar en donde podemos celebrar nuestras diferencias y entender que esas diferencias son material para la construcción de un tiempo nuevo, verdad?

Entonces esa es la parte que traigo un poco de esperanza.

Chris: Ya, qué bonito. Gracias, Claude . o sea, yo siento [00:06:00] mucho de la esperanza, pero también de la desesperación por alguien que ha visitado a varios pueblos indígenas en las Amazonas hace como 15 años de más ya, en ese tiempo esas medicinas fueron llegando poco a poco a la mentalidad colectiva del occidente.

Y pues me ha ayudado un montón, no solo por cuestiones espirituales, pero también por reparar el daño que hice a mi cuerpo, por ejemplo, pero también metiendome en esos círculos, en las Amazonas, por ejemplo, pero también mi tierra nativa Toronto, Canadá y otras partes Oaxaca, México. hemos visto poco a poco la descuidado de la sabiduría indígena, las culturas indígenas, las medicinas, y más que nada, las contradicciones que [00:07:00] aparece dentro de el renacimiento" psicodélico. Entonces, ya tienes mucho tiempo en esos no solo respecto a la medicina, pero también en las culturas indígenas en las Amazonas. Me gustaría preguntarte que has visto allá en el sentido de contradicciones, sobre el turismo sobre la medicina, puede ser el lado del extranjero viniendo para sanarse, o igual los locales o indígenas aprovechando al momento.

Claude: Contradicciones tienen todas las culturas, tienen contradicciones. Y la contradicción principal es entre lo que se dice, no? Lo que se profesa y lo que uno ve en la práctica no? Es como si tú vas a la iglesia y escuchas al pastor hablando de cómo debe ser un buen cristiano.

Y después te paseas por yo que sé por Chicago o por ciudad de México, y ves lo que [00:08:00] son los cristianos y dices wow hay una enorme contradicción, verdad? Es terrible la contradicción Cuando hablamos de los pueblos indígenas y de los conocimientos, de los pueblos indígenas, la sabiduría indígena, parece ser que hablamos desde un lugar de idealización no?

Y a mí no me gustaría, caer en eso de idealizar sino tratar de ser muy concreto. Una cosa es la realidad, que es realmente terrible. Vivimos en un momento que es la cúspide, es la continuación de un proceso de colonialismo, de exterminación que no fue algo que sucedió con la llegada de los españoles, y los portugueses y el tiempo de la conquista. Y no fue algo que pasó.

Es algo que sigue pasando,. Es algo que [00:09:00] sigue pasando. Como decía el gran Aílton Krenak, un gran líder indígena de aquí de Brasil, y un intelectual, miembro de la academia brasilera de las letras, recientemente. Decía lo que ustedes no entienden es que su mundo sigue en guerra con nuestro mundo.

El decía eso. Él lo dice, o sea, ustedes no entienden que el mundo occidental, el mundo moderno continúa en guerra y de, y haciendo todos los esfuerzos para que las culturas indígenas desaparezcan.

O sea, en la práctica, eso es lo que estamos haciendo. Entonces, cuando yo hablo de esperanza, hablo porque hay algo que está surgiendo, que es nuevo, pero realmente es muy pequeño. Y como dices tú, cuando, o sea, la expansión de la ayahuasca, del San Pedro, de lo del peyote y de una cierto [00:10:00] respeto y un cierto entendimiento sobre la importancia de los conocimientos indígenas, todavia realmente e no entendemos eso, no entendemos. Y cuando hablamos desde el norte global, y lo que se llama esta el renacimiento psicodélico, cuando hablan de los pueblos indígenas, hay una idealización, sobre todo, es solamente parte de un discurso que es un poco "woke."

Es un poco para hacer bonito tu discurso, pero en la práctica no se ve, no, no, no ocupa un lugar importante. Ya está diseñado el camino por donde va esta revolución psicodélica, es extraer los principios activos de las plantas, hacer medicamentos, de hacer una pastilla que va a ayudar a la gente a mantenerse en mejor forma dentro de la locura que propone occidente.

Cómo le damos a la gente [00:11:00] herramientas para que se adapten y para que resistan, es el absurdo al que los estamos sometiendo, eso es realmente. O sea necesitamos ya drogas como "Brave New World", no como "soma". Te sientes deprimido? Tómate tus pastillas. Estás cuestionando mucho las cosas, tomate esto para que puedas seguir funcionando y operando y produciendo, verdad?

Pero hay una cosa muy, muy clara para mí, es que aún no hemos logrado entender la magnitud de los conocimientos indígenas. Y digo conocimientos, y no creencias porque en general, cuando hablamos de los pueblos indígenas, lo que sabe un chamán, como le dicen, un curandero, o lo que hablan ellos alrededor de su espiritualidad, la gente piensa, "ah, son sus creencias." Y en el mejor de los casos, dice "ay qué bonito, hay [00:12:00] que respetarlo, hay que cuidar sus derechos, y tienen derechos culturales y tienen todo el derecho a creer en lo que creen." Pero cuando decimos creencias, también es una incomprensión porque de creencia tiene muy poco en realidad.

Cuando uno estudia más, y cuando uno profundiza sobre lo que sabe hacer un curandero, un ayahuasquero, Shipibo, Ashaninka, Huni Kuin, Karipuna, Noke Koi Kofan, lo que ellos saben, no tiene nada que ver con las creencias. No tiene nada que ver con la adoración religiosa de ciertas deidades. Nada que ver. Estamos hablando de conocimiento profundamente práctico, verdad?

Es una acumulación de conocimientos durante generaciones y generaciones por estudiosos de la selva, que se organiza este [00:13:00] conocimiento. Socialmente y además que se transmite con un método. Hay un método muy estricto, muy específico de transmisión de estos conocimientos y de estas maneras de conocer, entonces te acabo de dar una definición no de una religión. Te acabo de dar una definición de ciencia.

Entonces, lo que no hemos llegado a entender hasta ahora es que lo poquito que ha sobrevivido hasta hoy de esos conocimientos se asemeja mucho más a una ciencia que a una religión. Es mucho más un conocimiento práctico que una creencia religiosa, verdad? Y en ese sentido, es de suma importancia. Y entonces, cuando tenemos más y más personas tienen esta experiencia, qué es lo que pasa?

Mucha gente viene a la selva en Iquitos, he trabajado muchos años, durante años he sido como el centro principal donde he recibido mucha gente para [00:14:00] tomar ayahuasca y esas cosas, y viene gente a sanarse de cosas que en sus países, pues no, nadie los puede sanar de depresiones, de traumas, cosas físicas también, pero sobre todo cosas psicológicas, verdad?

Y después vuelven y dice "oh, yo tomé ayahuasca y me curé." "Cómo te curaste?" "Ah, fui, tomé ayahuasca," pero nadie dice estuve tomando con un viejo que todas las noches me cantaba durante media hora. Y después venía en la mañana y me preguntaba cómo era mis sueños. Y después venía con otros remedios y me daba y me hacía unos baños. Y cuando me hacía esos baños me cantaba de nuevo. Y después me daba esto, y me daba esta medicina y me cantaba, y cuando él me cantaba, me hacía ver este tipo de... Nadie habla de eso. La gente dice "yo tomé ayahuasca y el ayahuasca me curó", pero el viejito que estaba cantando solamente parece un accesorio de un viejito cantando.

Pero no es así.

La mayoría de la gente dice, "Wow, cómo te curaste de eso? Qué pasó? Qué hiciste?

"Ah ya tomé ayahuasca. El ayahuasca me curó."

Verdad? Realmente yo he escuchado muy poca gente decir "el abuelito, la abuelita, me dio ayahuasca, pero me cantó durante horas, me dio baños, me preguntó mis sueños, adaptó todas las plantas y el tratamiento que iba haciendo según mis sueños, según lo que iba viendo. Cuando me cantaba, me guiaba para ver cosas, o no ver cosas."

Parece ser que el abuelito que cantaba fuese un accesorio, decoración. Y no realmente, no le damos crédito al trabajo profundo que ellos hacen, y el conocimiento que ponen en practica. Y no es extraño porque es muy difícil de entender, cómo una persona cantando, me va, me va a curar con un canto, verdad?

No, como para nosotros, es muy difícil, no tiene sentido. [00:01:00] Tiene que ser la substancia que tomaste y que se metió en tu cerebro y hizo alguna cosas de conexiones neurológicas. Yo que sé. No puede ser esa cosa, porque para nosotros, ya sería el pensamiento mágico, verdad?

Pero como te digo, eso que nosotros llamamos pensamiento mágico para ellos no es un pensamiento mágico. Es un conocimiento muy concreto que se aprende que tiene métodos de aprendizaje. Son conocimientos y habilidades, y capacidades que se adquieren con métodos de transmisión, verdad? Y hasta ahora no hemos logrado darle realmente el lugar que le corresponde a eso.

Por el contrario, estamos impactando en eso de maneras muy profundas, y hay una contradicción fundamental que yo veo en lo, en para volver un poco a la pregunta que me haces. En todo este turismo que ha llegado, y [00:02:00] esta fascinación, este interés. Cuáles son los impactos que esto ha tenido en las comunidades indígenas en el mundo indígena, verdad?

Entonces yo creo que hay dos cosas que parecen ser un poco contradictorias. Por un lado, hay una gran bendición. Hace 20 años, tú no veías gente de nuestra edad, jóvenes interesados en sentarse con los abuelos y aprender realmente, y ser continuadores de esas tradiciones y cultivadores de ese tipo de conocimientos.

La mayoría de gente de nuestra edad, un poco más viejos, hasta la edad de nuestro, gente que tiene hoy día 50, 55 años, 60 años, no querían hacer, no. Querían ser profesores interculturales bilingües, querían ser [00:03:00] profesionales, pertenecer al mundo de los blancos, verdad? Entonces, los viejos, eran de un tiempo pasado que estaba destinado a extinguirse.

Entonces, con la llegada de los occidentales y con este interés por esas cosas, ha habido cierto renacimiento y sobre todo, un verdadero interés de la juventud por aprender estas cosas como una alternativa profesional, digamos. Digamos, oye, para qué voy a ser abogado? Si yo, si mira todos los gringos que están viniendo, yo puedo ser esto y me va a ir mejor, verdad?

Entonces, por un lado, hay esa parte que, hoy en día vemos, por ejemplo, en los Shipibo, muchísima gente que está aprendiendo, verdad? Muchos jóvenes están interesados, no solamente en los Shipibo, pero sino, pero en muchos lugares en Brasil, en Colombia, en Ecuador, yo veo, veo eso, una juventud que está poco a poco interesándose más y [00:04:00] volviendo a sus propias raíces.

Es como, como decir, todo desde que eres niño, siempre te dicen, "los antiguos ser una porquería ya ese mundo acabó, lo único que cuenta es la modernidad y integrarse a la vida urbana, a la vida oficial de esta civilización, ir a la iglesia, tener una carrera, y ser alguien en la vida," verdad?

Y entonces era como, y los estados con políticas de esa naturaleza, los gobiernos, los estados de nuestros países, era, pues la cuestión indígena era cómo civilizamos a los indios. Civilizar al indio no es otra cosa que hacerlo olvidar de sus sistemas, de sus culturas, pero como una parte así de como digo, "woke," no como,

"ay, que lindo los indios que mantengan sus danzas, que mantengan su folclore, que mantengan [00:05:00] sus ropitas y que mantengan su ciertas cosas que es como bonito, que ellos mantengan como algo pintoresco y algo folclórico," pero sin entender realmente la profundidad.

Pero hoy en día, yo creo que en gran medida, gracias a esto, no solamente, es una cosa más compleja evidentemente, pero, la juventud, viendo que hay esta llegada de blancos, de extranjeros, de gringos, no? Interesadisimos por los conocimientos de los abuelos, por la medicina. Y que van y están ahí, dicen "uy acá tiene que haber algo interesante, yo también quiero aprender."

Si a los gringos les gusta esto, es porque algo bueno debe haber entiendes? Llegamos a ese punto en que estaba destinado a desaparecer, pero de una a otra manera, hay un renacimiento, verdad? Al mismo tiempo, [00:06:00] en la transmisión de estos conocimientos, como te decía sumamente complejos, sumamente estricta, estrictos métodos de transmisión, pues se ha tenido que simplificar porque los jóvenes no están aptos ya, habiendo ido a la escuela, teniendo un pie en la ciudad. No, no es tan aptos ni tienen el interés, ni las condiciones, ni las aptitudes para realmente entrar en esos procesos como lo podían haber hecho los abuelos, que hoy en día tienen 70, 80 años, verdad, que fueron realmente los últimos.

A menos que uno se vaya muy lejos en la selva donde lugares que no tienen mucho contacto, que ellos todavía deben de mantener algunas cosas, pero ellos están alejados también de estos circuitos,

Pero entonces, sí, hay una gran simplificación de estos sistemas. Entonces se pierden muchas cosas. Para bien o para mal, no? Mucha gente dice, bueno, por lo menos se está perdiendo toda esta parte de la brujería y [00:07:00] los ataques chamánicos y toda esa cosa, pero a lo cual se le da mucha, mucha importancia que tampoco logramos entender, porque nosotros lo vemos con esa visión judeo cristiana, esa distinción maniquea del bien y del mal, que en los mundos indígenas no es que no exista, sino que es totalmente diferente, no?. Y eso forma parte de esas diferencias que son importantes de entender y de respetar, verdad? Entonces, toda esta parte que nosotros vemos como brujería, como diabólico y tal, tienen su función dentro de un sistema, y que no, tratar de hacerlo desaparecer es hacer desaparecer el sistema mismo, verdad?

Porque no lo entendemos. Es lo mismo que pasa, es lo que ha pasado siempre, algo que nos escandaliza, entonces lo queremos cambiar, pero nos escandaliza desde nuestra propia visión del mundo y no estamos entendiéndolo desde la visión de [00:08:00] ellos. No quiere decir que todo se puede relativizar, verdad? Hay cosas que son, pues muy difíciles, no, y muy delicadas, pero en en reglas general, cuando hay algo que nos escandaliza, lo queremos cambiar, sin realmente profundizar en un entendimiento de la función de esas cosas, pues estamos siguiendo los mismos patrones que los curas que llegaban hace 400 años, 500 años. Que decían ah, esto es diabólico. Tenemos que extirpar estas cosas, no? Entonces seguimos haciendo eso.

Entonces, por un lado, vemos que hay un renacimiento del interés de la juventud y una reconexión con su propia identidad al mismo tiempo que hay una simplificación algo peligrosa de estos sistemas, quiere decir que los jóvenes que de aquí a poco van a ser los abuelos no saben la [00:09:00] mitad de lo que sabían sus abuelos. Saben lo mínimo indispensable que sirve para darle al gringo lo que requiere, lo que necesita, lo que está buscando, lo suficiente para hacer negocio en realidad y eso no es para culparlos a ellos, sino que es parte del sistema en el que estamos navegando, porque todo funciona así.

Para qué te vas a profundizar tanto si con este mínimo ya te alcanza? Sobre todo cuando vemos que muchos gringos, muchos extranjeros van toman ayahuasca unas cuantas veces o hacen alguna dieta, y después se llevan ayahuasca a sus países, se ponen las plumas, agarran su guitarrita, y empiezan a cantar estas cosas como decoración alrededor de esta experiencia y hacen mucho dinero.

Y así se ha ido expandiendo la ayahuasca por el mundo, verdad? Y eso cumple su función también. No es para juzgarlo, pero [00:10:00] también hay, es de una superficialidad, muchas veces, hiriente, cuando tú ves lo que sabe un abuelo y lo que ha tenido que pasar las dificultades, las pruebas y las responsabilidades que tiene un curandero amazónico para su comunidad, y los sistemas de rendición de cuentas que son los que más o menos lo mantienen a raya, que uno no puede hacer lo que le da la gana con ese poder, sino que hay un sistema de control, cuando esto sale y se va afuera en estos círculos, medios new age, medios hippie, medio neochamánico, pues toda esa cuestión se pierde y se empiezan a inventar un montón de cosas, y sobre todo, un discurso que es bastante problemático.

Entonces surge esta idea que la ayahuasca es la panacea universal, y "la madrecita ayahuasca" me [00:11:00] dijo, y, "esto es lo que va a salvar el mundo." Entonces más personas tenemos que buscar la forma que más y más personas tengan esta experiencia para salvar el mundo verdad? Y la verdad que yo creo que eso no es así. Si fuera así, si fuera por la cantidad de ayahuasca que se toma en el mundo, pues el mundo ya habría cambiado, porque realmente se toma mucha ayahuasca. Cuando yo, el principio de los años 2000 en Europa, era muy raro escuchar de eso no? Hoy en día, en cualquier país europeo, todos los fines de semana tú puedes encontrar una ceremonia de ayahuasca, en todas partes.

Eso se ha expandido. Se ha normalizado. Ya es mainstream, ya se volvió mainstream. Pero qué se ha vuelto mainstream? Nuestra propia interpretación, que es bastante problemática sobre esto y no se le ha dado el lugar que le [00:12:00] corresponde a los guardianes de esos conocimientos. Entonces eso es lo que yo tengo para criticar en todo este tema de la revolución psicodélica, que hablamos de psicodélico psicodélico, psicodélico, como la panacea, lo que puede salvar el mundo, pero cuánta experiencia tiene nuestra sociedad con los psicodélicos?

Dos generaciones? Máximo? Desde Hoffman, y esa, ya de la generación Beat, de los 50. Vale?, un poco eso. Y entonces, hoy día, tú tienes psychodelic studies en las universidades y formación de terapias con psicodélicos que los enseñan en institutos, de estudios bastante importantes. Y uno se pregunta, pero qué estudia?

Qué les enseñan? Qué podemos haber acumulado como conocimiento en esas dos generaciones, siendo que durante más o menos 40 años, esto ha sido o 50 o 60 años. Esto ha sido prohibido. Era [00:13:00] ilegal. Hoy en día se está más o menos legalizando, entonces se puede estudiar más abiertamente, se puede investigar, se puede aprender, se puede experimentar mucho más, pero durante muchos años, era ilegal, era underground, subterráneo, verdad? Entonces, qué es lo que hemos podido acumular como el conocimiento? Es mínimo, es muy superficial, sobre todo si lo comparas con lo que saben allá en la selva, los indígenas en México, los Wixarika allá donde, por donde tu estás, los mazatecos y toda esa gente que tiene conocimiento de los hongos.

Eso es una acumulación, de conocimiento extraordinaria. Lo que pasa es que, como son indios, no les damos el lugar. Qué me va, si tú tienes un doctorado en cualquier universidad del mundo y te sienta junto con indios, adentro de uno tiene esa terrible arrogancia que tenemos [00:14:00] los occidentales de decir, si yo soy un doctor, qué me va a enseñar un indio?

Entiendes? Y eso, eso demuestra que aún por más que tratamos de idealizar y por más que hay un gran respeto, y algo que esté cambiando, todavía seguimos regidos por un profundo racismo. Un profundo complejo de superioridad, que creo yo, que está la base de los grandes problemas que tenemos hoy en día como humanidad es realmente la arrogancia y el complejo de superioridad que tenemos como miembros de esta civilización, que es extraordinaria, pero también es la que nos está llevando el hecatombe verdad? Es la que está destruyendo el mundo.

Entonces, hay verdades muy incómodas que no queremos ver pero es la verdad, a pesar de toda la grandeza que hemos logrado con este, con los conocimientos de nuestra ciencia, es también nuestra misma ciencia la que está destruyendo [00:15:00] el mundo, nuestra manera de entender y de conocer el mundo.

Entonces ahora, poco a poco, nos estamos dando cuenta que necesitamos de la participación de estos otros pueblos que tienen otras maneras de ver, de entender, de estar en el mundo, y de conocer, de aprender otras maneras, no? Entonces sucede una cosa muy bonita y extraordinaria cuando juntamos personas que piensan diferente y realmente ya no es una discusión sobre cuál es mejor, cuál sistema es mejor, si mi ciencia o tu ciencia o no, sino que es como complementamos nuestros tipos de conocimiento, verdad? Lo que decíamos también, o sea, a partir de nuestras diferencias, con nuestras diferencias como material, que es lo que podemos tejer juntos, que no se ha hecho nunca, verdad? Entonces, eso es lo que está surgiendo también, pero en un contexto muy [00:16:00] problemático en lo que surgen los intereses económicos, financieros, grandes farmacéutica, grandes capitales que quieren invertir en estas cosas y no se les da el lugar a los grandes detentores de estos conocimientos. Y sobretodo no se les da lugar en el diálogo, ni en la creación de acuerdos, sino que no se le da una participación financiera de lo que se puede recaudar como beneficios a partir de sus conocimientos, verdad?

Entonces seguimos reproduciendo ese sistema colonial, ese sistema de explotación del otro y de la tierra, de la naturaleza en beneficio del capital, en beneficio para generar, ingresos económicos, no? Entonces estamos en eso es, es altamente complejo. [00:17:00]

Hay cosas buenas y hay cosas negativas. Hay un impacto muy grande también en la Amazonía con toda la llegada de toda esta gente, pero impactos positivos. Yo, yo he encontrado muchos líderes, en Amazonía que me dicen "gracias a ustedes que vienen acá. Nosotros estamos volviendo a nuestras raíces", "Si no fuera por ustedes, ya estaríamos perdidos."

Entonces hay algo que está sucediendo, que es algo muy positivo, pero también, como venimos con esos programas, no logramos darle la profundidad que podríamos estar alcanzando. Y que nuevamente, creo yo, que lo que está la base es nuestro terrible complejo de superioridad, que creemos que todos lo sabemos y que, pues somos mejores y que, qué nos va a enseñar, me entiendes? Aunque algo esté cambiando, aunque haya un poco de esperanza, todavía hay mucho camino por delante, [00:18:00] no?

Chris: Mm. gracias Claude poder sacar algunos de esos hilos del nudo enorme en que vivimos. Pues sí, yo siento que, una de las cosas menos escuchados en nuestros tiempos de gente que tiene comentarios, opiniones, lo que sea, es, pues "no sé la verdad, no sé" . O sea, hay una una falta enorme de humildad.

Creo que de la gente que critica la revolución o renacimiento psicodélico, o la gente que celebra no? O sea, hay una gran falta de humildad igual de tiempo profundo o de conocimiento histórico podemos decir, y como mencionaste, la cuestión de los abuelos y las relaciones que la gente tiene, o sea, las Amazonas y los pueblos indígenas ya por miles y miles de [00:19:00] años con sus lugares.

Y como poco a poco se profundizaron su propio lugar dentro de los otros seres en su ecología, en su ecosistema, sus ecosistemas, y que, ese idea de que alguien puede irse a un lugar así. tomar la medicina como es una pastilla nada más volverse o simplemente quedarse y decir que "ah me curó" o algo Pues eso, eso me suena como bastante fascinante, no? Y porque, para mí al final también tiene que ver con la relacion con los ancianos o sabios de un lugar o sea, el maestro mío me dijo una vez que son los jóvenes que hacen ancianos, que hacen sabios que hacen como elders no? No son los viejos.

O sea, los viejos son el vehículo para la función de esa sabiduría. Pero son los jóvenes que tienen que preguntar y [00:20:00] eso. Parece que está muy, muy perdido en el mundo occidental. O sea más bien la gente urbana, la gente del norte, la gran mayoría son migrantes o familias de inmigrantes.

Entonces, yo siento que la relación que tenemos con la medicina, que es solo medicina, es una pastilla o aunque sí, es un ser que no, como dijiste, como no tenemos a veces la capacidad de entender, el lugar del abuelo, abuela humana en esa relación, pues hay muchas, muchas direcciones que podemos ir en ese sentido, pero también lo que he visto, lo que he escuchado, he leído un poco es sobre la deforestación de las medicinas, las plantas sagradas, y que la gente va [00:21:00] domesticando poco a poco las plantas y que las plantas domesticadas no tienen la misma fuerza, en parte porque están cosechadas o cosechados más y más joven, más y más antes de su maduración, y que eso también quizás tiene algo que ver con nuestra contexto del occidente como la necesidad o rapidez o velocidad en que necesitamos conseguir y consumir la medicina y ser curado, etcétera.

Entonces entiendo que también has estado trabajando por algunas organizaciones que trabajan específicamente en la conservación de las medicinas, y también, otras que trabajan en la educación e investigaciones sobre lo etnobotánico.

Entonces, me gustaría preguntarte sobre y ICEERS y MSCF tiene [00:22:00] un, una perspectiva fija o quizás como desde tu perspectiva, cómo vamos en ese camino?

Claude: Mira, esa es una problemática, que corresponde a ese mismo sistema, no? O sea, en otras palabras, por ejemplo, cuando surgió este fondo, esta fundación, que es el fondo para la conservación de las medicinas indígenas o INC por sus en inglés.

La primera inquietud que surgió, o sea el primer impulso y el primer, el primer capital semilla para para lanzar esto era exactamente esa idea no? Estas medicinas se están expandiendo, más y más personas lo van a necesitar, lo van a usar. Entonces va a haber un impacto en la sostenibilidad de estas plantas.

Se va a poner en riesgo su continuidad, verdad? Cuando a mí me propusieron a [00:23:00] trabajar en esto y ayudar a la creación de este fondo, y me lo pusieron en esos términos, mi respuesta fue negativa. Yo dije no tengo el menor interés en trabajar en eso. Porque, o sea, en otras palabras, es ¿Cómo hacemos para garantizar la demanda?

Cómo hacemos para para que tengamos suficiente, vamos a hacer plantaciones de peyote y plantaciones de ayahuasca para que no se acabe, para que alcance para todas las personas en el mundo que lo van a necesitar. Y yo dije no tengo el menor interés en hacer eso. Además, no creo que ese sea el real problema.

Dije ahora si se tratase de la conservación de los conocimientos, estamos hablando de otra cosa. Eso es lo realmente precioso que debemos poner todo nuestros esfuerzos [00:24:00] para que exista una continuidad, para que no desaparezca como está desapareciendo, desaparece. Cada vez que se muere un abuelo y se han muerto muchos últimamente, sobre todo con el COVID, se han muerto muchos abuelos, pues se pierde, se pierde, o sea, es una tragedia para la humanidad entera, que se muera un abuelo que no tuvo la posibilidad de transmitirle a uno, a dos, a tres de sus hijos, a sus nietos, ese conocimiento, que no haya nadie que vaya a saber lo que sabe él, pues es una tragedia para todos nosotros.

Entonces, cuando estamos pensando en cómo vamos a hacer? Se va a acabar la ayahuasca, o hay plantaciones, si no es lo mismo, es una inquietud válida, evidentemente, dentro nuestra lógica. Pero olvidamos que lo principal es la conservación de estos conocimientos. Entonces, tanto [00:25:00] MSC como ICEERS se está enfocando cada vez más en un trabajo profundo de desarrollar relaciones, cultivar relaciones con estos abuelos detentores de conocimientos, con estas comunidades que aún practican, mantiene sus sistemas, verdad? Y trabajando con ellos, digamos para ellos, para con programas, y con proyectos, y procesos que son diseñados por ellos, guiados por ellos, y nosotros solamente nos dedicamos a dar, un apoyo técnico y financiero, no? Para garantizar esto, entonces, al hacer esto, al dedicarlos más a la conservación de estos conocimientos, nos damos cuenta que la cultura no puede sobrevivir sin el [00:26:00] territorio.

El conocimiento de los abuelos no tiene sentido sin un territorio, verdad? Y cuando hablamos de la conservación de la Amazonía, tampoco podemos entender la conservación de los ecosistemas sin la conservación de las culturas que han vivido ahí durante miles de años. O sea, todo va de la par, todo va de la mano, no?

Entonces con una visión mucho más holistica, digamos más amplia. Pues entendemos eso, que cuidando de la cultura y poniendo todos los esfuerzos necesarios para la continuidad de esas culturas también estamos cuidando a la Amazonía, cuidando la biodiversidad, cuidando el agua, cuidando las medicinas, cuidando todo.

Entiendes? Ya existen en Brasil enormes plantaciones de ayahuasca, de chacruna. Encuentras plantaciones en diferentes partes del mundo, [00:27:00] en Hawaii, y en Costa Rica, y en diferentes lugares. Ya la gente ha ido a sembrar hace años. Entonces, hay, no, eso no va a faltar. Lo que sí no vanos faltar, nos estamos quedando huérfanos de esos conocimientos.

Y eso sí que es una gran pérdida porque yo tengo la certeza, la convicción que en esos, en esos conocimientos están las llaves, las respuestas que nos pueden ayudar a resolver los grandes desafíos que tiene la humanidad hoy en día. Desde nuestra ciencia no vamos a resolver, estamos, estamos en una crisis civilizatoria, estamos en una crisis global, y lo único que nos dicen los científicos es que tenemos que reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero.

Y ahí van 20 años o más tratando de hacer eso, y no lo consiguen. No [00:28:00] solamente es insuficiente pensarlo de esa manera tan reduccionista, sino que, igualmente están acatandose a una sola cosa y no lo consiguen, no hemos logrado nada, no? Lo que realmente necesitamos es un cambio de sentido, un cambio entender una profundidad mucho mayor de cuál es nuestra relación como especie con este planeta.

Y para eso necesitamos los entendimientos de lo más extraordinario que ha guardado la humanidad hasta hoy, no solamente de la civilización occidental, sino de todos, no? Entonces, cada vez que se pierde una lengua, cada vez que se muere un abuelo sabedor es una tragedia para toda la humanidad.

Entonces, está muy bien que utilicemos estas medicinas, está muy bien que se esté expandiendo estas prácticas, pero esto sirve, [00:29:00] como un proceso inicial, como abrir una ventana hacia un mundo de posibilidades. Entonces, a mí me gusta que haya gente dando ayahuasca en Estados Unidos, en Europa.

Me gusta porque mucha gente tiene la experiencia y dice "wow, en verdad si hay algo más. En verdad, aquí hay todo un mundo que yo no tenía idea que existía y que podría leer millones de cosas, y puedo creer o no creer, pero teniendo la experiencia, ya no necesito creer. Yo sé que hay algo. Sé que la naturaleza está viva. Sé que la naturaleza habla, sé que hay manera de comunicarse con la sutileza del funcionamiento de este planeta, de las aguas, de los ríos, de los vientos de las montañas. Todo es un sistema que está vivo, y hay manera de comunicarse con eso y mantenerse en una profunda relación, simbiótica, de profundo respeto y de amor con todo esto no?

Entonces, es [00:30:00] importante que muchas personas tengan ese tipo de experiencia, pero después qué? Después de esa experiencia qué? Volvemos a nuestra vida normal, a nuestro trabajo de siempre, a la dificultad de nuestras relaciones cotidianas y el drama de la imposibilidad de mantener una conexión profunda con el tejido de la vida.

Todo de nuestra civilización está hecho para mantenernos desconectados de la vida, del funcionamiento de la vida en este planeta, verdad? Entonces, hacia eso es lo que tenemos que apuntar, porque el problema no son las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, el problema es nuestra relación con el mundo.

No es las historias que nos hacen creer que el mundo es una fuente de recursos para extraer, transformar y generar riqueza. Esa historia es profundamente [00:31:00] problemática. Y cuando conversamos con los sabios, con los abuelos, con los indígenas, escuchamos esas historias. Nos damos cuenta. Wow. Estas historias necesitan ser escuchadas.

Estas historias necesitan, necesitan ser contadas en diferentes espacios. Y estos abuelos, estos sabios necesitan ocupar el lugar que les corresponde en la mesa de negociaciones de la humanidad. No se trata de conservar esto como algo folclórico, como un derecho de estos pobrecitos pueblos que tienen el derecho de vivir, como siempre vivieron, como quieran vivir. No, se trata de nuestra sobrevivencia.

Entonces, hacia eso, creo yo, que debemos estar apuntando y sobre todo el tema de la revolución del renacimiento psicodélico yo creo que es una punta de lanza. Es una primera entrada en el que vamos poco a poco, demostrando que no se trata [00:32:00] solamente de convencer así retóricamente, sino que hay que demostrar, con hechos, la pertinencia, la utilidad de estos conocimientos para hoy para el mundo de hoy, verdad?

Entonces, el tema de la salud y el tema de la salud mental es como es una problemática gigantesca, no? Enorme, hiper compleja. Es la primera cosa que, más y más científicos y gente que decide se está dando cuenta. "Uy, aquí esta gente sabe algo que nosotros no sabemos y tiene una manera de saber y entender el funcionamiento de la mente y el espíritu humano que nosotros no tenemos idea y que realmente funciona."

Entonces eso es como una primera parte, como una punta de lanza. Estamos entrando en un lugar para poder demostrar al mundo. "Oye, lo que saben estos [00:33:00] pueblos es importante no solamente para ellos, no solamente para la continuidad de sus culturas, de sus tradiciones, no solamente para la salvaguarda de la selva Amazónica sino para toda la humanidad." Verdad?

Y es muy triste ver en nuestros países, en Colombia. Bueno, Colombia hay otro nivel de entendimiento mucho más maduro, sobre lo indígena. Creo que están mucho más avanzados en ese sentido, pero en Brasil, en Perú, en Ecuador, en México, no le estamos dando la importancia que merece a esta problemática, o sea al rescate de lo poco que ha sobrevivido esos conocimientos extraordinarios que se mantienen en las selvas, en los desiertos, en las montañas, que se han ido guardando en secreto hasta hoy, o sea es heroico que haya [00:34:00] sobrevivido hasta hoy. Y hoy en día nos estamos dando cuenta de la pertinencia y la importancia de todo eso.

Entonces, cuando hablamos de conservación, estamos hablando de conservación biocultural. Entender que no se puede preservar una cultura sin preservar la totalidad de su territorio, sin derechos de esos pueblos sobre sus territorios, y no se puede preservar los ecosistemas y los derechos si no se hace todos los esfuerzos para preservar esas culturas que han vivido en profundo respeto, en simbiosis con esos ecosistemas.

Y tenemos muchísimo que aprender. Todo este tema de la cooperación internacional, de las ayudas de las ONGs, de los proyectos de los pueblos indígenas es de un paternalismo triste y absurdo que en el fondo dice "ay pobrecitos los indios vamos a ayudarlos", vamos a ayudarlos a qué? Vamos a ayudarlos a que sean más como nosotros.

Eso es lo que estamos haciendo, creyendo que [00:35:00] somos lo mejor. Pero entonces más y más estamos entendiendo que es es mucho más lo que nosotros podemos aprender de ellos, que ellos transformarse en nosotros. Tenemos que re indigenizarnos, sabes?. Tenemos que volver a ciertas raíces que nos permitan una profunda conexión con la vida, con la naturaleza, con todos los seres que viven en nuestro territorio.

Y eso es lo que en la misma naturaleza, la misma tierra nos está indicando, nos está llamando. O sea, si siguen así de desconectados, los vamos a exterminar. Tienen que re conectarse con eso, entonces ahí yo creo que hay una, algo nuevo que está surgiendo, que es maravilloso, verdad? Y espero yo que eso llegue a más y más personas.

Estamos trabajando duro para eso la [00:36:00] verdad.

Chris: Mm, pues muchísimas gracias por esos trabajos Claude. Y por tener la capacidad de afilar el cuchillo, en estos tiempos y en nuestra conversación, para sacar la grasa, digamos, como digamos. Yo siento que es, es un trabajo muy fuerte, no? O sea, para mí, eso es el fin de turismo, la capacidad de parar, de ver al mundo como algo que existe sólo por tus gustos. Algo que existe en un sentido temporal, es decir desechable. Pero eso va a durar como un montón de trabajo en el sentido de recordar, de recordar que en algún momento sus antepasados, los urbanos, los del norte, etcétera, fueron indígenas.

Pero qué pasó? Qué ha pasado? Qué rompió [00:37:00] esa relación con la tierra? Y eso, eso es un trabajo muy, muy fuerte y obviamente generacional y intergeneracional, entonces. Pues hay mucho más que podemos hablar y ojalá que tenemos la oportunidad en algún momento, pero quería agradecerte por la parte de mí, por la parte del podcast y los escuchantes.

Y al final quería preguntarte, y para nuestros oyentes, si hay una manera de seguir a tu trabajo o contactarte, si estás dispuesto a eso, cómo se pueden conocer lo de ICEERS y MSC?

Claude: Bueno, tienes, el trabajo de MSC es muy importante. Y pues, si necesitamos a más gente que se sume, que done. Necesitamos canalizar muchos [00:38:00] recursos para poder hacer estas cosas bien, verdad? Con pocos recursos estamos haciendo cosas increíbles, pero ya estamos viendo que, ya llegamos a niveles en los que podemos administrar mucho mayores recursos. Entonces, si la gente se siente inspirada y pueden entrar a la página web de MSC o ICEERS, y MSC fund FND, ver lo que estamos haciendo, los diferentes proyectos que tenemos ahí y se sientan inspirados para donar o conseguir recursos, pues, genial. ICEERS también hace un trabajo extraordinario en la creación de conocimientos, artículos científicos y defensa legal también de estos detentores, de estas medicinas.

Trabajo con incidencia política con gente que decide en el mundo. [00:39:00] Entonces estamos luchando ahí por los derechos de los pueblos indígenas, por el derecho del uso de estas medicinas que en muchos lugares son ilegales, y también sobre todo, decir a la gente que más que ir a la selva, o tomar ayahuasca cerca de sus lugares, muchas veces ahí cerca también tienen una reserva, algunos abuelos, pueblos indígenas que están cerca de ustedes, no? En sus países, cerca de sus ciudades. Y pues es tiempo de reconectar, y es muy difícil, pero la verdad que vale la pena, ir, ver lo que necesitan, cómo podemos ayudar, cómo podemos colaborar, simplemente con esa presencia, con otro tipo de encuentro, y cultivar esas relaciones de amistad, es algo, es algo muy importante que podemos hacer hoy en día, y que, [00:40:00] pues la tierra nos está pidiendo a gritos que nos re conectemos. Y ahí están los abuelos, todavía hay abuelos que, como dices tú, solamente esperan que vengan los jóvenes a preguntar no? Y muchas veces cuando no son los propios jóvenes de sus comunidades, pues están muy felices cuando viene gente de afuera de otros lugares, con esas preguntas, porque los ayaban a practicar, los ayudan a compartir, pero también inspiran a los jóvenes de su comunidad a sentarse con los abuelos.

Creo que es un tiempo en el que es muy importante volver a sentarse con los abuelos, y los abuelos están ahí y están necesitando mucho de nosotros. Entonces, hagámoslo.

Chris: Oye, gracias, hermano. Voy a asegurar que esos enlaces están en la página de El Fin del Turismo cuando lance el episodio. Y [00:41:00] pues, desde el norte hacia el sur te mando un gran abrazo. Y gracias por tu tiempo hoy, por tu trabajo y por tus compromisos Claude.

Claude: Un placer, Chris, gracias a ti. Gracias por lo que estás haciendo. Saludos.

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English Transcription

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome Claude, to the podcast The End of Tourism.

Claude: Chris. Thank you very much.

Chris: I was wondering if you could explain a little bit about where you are today and how the world appears to you?

Claude: Good question. I am, right now I am in Rio de Janeiro, where I live. I am Peruvian and I also studied anthropology and I dedicate a lot of my time to indigenous peoples, especially in Brazil, Colombia and Peru and I have been working in the Amazon for many years. And as I see the world today, from here, well, with a lot of concern, obviously, but also because of what I do with some hope,

Chris: Yeah, and in that matter of what you do and what we talked about before, it seems like it's a great path, a path of [00:01:00] decades and decades. And I would like, if we could see a little more of that path. Could you comment a little on how you got to this great moment, be it through your travels, to other countries, to other worlds, to other teachers.

Claude: Yes, of course, let me explain. I've been working with indigenous people in general for about 20 years, but especially with the topic of spirituality, master plants like ayahuasca and those things, and I got there like, I think, like most people who go to the jungle today, or to look for these medicines, as they are called, which is a certain or deep dissatisfaction with our own culture, with the existential response that our own society [00:02:00] can give us, I would say.

It's like there's always a question that one asks oneself, "Doesn't there have to be something more? It can't just be that." That proposal, let's say from the West, can't just be that, there has to be something more, right? So that led me on a search since, I don't know when I was around twenty, twenty-something years old.

What led me to experiment with these medicines like ayahuasca, San Pedro, mushrooms, not for a playful or evasive reason, but on the contrary, with a curiosity for other ways of knowing and understanding. So I approached these medicines, with curiosity to understand how indigenous peoples know what they know. What is the origin of their [00:03:00] knowledge at the moment, right?

So, I studied anthropology. I quickly moved away from academia because I found it much more interesting what my grandparents taught me, who for anthropology were my informants, right? It was like, I had to have my informant, this informant. And I realized that no, they were not my informants, but they were teachers and I learned much more from them than what I was taught in books, or in classes, or in seminars, right?

So I decided to dedicate myself more to following them and to continue learning with them, and to see how I could help them. These grandparents, these wise indigenous people. And that led me to a wonderful path that today I call "the bridge people," right? In other words, people who are in that place of interface, between the knowledge, the wisdom that remains to us from the indigenous peoples [00:04:00] and the Western world, the modern world.

And in this new type of encounter that has been emerging for a decade or maybe two decades. It is this new type of encounter of our worlds, right? That until today was, had always been extremely problematic, if not murderous, right? The way our Western world met the indigenous worlds was destructive. Today we find ourselves in a different way, in which many young people and adults and people from the global north come in search of knowledge, wisdom, cure, healing, alternatives, looking for answers that our own civilization cannot give us. There is a hunger, a thirst for meaning for something greater, so many people begin to go there with different eyes, with a [00:05:00] respect that I don't think had existed before. And that brings positive things and negative things, obviously.

It seems that we are wrong. There is a great curse, that, like everything that the West touches, it eventually turns into a great disaster. It seems like something super nice, super wonderful, illusory, it makes us fall in love, it seduces us, but after a short time we begin to realize the terrible consequences that we bring, right?

But something, I don't know, something is also changing, something is shifting. There is a certain maturity on both sides, both on the indigenous side and on the non-indigenous side, to meet from a place where we can celebrate our differences and understand that those differences are material for the construction of a new time , right?

So that's the part that brings me a little bit of hope.

Chris: Yeah, that's nice. Thank you, Claude. I mean, I feel [00:06:00] a lot of hope, but also despair for someone who has visited several indigenous peoples in the Amazon for about 15 years now, during which time these medicines were gradually reaching the collective mentality of the West.

And it has helped me a lot, not only for spiritual reasons, but also for repairing the damage I did to my body, for example, but also getting into those circles, in the Amazon, for example, but also my native land Toronto, Canada and other parts Oaxaca, Mexico. We have seen little by little the neglect of indigenous wisdom, indigenous cultures, medicines, and more than anything, the contradictions that [00:07:00] appear within the "psychedelic renaissance." So, you have been in those for a long time, not only regarding medicine, but also in indigenous cultures in the Amazon. I would like to ask you what you have seen there in the sense of contradictions, about tourism regarding medicine, it can be the side of foreigners coming to heal themselves, or maybe the locals or indigenous people taking advantage of the moment.

Claude: All cultures have contradictions. And the main contradiction is between what is said, right? What is professed and what one sees in practice, right? It's like going to church and listening to the pastor talking about what a good Christian should be like.

And then you walk around, I don't know, Chicago or Mexico City, and you see what [00:08:00] Christians are like and you say, wow, there's a huge contradiction, right? The contradiction is terrible. When we talk about indigenous peoples and knowledge, indigenous peoples, indigenous wisdom, it seems like we're speaking from a place of idealization, right?

And I would not like to fall into that idealization but rather try to be very concrete. One thing is reality, which is truly terrible. We live in a time that is the peak, it is the continuation of a process of colonialism, of extermination that was not something that happened with the arrival of the Spanish, and the Portuguese and the time of the conquest. And it was not something that happened.

It's something that keeps happening, . It's something that [00:09:00] It keeps happening. As the great Aílton Krenak, a great indigenous leader from here in Brazil, and an intellectual , member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, recently said, what you don't understand is that your world is still at war with our world.

He said that . He says that, in other words, you don't understand that the Western world, the modern world, continues at war and making every effort to make indigenous cultures disappear.

I mean, in practice, that's what we're doing. So, when I talk about hope, I'm talking about it because there's something that's emerging, that's new, but it's really very small. And as you say, when, I mean, the expansion of ayahuasca, of San Pedro, of peyote and of a certain [00:10:00] Respect and a certain understanding of the importance of indigenous knowledge , we still don't really understand that, we don't understand. And when we talk from the global north, and what is called the psychedelic renaissance, when they talk about indigenous peoples, there is an idealization, above all, it is only part of a discourse that is a bit " woke. "

It's a bit of a way of making your speech pretty, but in practice it's not visible, no, no, it doesn't occupy an important place. The path that this psychedelic revolution is going to follow is already designed, it is to extract the active principles from plants, to make medicines, to make a pill that will help people stay in better shape within the madness that the West proposes.

How we give to people [00:11:00] tools to adapt and to resist , that's the absurdity we're subjecting them to , that 's really it. I mean, we need drugs like Brave New World now , not Soma. Are you feeling depressed? Take your pills . You're questioning things too much , take this so you can keep functioning and operating and producing, right?

But one thing is very, very clear to me, and that is that we have not yet managed to understand the magnitude of indigenous knowledge. And I say knowledge, not beliefs, because in general, when we talk about indigenous peoples, what a shaman, as they call him, a healer, knows, or what they talk about regarding their spirituality, people think, "ah, those are their beliefs." And in the best of cases, they say, "oh, how nice, we have to respect it, we have to take care of their rights, and they have cultural rights and they have every right to believe in what they believe." But when we say beliefs, it is also a misunderstanding because it has very little of belief in reality.

When one studies more, and when one goes deeper into what a healer, an ayahuasca, Shipibo, Ashaninka, Huni Kuin, Karipuna, Noke Koi Kofan, knows how to do, what they know, it has nothing to do with beliefs. It has nothing to do with the religious worship of certain deities. Nothing to do with it. We are talking about deeply practical knowledge, right?

It is an accumulation of knowledge over generations and generations by scholars of the jungle, who organize this [00:13:00] knowledge. Socially and also transmitted with a method. There is a very strict, very specific method of transmitting this knowledge and these ways of knowing, so I just gave you a definition not of a religion. I just gave you a definition of science.

So what we haven't really understood until now is that the little bit of that knowledge that has survived to this day is much more like a science than a religion. It's much more practical knowledge than a religious belief, right? And in that sense, it's of the utmost importance. And so, when we have more and more people having this experience, what happens?

Many people come to the jungle in Iquitos, I have worked for many years, for years I have been like the main center where I have received many people to [00:14:00] take ayahuasca and those things, and people come to heal themselves of things that in their countries, well, no, no one can heal them of depression, trauma, physical things too, but above all psychological things, right?

And then they come back and say, "Oh, I took ayahuasca and I was cured." "How did you get cured?" "Oh, I went, I took ayahuasca," but nobody says, "I was drinking with an old man who sang to me every night for half an hour. And then he would come in the morning and ask me what my dreams were like. And then he would come with other medicines and he would give me baths. And when he would give me baths, he would sing to me again. And then he would give me this, and he would give me this medicine and sing to me, and when he would sing to me, he would make me see this kind of... Nobody talks about it. People say, "I took ayahuasca and the ayahuasca cured me," but the old man who was singing just seems like an accessory to an old man singing.

But that is not the case.

Claude: [00:00:00] Most people say, "Wow, how did you heal from that? What happened? What did you do?

"Ah, I already took ayahuasca. Ayahuasca cured me."

True? I've actually heard very few people say, "Grandpa, Grandma gave me ayahuasca, but he sang to me for hours, gave me baths, asked me about my dreams, adapted all the plants and the treatment he was doing to my dreams, to what he was seeing. When he sang to me, he guided me to see things, or not see things."

It seems as if the old man who sang was an accessory, a decoration. And no, really, we don't give credit to the deep work they do, and the knowledge they put into practice. And it's not strange because it's very difficult to understand how a person singing is going to heal me with a song, right?

No, for us, it's very difficult, it doesn't make sense. [00:01:00] It has to be the substance that you took that got into your brain and made some neurological connections. I don't know. It can't be that thing, because for us, it would be magical thinking, right?

But as I say, what we call magical thinking is not magical thinking for them. It is a very concrete knowledge that is learned and has learning methods. It is knowledge and skills and abilities that are acquired through transmission methods, right? And up to now we have not really managed to give it the place it deserves.

On the contrary, we are impacting this in very profound ways, and there is a fundamental contradiction that I see in this, in going back to the question you asked me. In all this tourism that has arrived, and [00:02:00] this fascination, this interest. What are the impacts that this has had on indigenous communities in the indigenous world, right?

So I think there are two things that seem to be a bit contradictory. On the one hand, there is a great blessing. Twenty years ago, you didn't see people our age, young people interested in sitting with their grandparents and really learning, and continuing those traditions and cultivating that kind of knowledge.

Most people our age, a little older, up to our age, people who are 50, 55, 60 years old today, didn't want to do anything, no. They wanted to be bilingual intercultural teachers, they wanted to be [00:03:00] professionals, to belong to the white world, right? So, the old people were from a bygone era that was destined to become extinct.

So, with the arrival of the Westerners and with this interest in these things, there has been a certain renaissance and above all, a real interest among the youth to learn these things as a professional alternative, let's say. Let's say, hey, why should I be a lawyer? If I, if you look at all the gringos that are coming, I can be this and I'll do better, right?

So, on the one hand, there is this part that, today we see, for example, in the Shipibo, a lot of people who are learning, right? Many young people are interested, not only in the Shipibo, but in many places in Brazil, in Colombia, in Ecuador, I see, I see that, a youth that is little by little becoming more interested and [00:04:00] returning to their own roots.

It's like, how to say, since you're a kid, they always tell you, "The ancients were crap, that world is over, the only thing that matters is modernity and integrating into urban life, into the official life of this civilization, going to church, having a career, and being someone in life," right?

And then it was like, and the states with policies of that nature, the governments, the states of our countries, it was, well, the indigenous question was how do we civilize the Indians. Civilizing the Indian is nothing other than making them forget their systems, their cultures, but as a part of how I say, " woke, " not like,

" Oh, how nice the Indians are that they keep their dances, that they keep their folklore, that they keep [00:05:00] their clothes and that they keep certain things that are kind of nice, that they keep as something picturesque and somewhat folkloric, " but without really understanding the depth.

But today, I think that to a large extent, thanks to this, not only is it a more complex thing, obviously, but, the youth, seeing that there is this arrival of whites , of foreigners, of gringos, right? Very interested in the knowledge of their grandparents, in medicine. And they go and are there, they say " oh, there must be something interesting here, I also want to learn. "

If gringos like this, it's because there must be something good, you know? We got to that point where it was meant to disappear, but one way or another, there's a rebirth, right? At the same time, [00:06:00] In the transmission of this knowledge, as I was saying, it is extremely complex, extremely strict, strict methods of transmission, so it has had to be simplified because young people are no longer capable, having gone to school, having one foot in the city. No, they are not as capable, nor do they have the interest, nor the conditions, nor the aptitudes to really enter into these processes as the grandparents could have done, who today are 70, 80 years old, right , who were really the last .

Unless you go very far into the jungle where there are places where there is not much contact, they still have to maintain some things, but they are also far from these circuits,

But then, yes, there is a great simplification of these systems. So many things are lost. For better or worse, right? Many people say, well, at least this whole part of witchcraft and [00:07:00] shamanic attacks and all that stuff is being lost, but to which a lot, a lot of importance is given that we also fail to understand, because we see it with that Judeo-Christian vision, that Manichean distinction of good and evil, which in the indigenous worlds does not just not exist, but is totally different, right? And that is part of those differences that are important to understand and respect, right? So, all this part that we see as witchcraft, as diabolical and such, has its function within a system, and that no, trying to make it disappear is to make the system itself disappear, right?

Because we don't understand it. It's the same thing that happens, it's what has always happened, something that scandalizes us, so we want to change it, but it scandalizes us from our own worldview and we are not understanding it from the vision of [00:08:00] They do not. It does not mean that everything can be put into perspective, right? There are things that are very difficult, no, and very delicate, but in general, when there is something that scandalizes us, we want to change it, without really going into an understanding of the function of those things, because we are following the same patterns as the priests who arrived 400, 500 years ago. They said, "Oh, this is diabolical. We have to eradicate these things, right?" So we continue doing that.

So, on the one hand, we see that there is a rebirth of interest among the youth and a reconnection with their own identity, while at the same time there is a somewhat dangerous simplification of these systems, meaning that the young people who will soon be grandparents do not know half of what their grandparents knew. They know the bare minimum that is needed to give the gringo what he requires, what he needs, what he is looking for, enough to actually do business, and that is not to blame them, but it is part of the system in which we are navigating, because everything works like that.

Why are you going to go so deep if this minimum is enough? Especially when we see that many gringos, many foreigners, take ayahuasca a few times or go on a diet, and then they take ayahuasca back to their countries, put on the feathers, grab their little guitar, and start singing these things as decoration around this experience and make a lot of money.

And so ayahuasca has been expanding throughout the world, right? And that serves its purpose too. Not to judge, but [00:10:00] there is also, it is a superficiality, many times, hurtful, when you see what a grandfather knows and what he has had to go through, the difficulties, the tests and the responsibilities that an Amazonian healer has for his community, and the systems of accountability that are more or less what keep him in line, that one cannot do what one wants with that power, but rather there is a system of control, when this comes out and goes out in these circles, new age media, hippie media, neo-shamanic media, then that whole issue is lost and they start to invent a lot of things, and above all, a discourse that is quite problematic.

So this idea arises that ayahuasca is the universal panacea, and " the little mother ayahuasca " [ 00:11:00] He said, and, " This is what is going to save the world. " So more people have to find a way for more and more people to have this experience to save the world, right? And the truth is that I believe that That is not the case. If it were so, if it were because of the amount of ayahuasca that is consumed in the world, then the world would have already changed, because there is really a lot of ayahuasca consumed . When I was in Europe in the early 2000s, it was very rare to hear about that, right? Nowadays, in any European country, every weekend you can find an ayahuasca ceremony, everywhere.

That has expanded . It has become normalized . It is already mainstream, it has become mainstream. But what has become mainstream? Our own interpretation, which is quite problematic about this and it has not been given the place that it should be [00:12:00] It is up to the guardians of that knowledge. So that is what I have to criticize in this whole issue of the psychedelic revolution, that we talk about psychedelic, psychedelic, psychedelic, as the panacea, the thing that can save the world, but how much experience does our society have with psychedelics?

Two generations? Maximum? Since Hoffman, and that one, already from the B eat generation, from the 50s. OK?, a bit like that. And then, today, you have psychodelic studies in universities and training in psychedelic therapies that are taught in institutes, of quite important studies. And one wonders, but what does he study?

What do they teach them? What can we have accumulated as knowledge in those two generations, given that for more or less 40 years, this has been or 50 or 60 years. This has been prohibited . It was [00:13:00] Illegal . Nowadays it is more or less legalized, so you can study more openly, you can research, you can learn, you can experiment much more, but for many years, it was illegal, it was underground, subterranean, right? So, what have we been able to accumulate as knowledge? It is minimal, it is very superficial, especially if you compare it with what they know there in the jungle, the indigenous people in Mexico, the Wixarika. there where, where you are, the Mazatecs and all those people who have knowledge of mushrooms.

That is an extraordinary accumulation of knowledge. The thing is that, because they are Indians, we don't give them a place. What do I care, if you have a PhD from any university in the world and you sit with Indians, inside you have that terrible arrogance that we Westerners have of saying, if I am a doctor, what is an Indian going to teach me?

Do you understand? And that, that shows that even though we try to idealize and even though there is great respect, and something is changing, we are still governed by a deep racism. A deep superiority complex, which I believe is the basis of the great problems we have today as humanity. It is really the arrogance and the superiority complex that we have as members of this civilization, which is extraordinary, but it is also what is leading us to the catastrophe , right? It is what is destroying the world.

So, there are very uncomfortable truths that we do not want to see but it is the truth, despite all the greatness that we have achieved with this, with the knowledge of our science, it is also our very science that is destroying [00:15:00] the world, our way of understanding and knowing the world.

So now, little by little, we are realizing that we need the participation of these other peoples who have other ways of seeing, of understanding, of being in the world, and of knowing, of learning other ways, right? So something very beautiful and extraordinary happens when we bring together people who think differently and it really is no longer a discussion about which is better, which system is better, whether my science or your science or not, but rather it is how we complement our types of knowledge, right? What we were also saying, that is, from our differences, with our differences as material, what is it that we can weave together, which has never been done before, right? So, that is what is also emerging, but in a very [00:16:00] problematic context in which economic, financial interests, big pharmaceuticals, big capital that want to invest in these things arise and the great holders of this knowledge are not given a place. And above all, they are not given a place in dialogue, nor in the creation of agreements, but they are not given a financial share of what can be collected as benefits from their knowledge, right?

So we continue to reproduce that colonial system, that system of exploitation of others and of the land, of nature for the benefit of capital, for the benefit of generating economic income, right? So we are in that, it is highly complex. [00:17:00]

There are good things and there are negative things. There is also a huge impact in the Amazon with all these people arriving, but positive impacts. I have met many leaders in the Amazon who tell me "thanks to you for coming here. We are returning to our roots." "If it weren't for you, we would already be lost."

So there is something that is happening, which is something very positive, but also, as we come with these programs, we are not able to give it the depth that we could be achieving. And again, I think that what is at the base is our terrible superiority complex, that we believe that we all know it and that, well, we are better and that, what is it going to teach us, do you understand? Even though something is changing, even though there is a little hope, there is still a long way to go, [00:18:00] no?

Chris: Mm. Thank you Claude for being able to pull out some of the threads from the enormous knot we live in. Well, yes, I feel that one of the things that is least heard in our times from people who have comments, opinions, whatever, is, well, "I don't know the truth, I don't know." In other words, there is a huge lack of humility.

I think that people who criticize the psychedelic revolution or renaissance, or people who celebrate it, right? I mean, there is a great lack of humility, as well as deep time or historical knowledge, we can say, and as you mentioned, the issue of the grandparents and the relationships that people have, that is, the Amazons and the indigenous peoples for thousands and thousands of [00:19:00] years with their places.

And as they gradually deepened their own place within the other beings in their ecology, in their ecosystem, their ecosystems, and that, this idea that someone can go to a place like that, take the medicine like a pill as soon as they come back or simply stay and say "ah, it cured me" or something. Well, that, that sounds pretty fascinating to me, right? And because, for me in the end it also has to do with the relationship with the elders or wise men of a place. I mean, my teacher once told me that it is the young people who make elders, who make wise men who act like elders, right? It is not the old people.

I mean, the old people are the vehicle for the function of that wisdom. But it is the young people who have to ask and [00:20:00] that. It seems that it is very, very lost in the Western world. I mean, rather the urban people, the people from the North, the vast majority are migrants or immigrant families.

So, I feel that the relationship we have with medicine, which is just medicine, is a pill or although yes, it is a being that, as you said, as we sometimes do not have the capacity to understand, the place of the human grandfather, grandmother in that relationship, well, there are many, many directions we can go in that sense, but also what I've seen, what I've heard, I've read a little is about the deforestation of medicines, sacred plants, and that people are [00:21:00] slowly domesticating plants and that domesticated plants do not have the same strength, partly because they are harvested younger and younger, earlier and earlier than they mature, and that this also perhaps has something to do with our Western context like the need or speed or velocity at which we need to get and consume medicine and be cured, etc.

So I understand that you have also been working for some organizations that work specifically on the conservation of medicines, and also, others that work in education and research on ethnobotany.

So, I'd like to ask you about ICEERS and MSCF has [00:22:00] a, a fixed perspective or maybe from your perspective, how are we going on that path?

Claude: Look, that is a problem that corresponds to that same system, right? In other words, for example, when this fund, this foundation, which is the fund for the conservation of indigenous medicines or INC for its name in English, emerged.

The first concern that arose, that is, the first impulse and the first seed capital to launch this was exactly that idea, right? These medicines are expanding, more and more people are going to need them, they are going to use them. So there will be an impact on the sustainability of these plants.

Its continuity is going to be put at risk, right? When I was asked to [00:23:00] work on this and help create this fund, and they put it to me in those terms, my answer was negative. I said I have no interest in working on that. Because, in other words, it's: How do we guarantee demand?

How do we make sure we have enough? We're going to start peyote plantations and ayahuasca plantations so that we don't run out, so that there's enough for all the people in the world who are going to need it. And I said, I have no interest in doing that. Besides, I don't think that's the real problem.

I said now if it were about the conservation of knowledge, we are talking about something else. That is what is really precious and we must put all our efforts [00:24:00] so that there is continuity, so that it does not disappear as it is disappearing, it disappears. Every time a grandparent dies and many have died lately, especially with COVID, many grandparents have died, well, it is lost, it is lost, I mean, it is a tragedy for all of humanity, that a grandparent dies who did not have the possibility of transmitting that knowledge to one, two, three of his children, his grandchildren, that there is no one who will know what he knows, well, it is a tragedy for all of us.

So, when we are thinking about how we are going to do it? Is ayahuasca going to run out, or are there plantations, if it is not the same, it is a valid concern, obviously, within our logic. But we forget that the main thing is the conservation of this knowledge. So, both [00:25:00] MSC as ICEERS is increasingly focusing on a deep work of developing relationships, cultivating relationships with these grandparents who hold knowledge, with these communities that still practice, maintain their systems, right? And working with them, let's say for them, with programs, and with projects, and processes that are designed by them, guided by them, and we only dedicate ourselves to giving technical and financial support, right? To guarantee this, then, by doing this, by dedicating ourselves more to the conservation of this knowledge, we realize that culture cannot survive without the [00:26:00] territory.

The knowledge of our ancestors is meaningless without a territory, right? And when we talk about the conservation of the Amazon, we cannot understand the conservation of ecosystems without the conservation of the cultures that have lived there for thousands of years. I mean, everything goes hand in hand, right?

So with a much more holistic vision, let's say a broader one. Well, we understand that, by taking care of the culture and putting all the necessary efforts for the continuity of those cultures, we are also taking care of the Amazon, taking care of biodiversity, taking care of water, taking care of medicines, taking care of everything.

Do you understand? There are already huge plantations of ayahuasca and chacruna in Brazil. You find plantations in different parts of the world, [00:27:00] In Hawaii, and in Costa Rica, and in different places. People have been planting for years. So, there is, no, that is not going to be lacking. What we are not going to be lacking is that we are being left without that knowledge.

And that is a great loss because I am certain, I am convinced that in that knowledge are the keys, the answers that can help us solve the great challenges that humanity faces today. With our science we are not going to solve them, we are, we are in a civilizational crisis, we are in a global crisis, and the only thing that scientists tell us is that we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And there they go for 20 years or more trying to do that, and they don't get it. No [00:28:00] Not only is it insufficient to think of it in such a reductionist way, but they are also sticking to one thing and not achieving it, we have not achieved anything, right? What we really need is a change of direction, a change to understand a much greater depth of what our relationship is as a species with this planet.

And for that we need the understanding of the most extraordinary things that humanity has preserved until today, not only from Western civilization, but from all of us, right? So, every time a language is lost, every time a wise grandfather dies, it is a tragedy for all of humanity.

So, it's great that we use these medicines, it's great that these practices are expanding, but this serves, [00:29:00] as an initial process, like opening a window to a world of possibilities. So, I like that there are people giving ayahuasca in the United States, in Europe.

I like it because a lot of people have the experience and say, "wow, there really is something more. There really is a whole world here that I had no idea existed and that I could read a million things about, and I can believe or not believe, but having the experience, I don't need to believe anymore. I know there is something. I know that nature is alive. I know that nature speaks, I know that there is a way to communicate with the subtlety of the functioning of this planet, of the waters, of the rivers, of the winds of the mountains. Everything is a system that is alive, and there is a way to communicate with that and maintain a deep, symbiotic relationship, of profound respect and love with all of this, right?

So, it's [00:30:00] important for many people to have that kind of experience, but then what? After that experience, what? We go back to our normal life, to our usual work, to the difficulty of our daily relationships and the drama of the impossibility of maintaining a deep connection with the fabric of life.

Everything about our civilization is designed to keep us disconnected from life, from the functioning of life on this planet, right? So that's what we have to aim for, because the problem is not greenhouse gas emissions, the problem is our relationship with the world.

It is not the stories that make us believe that the world is a source of resources to extract, transform and generate wealth. That story is deeply [00:31:00] problematic. And when we talk to the wise men, to the elders, to the indigenous people, we hear these stories. We realize. Wow. These stories need to be heard.

These stories need to be told in different spaces. And these grandparents, these wise men need to occupy their rightful place at the negotiating table of humanity. It is not about preserving this as something folkloric , as a right of these poor people who have the right to live, as they have always lived, as they want to live. No, it is about our survival.

So, that is what I think we should be aiming for, and especially the issue of the psychedelic renaissance revolution, I think it is a spearhead. It is a first entry in which we are going little by little, proving that it is not about [00:32:00] Not only to convince rhetorically, but it is necessary to demonstrate, with facts, the relevance, the usefulness of this knowledge for today's world, right?

So, the issue of health and the issue of mental health is like a gigantic problem, right? Huge, hyper complex. It's the first thing that more and more scientists and decision-makers are realizing. "Wow, these people here know something that we don't know and they have a way of knowing and understanding the functioning of the human mind and spirit that we have no idea about and that really works."

So that's like a first part, like a spearhead. We're entering a place to be able to show the world. "Hey, what these [00:33:00] people know is important not only for them, not only for the continuity of their cultures, their traditions, not only for the safeguarding of the Amazon rainforest but for all of humanity." Right?

And it is very sad to see in our countries, in Colombia. Well, in Colombia there is another level of much more mature understanding about the indigenous. I think they are much more advanced in that sense, but in Brazil, in Peru, in Ecuador, in Mexico, we are not giving the importance that this problem deserves, that is, to the rescue of the little that has survived of that extraordinary knowledge that is kept in the jungles, in the deserts, in the mountains, that has been kept secret until today, that is, it is heroic that it has [00:34:00] survived until today. And today we are realizing the relevance and importance of all that.

So when we talk about conservation, we are talking about biocultural conservation. Understanding that you cannot preserve a culture without preserving its entire territory, without the rights of those peoples over their territories, and you cannot preserve ecosystems and rights if you do not make every effort to preserve those cultures that have lived in profound respect, in symbiosis with those ecosystems.

And we have a lot to learn. This whole issue of international cooperation, of NGO aid, of indigenous peoples' projects is a sad and absurd paternalism that basically says "poor Indians, let's help them." Let's help them with what? Let's help them to be more like us.

That's what we're doing, believing that [00:35:00] we are the best. But then we're increasingly understanding that there's much more we can learn from them than them becoming us. We have to re-indigenize ourselves, you know? We have to return to certain roots that allow us a deep connection with life, with nature, with all the beings that live in our territory.

And that is what nature itself, the earth itself is telling us, it is calling us. In other words, if you continue to be so disconnected, we are going to exterminate you. You have to reconnect with that, so I think there is something new that is emerging, which is wonderful, right? And I hope that this reaches more and more people.

We are working hard for that, really .

Chris: Mm, well thank you very much for that work Claude. And for having the ability to sharpen the knife, in these times and in our conversation, to remove the fat, let's say, whatever we call it. I feel that it is, it is a very hard job, right? I mean, for me, that is the end of tourism, the ability to stop, to see the world as something that exists only for your tastes. Something that exists in a temporary sense, that is to say disposable. But that will last like a lot of work in the sense of remembering, of remembering that at some point your ancestors, the urban ones, those from the north, etc., were indigenous.

But what happened? What has happened? What broke [00:37:00] that relationship with the land? And that, that is a very, very strong and obviously generational and intergenerational work, then. Well, there is much more that we can talk about and hopefully we will have the opportunity at some point, but I wanted to thank you for my part, for the podcast and the listeners.

And finally, I wanted to ask you, and for our listeners, if there is a way to follow your work or contact you, if you are willing to do that, how can they find out about ICEERS and MSC?

Claude: Well, you see, MSC's work is very important. And so, if we need more people to join, to donate, we need to channel a lot of [00:38:00] resources to be able to do these things well, right? With few resources we are doing incredible things, but we are already seeing that, we have reached levels where we can manage much greater resources. So, if people feel inspired and can go to the MSC or ICEERS website, and MSC fund FND , see what we are doing, the different projects we have there and feel inspired to donate or get resources, well, great. ICEERS also does an extraordinary job in the creation of knowledge, scientific articles and legal defense of these holders of these medicines.

I work with political advocacy with people who make decisions in the world. [00:39:00] So we are fighting there for the rights of indigenous peoples, for the right to use these medicines that are illegal in many places, and also above all, to tell people that more than going to the jungle, or taking ayahuasca near their places, many times there is also a reserve nearby, some elders, indigenous peoples who are close to you, right? In your countries, near your cities. And so it is time to reconnect, and it is very difficult, but the truth is that it is worth it, to go, to see what they need, how we can help, how we can collaborate, simply with that presence, with another type of meeting, and to cultivate those relationships of friendship, it is something, it is something very important that we can do today, and that, [00:40:00] Well, the earth is crying out for us to reconnect. And there are the grandparents, there are still grandparents who, as you say, are just waiting for the young people to come and ask, right? And many times when they are not the young people from their communities, they are very happy when people from outside come with these questions, because they help them practice, they help them share, but they also inspire the young people from their community to sit down with their grandparents.

I think it's a time when it's very important to sit down with our grandparents again, and our grandparents are there and they need us a lot. So let's do it.

Chris: Hey, thanks bro. I'll make sure those links are on the End of Tourism page when I release the episode. And [00:41:00] well, from the north to the south I send you a big hug. And thank you for your time today, for your work and for your commitments, Claude.

Claude: Nice to meet you, Chris, thanks to you. Thanks for what you're doing. Cheers.

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Anniversary Update: Two years ago, an essay of mine was published in print for the first time. It is a piece of writing that is very dear to me. It came off the heels of a pilgrimage to visit some of my dead in Glasgow, Devon and Aegean Macedonia. Returning home to Oaxaca, I had a week to write and submit an early draft of this piece. To my surprise and deep gratitude, the editorial team at the Dark Mountain Project accepted it for Issue #23: Dark Kitchen.

Two years later, I can say I have a second essay that was published in Dark Mountain’s Issue #25 on relationships and rights to land. That piece, entitled “The Right to Stay Home,” is a kind of sideways sequel to this one that wonders about the places and people our families leave behind in their migrations.

Originally Published in Dark Mountain Issue #23 - Dark Kitchen (2023). You can purchase a copy and read the other written fermentations here.

In the Old Country, in times that we can no longer sense, there stood God among the people. For as long as they could remember, the people had been of that soil, they could remember working it and being worked by it. While the churches had persisted in the villages since time immemorial, their prayers’ sonic supplications were set over their fields and that is where they found Him.  

The Macedonian word for God is bog, and in the old days the word for wheat was zbog. Wheat was the accent on the name of God, the sound that preceded divinity and cradled it among them. Wheat was their God, the field their ministry, and the barn their temple.  

Throughout the world, there are stories about the enduring and regenerative matrimony between family and food, between home and harvest, between the dead and the digested, about how such people, wedded to place, understand their deities and their diets to be one and the same. This is one of those stories. 

The Flight and The Food

As a child, my sister and I had the great good fortune of being raised, in  part, by our baba and dedo. It was the late 1980s and our parents were off working themselves to the bone (mostly for us). This meant that the Old Country tradition of the elders looking after the youngsters survived the mass migration of the village from western Macedonia to east Toronto.

My ancestors managed to withstand four centuries of Ottoman rule, but the collapse of the empire conjured a firestorm in the Balkans whose ghosts continue to haunt the region. In the first half of the 20th century, their villages became revolving doors for the occupations of countless neighbouring armies. The local men were conscripted. Everyone, children included, was forced to speak a foreign tongue. One of my babas remembers policemen, pressed against the family’s house at night, listening in for any whisper of Macedonian, a crime whose punishment included flogging, jail time or being tied to a post for days on end in the town square. In the 1950s, as the ashes of war began to settle, the borders between communist Yugoslavia and fascist Greece were set to be petrified with barbed-wire fences, right down the middle of the lands my extended kin inhabited. ‘Choose,’ they were told. Not unsurprisingly, like so many in the region, they left, rarely if ever speaking of these things in our presence. 

We were blessed in that way, for a time. But not everything survives exile,  and usually it is the memory of migration that’s the first to go. In its place, we often find the gastronomy of a people, cultivating and sometimes hospicing the remnants of culture. My family was no exception. 

Arriving in Canada in the 1960s, many of the ex-villagers began working in restaurants, a typical tour-de-force for recent immigrants. Fresh-off-the boat often means right-into-the-kitchen, and, for those who can afford it, into one that can maintain the village hearth and hospitality as a means of survival. To thrive in a new, alien and often hostile world, people utilise what they know, and for many that includes the indelible and ancestral recipes they secretly stash away and smuggle through customs.  

While my family never opened a Macedonian restaurant, the Old Country aromas and flavours flowed through their kitchens. Their recipes were resurrected in the New World, feeding the umbilical cord of memory that connected there and here, then and now, us and them. 

Our Spiral Sustenance

Among all of our baba’s dishes, there was one that was sacred. Zelnik, they called it. In the Old Country, our people only prepared it for special occasions, which usually meant saints’ days, baptisms, weddings and funerals. As in many cultures, certain foods are reserved resolutely for ceremony as the sustaining, ritual reminders of life’s cyclic celebrations.

To put it another way, the appearance of specific foods, like the appearance of certain dates, the changes in the weather and the shape of the village, signify its' perpetuation and vitality through ceremony. It is ushered in through the kitchen as it is in the fields, as people sow and reap, as they mix and mould the sustaining bounty of their soils. 

If there is no field and no farming, what becomes of the ceremony? If there is no ceremony, what becomes of the dish, of the diet, and of the deities?  

As a child in Toronto, zelnik quickly became my favourite food, and our baba would make it as much as she could whenever we were around. Removed from the place her people knew as the centre of the world for as long as they could remember, we became the occasion for ceremony in her days. She, like many of her sisters, aunts and babas, were the guardians of hearth, hospitality and memory. They, the arches of the familial and communal thresholds, ensured that their ceremonies persisted in exile. From morning till afternoon, she spent hours spreading out the skin thin layers of hand-formed phyllo dough, painting them with butter and  egg wash, and filling their innards with brined cheese and sometimes spinach. She would then carefully fold the dough into long serpentine rolls and coil each one around itself until it took the shape of a spiral. These  hand-woven, wheaten prayers were then left to Grandfather Fire to bake, and if well-wrought, such a petition would provoke a golden sheen on the surface, signalling the birth of another zelnik.

During our New Year’s gatherings, the babas observed an ancient tradition related to St. Basil. They would hide a coin in the zelnik, then carefully cut the spiral into small sections, ensuring everyone had a piece. Whoever received the auspicious slice would be blessed with good luck (and often money) for the following year, a small manifestation of the family’s continued fortune. 

For my people, as for many others, zelnik was a cornerstone of immigrant identity, the breadcrumbs of memory laid down like pathways by the ancestors. They are also often the last thing to disappear from that path after the newcomers shorten their names, cast off their mother tongues, after they trade in their traditional clothing for department store bargains, their craft traditions for office jobs, their dances and rituals for modern rites, and their myths for history.  

However, when still stewarded, a people’s foodways can root a sense of identity. This is what zelnik did for me. It was ours. It belonged to us and staked a claim as something that made us Macedonian. It offered a quintessential connection to an ancestral homeland, to culture, and to the dead. But as it turned out, zelnik is part of a looping lineage that can pry us from the pitfalls of ethnicity and nationality, of the overzealous identification with the ‘I’ that often arrives with the seductive satisfaction of recovering my heritage, my history, and my culture. The majesty and mystery of food is that it is never for you and never has been.  

The Subversion of a Singular Identity

After our baba’s death, I slowly forgot about her cooking, tasting less and less of it as the years went by. Recently, however, alone in my apartment, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the overwhelming aroma of her freshly baked zelnik.  

The ancient odour prompted a web search. Not unsurprisingly, what arose was a litany of mouth-watering photos. One of them popped up with a location attached. It was a restaurant in Turkey. ‘Wow, they have zelnik in  Turkey?’ I thought. Then I found a cookbook online with a zelnik recipe in it, but there was no section on Macedonia. The recipe was in the Ukraine chapter. Later on, while hanging out with a Bulgarian friend, I mentioned  zelnik and described it to her. ‘Oh, that’s burek,’ she responded. As it turns out, the Turks, the Greeks, the Romanians and almost every other people in the Ottoman-influenced region have their own name (and version) of zelnik. In some cultures, for example, there is no spiral pattern baked into the bread.

The story’s roots expand as they deepen. Before my family emigrated to Canada, before incessant wars and cultural genocide came upon them in the Old Country, Ottoman control spanned North Africa to the Persian Gulf to the Balkans and everything in between. For half a millennium, colonial trade and travel persisted under a system of relative religious freedom (between Muslims, Christians and Jews) and this ensured a veritable kneading of the cultural grain. 

The roots of the word burek, zelnik’s better-known sibling, come from the  Turkish borek, meaning ‘stew’.1 Like mole in Mexico and curry in South Asia,  these names commonly refer to a plurality of flavours, of many seeds and roots. While the etymology of burek stretches back to ancient Persia, the origin of the recipe itself is unclear. Some claim that it arrived from Central Asia by way of Turkic nomads, some consider it a dish of the Ottoman high court, while others see a link to Byzantine times. 

Like its Aegean and Anatolian analogues, zelnik was a colonial dish, one that became indigenous to each of those places over time. The people honoured their manner of being in and of place by ensuring that their own local, cultural and ceremonial ingredients were pressed into the dough. Their maker’s mark, in other words. Zelnik is as Macedonian as burek is Bulgarian as placinta dobrogeana is Romanian, all of which are inherited through colonisation. This is to say that sometimes they don’t belong to a single people. Burek is also the national dish of the Macedonian state. By planting the dish in the local terroir, each community plunged their roots into the assimilating ground of empire. Each provides a path towards restoring ancestral memory, and subsequently remembering how it is forgotten.

I’m reminded of the words of a friend and elder, the culture activist, author and grief-worker Stephen Jenkinson: ‘The enemy of my ancestor is also my ancestor.’ The nuances in my people’s traditional dress, in their architecture and dance, even in my own appearance, are all consequences of the conquest, fusion and confusion that arises. Just like zelnik. The wars, the persecution, the migration, the ceremonies, the celebration and the love. Every ingredient is added. All of it. Cradled and cooked, it is nourishment and memory. All are eaten and all are fed, and in this way we begin to undo that enmity, piece by piece.  

A Moveable Feast, A Migratory Famine

Years ago, I landed on the semi-desert shores of Oaxaca, Mexico. I was lucky  enough to begin an apprenticeship with culture, with what it revealed and what it concealed. In the markets, at the molinos, in the bowls and on the plates of the people, one can peer into the bubbles in the bread and beverages to know something more of place and time. My attention led me to an old understanding, one contained and carried throughout many parts of the world.

In certain parts of southern Mexico, cacao and maize are still remembered as deities. Depending on where and when you are, the names, forms and functions can be distinct, but they are almost always divine and personified as such. While being worshipped as gods, cacao and maize are also known as ancestors – the first ancestors of human beings in Mesoamerica. In the Popol Vuh, the Quiche Maya creation story, the first fathers are both made of maize and subsequently fed it in order to become fully human.  

The Quiche are not alone. Countless cultures held and hold their principal foods, their staple crops, and the animals they husband as ancestors. One Hunahpu (maize) in the Mayan world, Dionysus (wine) in Greece, Inari (rice) in Shinto Japan, Axomamma (potato) for the Inca, Heryshaf (sheep) in Egypt, and Maxayuawi (deer) for the Wixarika. Zbog (wheat) for Macedonians. 

When we honour ancestry, we feed the divine among us. When we understand the animals and plants we eat as primordial ancestors, we can begin to coax from the crumbs what it means to commune together, what it means to be nourished by the dead and the divine, and what it means to be descendants of each.

Zelnik is an example of how the enemy of my ancestors is also my ancestor, how each of them, mostly by virtue of being born into their circumstances, are folded into the sustenance that fed my family long enough so I could be here today, writing this for you. Odds are that the stories are not all that different among your people.

Traditional food and drink are not representations of lineage. They are not symbols of ancestry. They are ancestry. In some cases, the foods themselves are the bodies and blood of ancestors transformed, moulded by descendant hands to remake and remember the ancient relationships between the living and the dead who sustain them. In other cases, the foods themselves are the guests of honour, the occasion for the ceremony, the living memory of the sustenance that kept your people alive long enough so you could be reading this today.

To understand what is hidden in our nourishment is to know what we’ve allowed to go unfed, and whom. To deny the inherent diversity in ancestry because it doesn’t suit your politics or morals is to make a monocultural Monsanto field of memory. It is to reproduce what made your people conquerors or conquered in the first place. It is to consume instead of commune. It is to only ever ask what you are eating and never whom.

Today, many of the fields surrounding the villages in western Macedonia, like the fields surrounding my home in Oaxaca, are examples of such amnesia. The Gods of Wheat, like the Gods of Maize, have become relics, reconstituted as alimentary fuel pumps, nutrition sources and natural resources, served by supermarkets, biotech companies and emigration. Similarly, the people of Oaxaca are the inheritors of centuries of brutal conquest, of cultural genocide and exile. The American dream – or nightmare – tempts villagers into the cities, slowly emptying the countryside, uprooting the food-borne relationships that blend together the living, the dead and the divine into masa, the dough of comm-unity.  

After a day’s work in the jungle, I’m often invited into my compañeros’ homes, offered their ancestral hospitality, fortified and inspirited by their grandmothers’ criollo tortillas. I witness first-hand the often dire dilemmas visiting their villages and all at once am transported to my baba and dedo’s, a century ago. I wonder if the spiral zelnik and the solar tortilla aren’t both anointed tutors of time, holy reminders of resilience and relationship, constantly at risk of slipping from view. 

In the few feasts and fields in which these ancestors are still kept alive,  nourishment arrives as memory – the collective memory that we are fed and entered into. Communing with the millennia-old lineages tying people to place and food, we are braided into that double-helixed digestion with each bite. What it might offer us is medicine, food for our times: that the lineage of sustenance continues to be forged not because the people in question were your ancestors, not because of what the food is, but who it is.

This is the recipe that my baba inherited, and that she has left to us. These are the ingredients of zelnik, the divine harvest of a people. When these things coalesce, ceremony can begin. When they are forgotten, the world is famished.

This is the food.

This is the grace.

Originally Published in Dark Mountain Issue #23 - Dark Kitchen (2023). You can purchase a copy and read the other written fermentations here. Similarly, you can read the sequel to this piece that was published in Dark Mountain #25, entitled “The Right to Stay Home.”

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En este episodio, mi invitada es Alf Bojórquez, novelista y ensayista yucateca. Su primera novela, Pepitas de calabaza (2023) salió en la editorial Fondo Blanco. Se segundo libro, No existe dique capaz de contener al océano furioso. Potencia, alegría y anarquismo, apareció hace unos meses. Fue ganadora del premio Moving Narratives (2024) de Prince Claus Fund y el British Council. Ha hecho giras en América Latina, Europa, Estados Unidos, Marruecos y Filipinas haciendo lecturas de su obra y dando talleres sobre narrativa, arte y teoría crítica. Tiene un programa de radio sobre lo mismo que se puede escuchar gratis en cualquier aplicación de podcasts: Un sueño largo, ancho y hondo. Ha colaborado con varios colectivos y organizaciones abajo y a la izquierda.

Notas del Episodio

• La traduccion de Joyful Militancy a Militancia Alegre

• Diferencias en el radicalismo rigido entre norte y sur

• Recuperando la miltancia y el contexto contemporaneo en militancia alegre

• Tejiendo a la Organización Revolucionaria

• La perdida de propiedad comunal en Mexico y la llegada del turismo

• Las redes sociales como una arma del imperio

• La imagen y la gestion, el usuario y el premio

• Contraturismo como peregrinaje

Tarea

• Pagina profesional - Instagram

• Un sueño largo, ancho y hondo - Instagram

• No existe dique capaz de contener al océano furioso - Volcana - Polilla - Utopicas - Traficantes de Suenos - Novedades don Gregorio (OAX)

• Militancia alegre: Tejer Resistencias, florecer en tiempos toxicas

• Pepitas de calabaza

Transcripcion en espanol (English Below)

Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenida al podcast El Fin del Turismo, Alf. Un placer hablar contigo hoy.

Alf: Ajá.

Chris: Este me gustaría empezar preguntándote donde te encuentras hoy y cómo se ve el mundo a través de tus ojos?

Alf: Este hoy me encuentro en mi cocina. Desde ahí trabajo yo. En la ciudad de México, en una colonia se llama Iztaccihuatl. Cómo se ve el mundo? Pues mira, yo no tengo una vista tan mala. Este no es un edificio grande, pero tengo una vista linda, no? O sea, no me tapa la vista otro edificio ni nada. Se ven muchas plantas. Y bueno, supongo que sabes que yo soy de provincia. Entonces yo siempre he sentido que aquí donde yo vivo es como una, un poquito provincia en la capital, porque no hay edificios tan grandes.

Este y bueno, desde aquí se ve, se me olvida que estoy en CDMX ahora, sabes a

Chris: Gracias. Pues eres entre otras cosas, autora de varios [00:01:00] textos entre ellos Pepitas de Calabaza y el muy reciente No Existe Dique Capaz de Contener al Océano Furioso. También coordinaste la traducción al español del texto en inglés de Militancia Alegre:

Deje Resistencias Florecer en Tiempos T óxicos. (o Joyful Militancy) A esa traducción le siguió un podcast complementario con Pamela Carmona titulado Alegría Emergente: Deshaciendo el Radicalismo Rígido. Entonces, para empezar, me gustaría preguntarte cómo conociste, el libro Joyful Militancy y qué te llevó a traducirlo.

Alf: Yo conocí ese libro. Lo cuento un poquito en el prólogo, pero yo conocí ese libro, en Estados Unidos, porque yo tenía una banda. Yo toqué en una banda de hardcore punk muchos, muchos años, la batería. Y entonces así accedí a Estados Unidos y estando [00:02:00] en el underground americano, que fue una parte importante de mi de mi de mi vida, estando en en California en concreto.

Me encontré ese libro como en una cafetería y yo me enamoré. Entonces lo traje y primero lo leí en inglés con alguna gente y muy lentamente empecé a trabajar con ese libro, traducir. Eso es una historia más larga que está ahí bien en el prólogo, pero bueno, llevo años como militando ese libro. También hubieron una serie de coincidencias de gente muy amable como Tumba a la Casa, como los autores canadienses, los derechos nos los regalaron. Se metió la gente de Traficantes de Sueno.

O sea, en realidad hay un montón de gente. Es como una red de redes, ese libro y una serie de casualidades y favores y gestos agradables de mucha gente que logró que eso saliera como salió, la verdad. O sea, yo pienso mi irrepetible, esa esa serie de factores. Ajá.

Chris: Ah chingón. Muy bien, Bueno, pues ese libro originalmente [00:03:00] se publicaron en 2016. A leer, reeler y traducir ese texto, tengo curiosidad por saber que crees que ha cambiado de este entonces, o qué diferencias principales has visto entre el radicalismo rígido descrito en el libro de la anglosfera o America norte, Anglosajona y la hispanesfera o Latinoamérica?

Alf: Este? Pues muchas cosas que decir, no. La parte que confirmé yo fui trabajando ese libro, eh? Porque digamos que yo, todavía este año presenté ese libro. O sea, y le fue muy bien en Costa Rica. Fue la última. A mí se me acabaron los ejemplares. Y digamos, terminé mi labor con con Militancia en Costa Rica hace dos, tres meses.

No es tanto, no? O sea todavía después de la del programa de radio con Pamela, se hizo en Costa Rica de presentación y le fue muy bien, eh? Y se [00:04:00] reimprimió ese sí. Ese libro fue un éxito de muchas maneras, no? Y fíjate a mí. Una cosa que con por me pasaban los años, no me gustó, es que yo siento que tiene un lado como muy liberal, osea, hay un lado donde es demasiado suave, no? O sea, al criticar lo rígido, siento que se pasa de flexible, por decir así. Entonces, y eso pasa un poco como con ciertos radicalismos del norte, que tienen que ver con la retórica de la amistad de la ternura como tan enfocados en el cuidado.

Y así, yo siento que sin querer como por llevarle la contraria al opuesto, como el machismo lo rígido, bla, bla, bla, caen en una cosa un poco... o sea yo siendo que ese el libro o por lo menos mi lectura de ese libro, ya estas alturas, si lo siendo demasiado suave, porque yo creo que la parte negativa de militar y de organizarse, pues es importante, no, eh?

Es importante de hablar, no? Entonces, cierto que en el libro, se pasa de buena onda, por [00:05:00] decirlo asi. Creo que por eso es un éxito porque hay lado "pop" en ese libro, un lado suavecito, dulcecito, que se mastica bien. Y está bien para los activismo, pero hay una parte en mi que dice bueno, pero hay que hablar del resentimiento, hay que hablar del odio.

Hay que hablar de la importancia de romper entre nosotras, de pelearnos entre nosotros, sin caer en el castigo y la culpa y la persecución. Pero yo sí, creo que la ruptura o la negatividad en general ese el libro no lo logra del todo.

Habría que ir a otros lados y pienso que de un año para acá, desde que se recrudeció el genocida ahora, pues justo toca repensar el antiimperialismo, toca repensar cosas que no pueden ser tan flexibles, no? O sea, pues están matando, están cayendo bombas y no se trata de vamos a ver si nos cae el 20 o no, o cuando nos cae el 20.

Pues hay un imperio gestionando un genocidio que se recrudeció muy fuerte el último año. Y eso implica, se endurece, se endurece. O sea, ha cambiado el panorama político. Y hay [00:06:00] procesos donde podemos ser muy flexibles y pacientes, pero hay procesos donde no, donde hay que responder porque la bomba te ca en la cabeza, o sea, y ya está.

Entonces me recuerdo un poco como en los del paso de los 60s a los 70s, o el paso hacia los 20, no? O sea, históricamente esto ha pasado. Se acaba el hipismo y y llega la guerrilla. Se acaba el anarquismo y empieza el partido comunista. O sea, hay momentos donde la historia te come y se vuelve un poquito más pues no te voy a decir duro, pero pero sí, incluso en el norte, los anarquistas que venían de escribir ese libro como muy ticunistas se están volviendo más de izquierda, más revolucionario, más leninistas mucho. Y yo creo que eso tiene que ver, bueno, una especie el leninismo, pues moderno o buena onda.

El tipo zapatismo en versión anglo, pero yo creo que eso tiene que ver con las condiciones actuales. Yo creo que antes de la pandemia, después de la pandemia, son dos planetas, tanto por el reconocimiento de genocidia, como porque lo que se [00:07:00] hizo toda la década que para mí acaba en pandemia. Pues tenía un lado muy chido, pero también a un lado muy de todo es válido.

La insurrección ya está aquí. Y pues ahora decimos no, pues no está aquí. No estamos parando a Estados Unidos este el imperio, no lo estamos parando. En otros momentos de la historia, si se la podido o poner ciertos límites al imperialismo." No del todo, pero se han ganado algunas luchas.

Entonces, bueno, ese libro creo que fue de su época. O sea, 2016 y ese anarquismo de la amistad y de hay que conectar y fluir y todo ese lado que para un poco hippie. Creo que es muy de su momento, de la década pasada, pero yo creo que esa época, ya no es la nuestra, por las por las condiciones. O sea, porque estamos reaccionando y respondiendo y organizándonos frente a otros problemas.

Chris: Claro, claro. Y si podrias actualizarlo en tus propios palabras, cuáles serían los temas más importantes [00:08:00] para cambiar o reemplazar?

Alf: O sea, mira te voy a contar de otro libro, pero también es del norte.

Entonces, pues no me encanta darle tanto entre ellos, pero un libro que, por ejemplo, le respondería fuerte de ese libro, sería este que me regalaban los de Traficantes, ahora que trabaje con ellos en en Madrid, que se llama Hacia Una Nueva Guerra Civil Mundial, de Lazzarato, no?

Entonces digo, lo que pasa es que él es un leninista, no? Entonces, le pega duro, le pega duro. O sea, pero esto ha pasado siempre, pero hay varias banda que está respondiendo, no? O sea, por ejemplo, en el caso de este libro que te a acaba de mencionar Lazzarato.

Pues él dice que los últimos 50 años, incluido militancia, que estaría al final de 50 años, lo político como tal no se habló? Entonces, si le aplicas Lazzarato a Militancia Alegre, efectivamente, nunca se habla de que a ver, o sea, el gobierno estadounidense control el mundo y va ganando. O sea, y hubieron luchas en los 60s, 70s, que lograron más o menos parar [00:09:00] ese imperialismo, los liberaciones nacionales, por ejemplo.

Las luchas de empezamos por Vietnam, Malher y Cuba y acabando con otras. Si más o menos se le pudo parar a ese imperialismo de ese momento? Pero por ejemplo, Militancia en ni un solo momento habla de política en un sentido duro, no? O sea anti-Trump, por ejemplo, anti-global como global north o norte y global. O sea, en el sentido que gobiernan en el mundo, no?

Y eso no se habla no? O sea, en ningún momento se dice bueno, nosotras, como norte, tenemos una deuda con el sur, no solo económica, sino política, no? O sea, en cuanto a no permitir la autonomía de los sur. Y palestina y Líbano es el, pues es el caso más extremo, no? Aunque aquí es lo mismo, no? O sea, la lucha la guerra contra los zapatistas es el mismo genocidio, con la misma bala.

O sea el mismo inversionista, las mismas ganancias. Es el mismo genocidio. Entonces, pero no hablar de eso, no hablar de lo meramente político, [00:10:00] no? O sea de como Morena trabaja para el gobierno gringo y mata a los zapatistas y los centroamericanos. Al no hablar de este tipo de cosas como duramente políticas.

O sea, como Trump controla a la milicia mexicana, la la la. Pues sí que es un libro hippie, no? O sea, en el sentido de que, ahí los leninistas tienen un punto. En este caso, Lazzarato pero mucha otra banda, al contestarle a la banda anárquica. Si muy chida la amistad y muy chida la... Lets tune in.

O sea, está bien, pero tú estás parada en un mundo que de beneficia de destruir este mundo donde tú y yo estamos parada, no? Entonces, de muchas maneras: lo real, lo simbólico en lo económico. El turismo, para mí solo es un capítulo de esa serie de industrias de muerte. Entonces no, al no hablarlo.

Yo pienso que es un libro que omite el lugar de enunciación principal, que es el imperio si habla del imperio, pero yo siento que si le faltó lo político político. Osea, como el norte domina y controla [00:11:00] al sur, el gobierno del norte en concreto.

Al no hablar eso pues si hizo darle un libro que pues no sé cómo va a envejecer. O sea, digo, bueno, a ver cómo le va, porque porque sí que sirve para lo que sirvió Tiqqun y esas cosas en su momento que era contestarle a la izquierda vertical, por decir así. Pero ese momento, por lo menos en el norte, ya pasó, no? Y ellos esos mismos ya regresaron a la verticalidad.

O sea, los que atacaron al leninismo, estamos en esta otra. Entonces chistosasto porque ellos tienen sus propios ciclos y nosotras tenemos otros ciclos de lucha, no? Y otras genealogías y otras retóricas. O sea, es muy diferente. Ahí la traducción. Por eso milita tanto ese libro porque, había que defender nuestro propio contexto, no?

Y decir bueno, es la genealogia de ellos, la nuestra tiene otras conceptos. O sea, ha ganado guerras y revoluciones. Hay muchos triunfos en nuestra historia del sur. De hecho, en la del norte hay más derrotas y en cambio, [00:12:00] las liberaciones nacionales, pues prácticamente todas triunfaron, si las piensas, contra el imperialismo.

Claro que ya no está de moda hablar de eso porque de colonial ya está en otra... ya se fue a otro lado. No? La mayoría de de anticolonial ya no está viniendo su genealogía en las luchas de liberación nacional y o la violencia?

Ya la violencia pasó de moda y justo este libro tiene algo de eso? Como de no hay que hablar de cómo en México tuvimos que tirar balazos para recuperarlo un poco que tenemos. No! Hay que hablar de la amistad del amor, la ternura. Esa parte es la que yo pienso que ya no le habla mucho a nuestro tiempo y a ver qué va a pasar después, a ver qué va a pasar después.

No, aunque tienes utilidad, no? O sea, mucha gente que está en el activismo vive con mucho, cariño de ese libro y está bien. O sea, Creo que está bien. Yo creo que le falta la parte política y negativa, pero bueno, no lo pudimos pedir todo a un solo libro. No.

Eso es lo que hicieron los europeos con nosotros, traer la biblia y [00:13:00] matarnos pretexto de un solo libro. Entonces yo creo que no hay que caer. Eso es, es colonial quererle pedir todo a un solo libro. Si ese libro dio lo que tuvo que dar en su contexto y ese contexto para mí pasó este listo. O sea, fue una herramienta útil que respondió y ya este lo que sigue.

Chris: Pues sí, este recuerdo que hubo una, una nota de pie en en el libro, de Silvia Federici y la tengo.

La cita aquí decía que

"lo que más importa es descubrir y recreer la memoria colectiva de las luchas pasadas. En los Estados Unidos, hay un intento sistemático de destruir esta memoria. Y ahora esto se está extendiendo por todo el mundo. Revivir la memoria de las luchas del pasado nos hace sentir ser parte de algo más grande que nuestras vidas individuales y de esta manera de un nuevo sentido a lo que estamos haciendo y nos da coraje, porque nos hace tener menos miedo en lo que [00:14:00] nos puede pasar individualmente."

Y siento que hay algo allá como también la, no sé si está impulsado desde arriba o si es solo una falta de memoria, pero sí, siento que es, es muy fuerte que hay una falta de linaje, en la política en el día de hoy, en los momentos sociales contemporáneos. Pero pues, quería preguntarte un poco de tus experiencias también con el turismo. Me gustaría preguntarle de qué tipo de reacciones recibiste, recibieron cómo resultado del podcast y si esas conversaciones cambiaron sus ideas sobre los temas tratados.

Alf: Este una parte había que preguntárselo directo a Pame porque yo creo que ella lo vivió a su forma también. Pero bueno, pues fue muy chido. Primero que nada, lo lo bonito. Ese programa varias cosas. Primero, ese programa fue apoyado por el instituto de estudios anarquistas americano, y eso [00:15:00] fue lindo, tener el apoyo. O sea, no precarizarnos tanto. Y tampoco tener que pedirle dinero a gente de mierda para hacer co chidas no, eso siempre se siente bien. Como no traicionar el contenido, o sea que vaya mucho la forma con el fondo, no. Entonces, de entrada, eso fue muy alegre. De segunda gran alegría, yo siempre trabajo a puerta cerrada.

Yo soy un poco celosa de mi trabajo. Entonces, pues a abrir la puerta y trabajar con no solo dos, vieron un podcast que éramos cuatro, cinco. Eso es rarísimo. Yo nunca había hecho eso. Yo no suelo hacer eso. Si, trabajo con gente, pero no con el micrófono, normalmente no, eh?

Siempre trabaj o con grupos y movimientos y cosas, pero digamos que a puerta cerrada por decir así o o coyunturas específicas. Entonces, primero la congruencia que yo siento que tuvo ese programa, como alinearnos en un anarquismo internacionalista, que yo creo que hay que recuperar.

El internacionalismo en general, eh? Y creo que a [00:16:00] veces la lucha contra el turismo sin querer se vuelve muy nacionalista y no distingue entre migrante y turista esas cosas, como en un México, es mejor que todo lo demás. Un poco raro, pero bueno, antes de perderme, yo creo que ahí hubo un gesto internacionalista lindo.

O sea, entre anarquistas del norte con los del sur primero y segundo, pues, abrir el micro porque que yo no es algo que suelo o solía hacer hasta hace hasta este año, por decir, o sea, yo llevo en un monólogo de locutora varios años porque mi parte social la hago cuerpo a cuerpo, por decir así. Y ya te podría platicar muchas cosas.

Pero a mí me emociono muchísimo el programa con Tejiendo a la Organización Revolucionaria, eh? La verdad me encantó. O sea, a mí ellos me parece que hacen un trabajo importante. Y me parece que nuestro tiempo se está pensando desde los revolucionarios también. No necesariamente como la decada pasada la insurreccional y el todo se vale.

Este, yo creo que está [00:17:00] cambiando un poco esos enfoques y justo ellos que llevan más de 20 años y son como 50 personas organizadas desde abajo con mucha claridad y mucha fuerza. Pues hicimos un puente muy chido, no entre en anarquismo y otras partes de la izquierda radical, que normalmente no nos damos la mano y no platica.

O sea, no es común ni es fácil. Y cuando se da, suele ser tenso. Y no hubo para mí nada de tensión, al revés. Hubo una complementación muy chida contorno. Es el último capítulo de Emergente. Bueno, o sea, y siento que conecta con Militancia Alegre. O sea, llamarla en militancia y no "activismo alegre" era una provocación de los autores.

Y yo creo que movimiento es como ?, entre muchos otros que se mencionan justos son militantes, no activistas, no? O sea que el activista tiene genealogía muy del norte y muy de los noventas para acá. Y yo creo que ellos como que leídos por "los cool" que Militancia Alegre sigue siendo el libro más cool, como que no suelen voltear, la gente cool, no suele voltear a ver a ese tipo de militancias como Thor. [00:18:00] Todos estuvieron muy chidos, pero yo le tengo especial cariño, a ese último, porque sí, pienso que hay que pensar alianzas insólitas, como todas las izquierdas radicales, tratar de articular.

Y para mí, eso lo más cercano fue contorno. Y yo lo sigo reescuchando. Y hay cosas que me dejar pensando, por ejemplo, lo que dicen de los sectores de la clase trabajadora, que hay un sector indígena, entonces se pelean entre ellos y como son sectorizados, en fin a mí, hay varias cosas que ellos me hacen pensar. Me hacen pensar mucho. Y su chamba es muy chida. Solo que, como no es la más cool y como nice. No tiene este super diseño ni nada. Pues mucha gente no les presta atención. Entonces yo, para mí, fue importante darles el micro a ellos y más bien me faltaron programas con ellos, la verdad.

Entonces, para mí, eso fue muy lindo, con el pretexto del libro, porque la verdad, casi ni hablamos o muy poquito. Ya haber podido entrevistar, por ejemplo, a Raquel Gutiérrez. De poder pues yo hubiera [00:19:00] entrevistado a John Holloway. O sea, yo me hubiera seguido. Lo que pasa es que la chamba entrevistadora es muy distinta a la que yo hago como locutora, o sea, es otro camino. Y pues, el recurso. Pues no lo hay. Claro. Claro. Porque esa lo pudimos hasta pagar un poquitito de dinero a la gente que entrevistamos. Pudimos autocobrar un poquitito. Pagarle a la diseñadora. Fue muy distinto a todo lo que yo hago. No este ese ese programa.

Insisto por el apoyo internacionalista que poco o mucho, pues fue muy lindo tener, porque normalmente no se puede pagar entrevistas y cosas, que es chistoso tanto tanto de lucha de clases, con compas que pu pues obviamente les cuesta venir para acá.

Chris: Ya no, pues es muy difícil, pero sí, fue un episodio muy bonito. Y lo voy a poner en el sitio web d El Fin de Turismo cuando lanzamos este podcast y también por los que quieren saber, es el último episodio de Alegría Emergente. Pues, hablando de tus obras Alf [00:20:00] en Pepitas de Calabaza, exploras algunos temas periférico de turismo, desde la Merida en la que creciste, los chiqui loteros o aquellos que dividen grandes lotes en lotes pequeños para venderlos a un precio normalmente superior, a veces a extranjeros. Es uno de esos temas.

Cómo influyó tu tiempo en Merida en tu comprensión del turismo?

Alf: Primero, extender un poco la la invitación a la lectura de mi trabajo. Este el tema de la propiedad y del turismo y del colonialismo, básicamente atraviesa toda toda mi obra, pero medida en concreto que que te interesa con Pepitas también es algo que menciono en el libro nuevo.

Él No Existe Dique Capaz de Contar y hablo específicamente de cómo el turismo, la industria del turismo ha ido como arrebatándonos a quienes venimos de las clases populares. Crecimos abajo y demás, sobre todo el placer, el ocio. Olvídate de la [00:21:00] tierra. Si el acceso al agua, una serie de cosas, no.

Entonces ahí se trabaja un poco más elabor adamente pero efectivamente desde Pepitas. Pues a mí, es un tema que me, central en mi trabajo. El tema del colonialismo, porque para mí, hablar de turismo se hablar de colonialismo actual, colonialismo interno externo, pero es el colorismo vigente. O sea, es un desplazamiento, parte de un proceso de desplazamiento em.

Entonces, en Pepitas, pues efectivamente eso es un protagonista, que digamos es el burgués nacional, por decirlo como muy teóricamente el chiquilotero, le decimos regionalmente, que es el es el terrateniente. No es Carlos Slim. O sea, no es el más rico, el lo rico, pero es, digamos, el terrateniente de mediano alcance que puede comprar tierra y fragmentarla y venderla, especular con la tierra, al final. Pero en el sur resiste, el año pasado, para para subir el tono a lo político otra vez... El el año pasado en el sur [00:22:00] resiste, nos decía el Congreso Nacional Indígena, que la mitad de la tierra en México es propiedad social, no? Y esto lo platicaba presentando no Existe Dique con Yasnaya Aguilar porque Oaxaca es un caso distinto y da mucha envidia.

Tiene una tercera forma de tierra que en la tierra comunal, pero no vamos entrar a las legalidades. El sureste de México, como representa a Paco y hablo en mi segundo libro también este de ah, el turismo ha entrado porque legalmente, desde el 92 se cambió la constitución y se ha roto la propiedad ejidal y ha entrado la propiedad privada, no?

Entonces, para llevarlo lo meramente político, luchar en contra del turismo hoy en México sería exigir que no se pueda vender, como en Oaxaca existe la propiedad comunal, no en ninguna otra parte del país hasta donde yo sé, que no se pueda legalmente vender esa tierra. Entonces, para no abstraer, o sea para ir a concreto, el turismo avanza, por el primermundista, coludido con [00:23:00] con con el tercermundista de la clase alta, en este caso, Paco, para romper la la propiedad social y meter la propiedad individual o privada, no? Si hubiera un mecanismo que la revolución mexicana nos heredó, ese mecanismo legal no podría existir el turismo en México, por lo menos no legalmente.

Entonces, como desde el 92, se terminó de caer lo que nos quedaba de revolucion mexicana y que se peleó a balazos. Hay que recuperar esa negativa. En el 92 se cambia, es perdemos eso que habíamos ganado la revolución. Y entonces el turismo ya explotan. Y eso es muy notorio para gente que somos del sur.

O sea, si yo te cuento cómo fui a Tulum por primera vez, y cuando volví a Tulum 10 o 20 anos después, o cómo fui a Zipolite por primera vez. Y eso es el resultado. O sea, te puedo escribir 30 libros, pero todo eso es result resultado específicamente una partecita de la constitución que menciona en mi segundo libre, legal, que permitió destruirlo lo que ganamos en la revolución mexicana, [00:24:00] que es la propiedad colectiva, en algunos casos propiedad indígena en otros casos, simplemente propiedad social de las clases populares.

Y esto lo he trado mucha gente y me fui enterando estando con la gente en territorio, por ejemplo, con la asamblea de defensores de territorio Maya Muuch Xiinbal, ellos en la práctica, me enseñaron toda esta serie de mecanismos y defensas caminando con los pueblos, estando ahí. O sea, porque hay que estar ahí a veces para entender la magnitud.

O sea, si tú lo piensas, el los muchos pueblos indígenas y clases populares son dueñas de hectáreas, el 40% del país, está en sus manos a nivel de propiedad legal, pero la propiedad privada va ganando, no, no. Y para mí, el turismo solo es un pedacito de ese proyecto colonizador actual, que va, va quitándonos, lo poquito que ganamos en la revolución mexicana. Bueno, ganamos varias cosas: la educación pública, salud pública, todo eso lo van privatizando. Pero es muy loco tierra y territorio, porque es muy específico. O sea 40 percent versus [00:25:00] 60 percent, un artículo de constitución, no hay que perdernos, osea. Ahí está. Pero mira el ombligo del pedo. Ajá.

Chris: Mm, gracias. Me gustaría proponer algunos algunas preguntas, algunas provocaciones. Quizás respeto de cómo el turismo y más bien, más recientemente, las entrecomillas invasiones de turistas, nómadas digitales a México desde la pandemia y otras partes también. O sea, no es solo México, pero obviamente hay otros lugares.

Y pues, hay ciertas cosas que ha surgido en otros episodios de podcast, respeto de el radicalismo rígido, y como lo veo a veces culturas de descartabilidad, que siento que es algo fundamental y también como desconocido en cómo funciona, pues la modernidad, la colonia, toda ese trayectoria [00:26:00] de mierda.

Pero lo vemos mucho. Siento, siento yo en los redes sociales. Entonces, me gustaría preguntarte, qué piensas sobre los efectos de las redes sociales en los contextos de las luchas contemporáneas, pero también bajo de este contexto de turismo, de las invasiones en México. Entonces mi pregunta es, cómo crees que las redes sociales contribuyen al radicalismo rígido?

Alf: Eh? Pues mira, yo creo que no solo contribuyen radicalismo rígido, o sea, respondiendo muy rápidamente. Yo creo que el algoritmo está diseñado y eso lo sabe la mayoría, espero, supongo este para generar estos echo-chambers que le llaman. Entonces, yo creo que lo mínimo, o sea, lo más x es que genere radicalismo rígido yo creo que en realidad la [00:27:00] ultraderecha está ganando en el mundo por las redes sociales. Y esto no lo digo yo. Esto está demostradisimo. O sea, Milei, Trump y todo el fascismo en el poder que desgraciadamente es, yo calculo la mitad del planeta, Bukele, etcétera, Bolsonaro, tienen mucho que ver con lo que aquí sería Chumel Torres, con lo que aquí sería Eduardo Verastegui. Tiene todo que ver, no?

Y yo creo que eso, el pensamiento crítico, como le nos queremos llamar a este el otro lado antifascista sea, no hemos tomado suficientemente en serio eso como un enemigo, no? Porque volviendo la negatividad, el resentimiento, pues hay ese es un nuevo enemigo. Para mí, hay que destruirlo este.

Acomodé lugar, o sea, como tenga que hacer. Entonces, esto lo hablaba también con Benja, la pareja de Yasnaya, el día de mi presentación en Volcana. O sea, qué pasa que mucha izquierda, mucho pensamiento crítico y todo, no quiere hacer pop. Entonces la derecha sí que está haciendo [00:28:00] pop y por eso ganó Trump, y por eso está Milei en el poder, porque hacen un un tipo de redes sociales poperas.

No tienen miedo a reducir el pensamiento, a provocar. No tienen miedo porque tienen el poder, obviamente, controlan el mundo. En concreto, Trump, no? Entonces, nosotras desde el miedo y desde un un clasicismo extraño, un machismo raro, como que decimos el "pop" está mal porque reduce.

Ser influencer está mal porque hace de lo abstracto. Lo reduce. Lo simplifica. Y ese es un problema. Es un problema grande que tiene que para mí tiene que ver con el problema de la es escolarización. Pero para contestarte, y yo creo que las redes sociales sostienen al fascismo actual, más que cualquier otra cosa, yo creo que más que ninguna otra cosa. Y por eso nos gobiernan celebridades y estamos en una fase nueva de la política como espectáculo. Y no estábamos ahí, volvemos a militancia como un libro que ya no responde a esta época, yo no siento que Obama era eso.

Yo no [00:29:00] siento que el PRIismo y el PANismo era eso. Estamos en otro momento, entonces, como siempre la izquierda o como lo quieras llamar, el pensamiento, el antifascismo general, que a mi me da igual los conceptos, como siempre estamos lentas, lentas en reaccionar. Porque? Pues porque nos asusta.

Las redes sociales, yo pienso que nos están bombardeando, emocionalmente con el genocidio. Yo creo que la manera en que están manejando la imagen del genocidio está tronando la salud mental, terminando de tronar, si no, es que ya la había tronado de buena parte de de de quienes estamos contra de Trump y Milei, por decir el amor que yo espero que seamos más o de la mitad de la tierra otra vez, este me gusta creer.

Entonces eso, yo creo que estamos lentas porque quieren ellos porque nos han tronado la la salud mental. Y eso hace que nos aletargamos en responder con la fuerza con la que ellos, o sea nos faltan influencers un poco más rudos, para decirlo como es, o sea un poco más tan fuertes y provocadores como ellos.

Yo [00:30:00] siento que los influencers de este lado hacen un trabajo importante, pero muy suave. O sea, está muy abajito. Muy bien portado. Cuando tú escuchas a Bukele, tú escuchas hablar a Milei o Trump y son los provocadores, realmente. Este, no le tienen miedo a decir pendejadas. Y la izquierda, sí. Sí, le tienen miedo a cagarla.

Cuando no se dan cuenta que lo que están haciendo ellos es provocar para mover, no? O sea, la gente sabe que es una exageración. Los votantes de Milei de Bukele y de Trump saben que dicen mucha, es un borracho, que está diciendo pendejadas, pero van y votan.

Chris: Claro.

Alf: La izquierda no está logrando subir el tono.

Al revés. O sea, entre más, baja en el fondo y más banderitas de palestina, como que más bien portadas, somos. Y entonces, ah, "pues vamos a hablar de la cultura de palestina, que es muy importante. Es muy bonita. Pero yo te apuesto que se hubieran influencers diciendo vamos a tirarles bombas y vamos a matar sería más fuerte, no? O sea, le daría [00:31:00] miedo a ellos como ha pasar, si ha pasado la historia en los 70. Esto sí que pasó. Si le dábamos miedo a ellos. Ya no le damos miedo. Y yo creo que eso tiene todo que ver con como el imperialismo hoy, es un algoritmo. Antes era otra cosa, y es un imperialismo de la mente y de las emociones.

Y es meramente como manejan la imagen. Osea, da igual lo que nos muestren, sino la manera en que se utiliza el discurso de Trump y la manera en que se utiliza la imagen del genocidio, no el genocidio. Eso a ellos no les importa, sino el uso, nos truenan, nos truenan todo el tiempo.

Entonces no logramos articular. No logramos reconocernos. Empezamos a competir, nos peleamos y es porque ellos van ganando. Han habido otros momentos de la historia donde este lado de veras le daba miedo sin idealizarlo porque también puede ser muy machista. Este le daba miedo a Trump y a los Trumps. O sea, se [00:32:00] cagaban de me decían no, no.

Entonces, bueno, van a matar, no? Y entonces, había algo positivo ahí. Había algo positivo ahí y eso se perdió, nuestra propia capacidad de dar miedo y defendernos. Se ha ido perdiendo. O sea, y es muy material, porque matan defensores del territorio cada semana, así como palestinos y libaneses con la misma pistola, la misma arma. Cada semana los matan.

Entonces, pues, claro que da miedo de subir el tono. No porque siento que te van a matar. Hay un fantasma. Entonces, yo creo que las redes sociales se tienen toda la culpa y que están gestionadas maravillosas, perfectas, las redes sociales y y el internet porque permitió que el imperialismo, se vuelva.

O sea que lo cargues a todos lados, que desees el fascismo. Y eso está en las pantallitas y en el celular. Lo manejaron muy bien. El que lo explica más bastante bien es, Adam Curtis, en Can't Get You Outta My Head. Y creo que eso hay que tomarlo [00:33:00] todavía más enserio, porque la gente nada más dice "ah, pinche Chumel Torres". No, wey. O sea, es el cáncer de esta sociedad. O sea, no se explicar. Es un verdadero enemigo y "ah x solo es un panista ahí raro." Lo que quiero decir es que no le damos la seriedad, como que no estamos leyendo el imperio en su nueva fase y cómo se maneja.

Chris: Pero entonces, tú crees que las maneras que podemos socovar el algoritmo es de, quitarnos de la pantalla? O sea, pero cómo está también el algoritmo no solo internalizándose según yo en los movimientos, pero en las mentalidades de la gente y dentro de los movimientos?

Alf: Claro que yo no tengo una respuesta, pero a mí se me ocurre que esto ya se intentado muchas veces como crear nuestros propios tecnologías. Lo que pasa es que nunca van a ser igual de atractivas y poderosas, como clase de quienes controlan la tierra, porque pues por algo [00:34:00] las controlan y van ganando no? Porque tienen todos los recursos y toda la inteligencia puesta ahí

Entonces, si los movimientos ya les pueden tener redes sociales, pero pero sus posts no tienen ningún alcance y eso está gestionado desde arriba. Entonces este es un problema más profundo que tiene que ver con el problema de la imagen y su gestión. O sea, al controlar el algoritmo, el imperio, lo que está controlando son las imágenes y las narrativas. Las gestionan, a eso me refiero con imperialismo. O sea, vemos lo que el imperio quiere que veamos y se acabó. O sea, es una nueva fase porque no necesariamente tienes al gringo gobernando a tu país como lo fue antes de la revoluciones nacionales, por ejemplo, pero tienes el celular que sólo te va a mostrar lo que le conviene al gobierno gringo o mayoritariamente.

Entonces quebrar el algoritmo es quebrar el imperio, o sea la verdad, o sea, no es otra cosa que eso . Y eso hace que lo [00:35:00] cool sea cool y lo no cool que suele ser más importante, no se vea y no tenga acceso recursos y no generar imágenes chidas. Y si logras de una imagen, no tiene ningún alcance. O sea, es muy notorio para mi trabajo.

O sea, si yo subo mi gatito 500 views, si yo subo el tipo de cosas que estamos platicando 5. Sí, claro. Es super evidente, no el manejo de la imagen y la gestión. Entonces, pues hay que volver. Hay que volver a la auto publicación. Hay que volver a los medios libres como se estuvieron haciendo hasta si varias decadas. O sea, y rehacerlo recuperarlos, repensarlos.

La gente que se está yendo a Mastodon en redes sociales. La gente que se está saliendo de los algoritmos, los más feos. Digo, no sé qué tanto lo vamos a lograr. O sea, por eso yo, mi parte política, la vivo más en presencial. O sea, yo voy. Trato de ir ahora que se cumplen 50 años de Lucio cada año, hacer pueblo, estar con el pueblo, ser pueblo. O sea, porque [00:36:00] claro que si yo no voy, nunca me voy a enterar.

Y si no camino con, como te conté, la asamblea maya, aunque sea cinco minutos, yo no me entero de que el pedo principal de todo esto es simplemente un artículo de la constitución, no? Entonces, o sea, pon tú que ellos postan en internet. Quién lo escucha? Nadie muy poca gente, pero eso es por quien controla.

Que la info no llegue no. Entonces, claro. Entonces a eso voy, o sea, hay un problema con la imagen. O sea, hay un gran problema con la imagen porque también lo que la ultra derecho y el fascismo ha logrado perfectamente bien en nuestra época. Es que la gente prefiere el reconocimiento y el like, el premio no que la reparación real.

Y entonces las redes sociales están basadas en un nuevo modelo de contra insurgencia y de pacificación y neutralización política, que es, yo voy, te doy un premio, yo voy y te muestro, yo te doy un like, pero para que ya te calles, no. Y para que no digas las cosas, [00:37:00] estamos decían, es un solo artículo.

Si echamos para atrás de artículo, pues vamos a parar buena parte de los capitales colonialistas y turísticos hoy, etc. O sea a lo que voy es que van y te premian, van y te likean para que te vayas pacificando. Y ahí hubo un cambio estrategia que también estamos muy lentas en sí, porque los setentas te mataban, a las clases medias organizadas políticamente. Hoy no. Hoy no es así.

Hoy matan a la gente de abajo, a los defensores que viven y habitan las clases populares, el territo y a la clase media la premia pa que te calles. Entonces, cómo te premian haciendo que el algoritmo te vea mucho y hables mucho y produzcas mucho contenido, pero es un contenido. Te repito muy bien portado.

Es un contenido suave, que omite las partes políticas que omite temas de imperialismo contra insurgencia, bla, bla, osea. Habla de todo lo demás, formas de vida, ternura radical, [00:38:00] consumo alternativo, sororidad solidaria, todo lo que tú quieras, excepto si no le cortamos la cabeza a Trump, esa condición no para. O sea, no sé si me explico.

Menos lo más importante, digo, lo estoy caricaturizando. Cortando la cabeza de Trump no vamos a parar el periodismo, pero me estás entendiendo. Están manejando la censura y estamos ya hablan de tecno tecnofeudalismo. Estamos regalándole un contenido que soporta el imperialismo y no nos damos... estamos tan enajenadas en este momento con el algoritmo que trabajamos para el gratis.

No? Y me incluye, o sea mis PDFs, son gratis. Mi radio es gratis. Yo soy una esclava del internet y se acabó, no? Y entonces, en la medida en que no lo sepamos, sentir la negatividad de ese despojo y de cómo todas trabajamos para el imperio. Nos gusta no poco mucho, este pues más nos enajenamos no? O sea, porque yo no cobro por mis ramas de radio.

Yo no cobro por el PDF [00:39:00] literal. Me despoja y me precariza en un sentido duro, directo. El pedo es que decirlo es fuerte porque la gente, pues como escucha en tu programa o el mío, y nos va MXN $5. Bien, pues la gente se compra la amiga y dice que padre, el internet me ven. Cuando solo te está viendo la gente que piensa como tú.

Y ya nadie más. O sea, ni un solo seguidor más. Gente que ya pensaba como tú, antes de llegar a tu contenido. Entonces, en realidad no estamos logrando hacer propaganda, no? Y yo creo que es super importante, porque porque en la medida siempre trabajamos con los que piensan como nosotras, no estamos empujando el ese 50 percent fascista, al reves, lo respetamos y decimos, bueno, yo trabajo con el 50%. Me quedo en el 40% de la propiedad social y nunca empujo la propiedad privada o el 50% fascista.

Y ya ahí te quedas que es muy cómodo también hablar entre nosotras. Pues que nadie te también te madres que nadie te mande [00:40:00] bots. Porque a mí lo que hacen es que me atacan en internet, no? Entonces, cada vez que digo lo que hay que decir, pues me mandan bots y me asustan me, como mucha gente, no, te amenazan.

Y todos eso esta perfectamente gestionado, en México desde Peña Nieto, del Peña bots. Se siente muy claramente esas tecnologías. Muchas veces israeles. Se siente muy clarito, no? Y funcionan perfectamente bien, porque pacifican y neutralizan maravillosamente. Ya la gente deja de lo que hay que decir porque tú sientes que... o sea, porque tú sientes lo general, el efecto contrario, las censuras se siente como premiO

Chris: total. Muchas gracias. Alf. me gustaría provocar un poco ese idea que la algoritmo sólo nos este en suavece. En suaveza, dijiste? En suavece. Ajá. Ajá, porque pues, [00:41:00] también a mí parece que algoritmo está pidiendo, metiendo, reforzando la rabia.

Y hace hace poco descubrí, descubrí un libro llamado Discard Studies en inglés, Estudios de Descarte, que intenta formular hipótesis no solo en torno a las historias sociales de la basura y contaminación, pero sino también del exilio y desplazamiento. Y la idea en los estudios del descarte es que todas estas cosas están muy relacionadas entre sí.

Las redes sociales creen una plataforma para los también expulsiones sociales en forma de cancelaciones o escrachees, por ejemplo.

Alf: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Entonces, también que si el el algo ritmo está imponiendo, invitándonos a ser más pacíficos, siento que hay una manera que está imponiendo, impulsando, invitándonos a descartar, tirar, la [00:42:00] gente entre los movimientos sociales, o sea, entre movimientos sociales, también en la manera interpersonal.

Y quería preguntarte sobre eso y las consecuencias a las luchas de largo plazo.

Alf: Mm-hmm. Mira, yo siento que si se habló particularmente en el segundo capítulo de Alegria Emergente con un invitado que se llama Tomás Calles. Con él, se habló eso. Mira, yo siento que que es bien complicado este tema, porque para mí, el escrache pues que últimamente más sé hoy es el escrache que llegar con el género, con abuso sexual. Y a la vez, yo creo que hay que hacerle su genealogía completa el escrache porque el escrache cada vez... o sea, si lo sacamos de género y lo metemos a la política, clase, a raza, y a todo lo demás, este de si tú te das cuenta, todo el tiempo, volviendo al 50 facho y al no facho, el 50% facho ha estrechado al 50% no facho.

Todo este es el tema del control de las narrativas y las imagenes. O sea, [00:43:00] si tú ves la imagen, por ejemplo y para mí, es una forma de escracheeo pre nuestra época. Si tú ves como Estados Unidos, creo la imagen de Cuba, es una forma de escrache, no? O sea, como, voy a hablar super mal de esos wey. Voy a decir. Voy a publicar todos los libros y todos los contenidos que hablen mal de Cuba, no?

Y para mí, hay un escracheeo ahí, un pre escracheeo, por decir así. Entonces, en términos políticos, que te vuelvo a decir que siento que son los cabezas, nos faltan en toda esta discusión. Siempre ha existido y va a existir formas de manipular y de destruir cuando la gente está haciendo cosas más o menos chidas, pues te van a buscar dónde y ahí te van a chingar, no?

Y el gobierno también participa eso con sus bots, no? Y su manejo de la información, de la distribución de la información en concreto. Entonces, yo siento que el escrache hay que verlo como también como parte de la contra insurgencia, no todos los escrachees, porque hay escrachees que, por ejemplo, no se vuelven públicos y se vuelven en procesos, por ejemplo, [00:44:00] de... o sea, no es la denuncia pública el punitivismo como ejercicio de castigo ejemplar público, hay escrachees o denuncias en concreto, que más bien se vuelven en ejercicios de justicia reparativa, puertas cerrada, que han sido efectivos.

Y yo me he enterado de varios y me han invitado a varios procesos. Este y con varios movimientos. Yo me he dado cuenta de la justicia ejercía por nosotras mismas. Sí, llevada a cabo reparar cosas concretas con soluciones concretas sin hacer una imagen, sin darle al algoritmo lo que nos quita todo el tiempo - tiempo, energía, sin darle la fotita donde dice "para hacer tu eescrache chido habla..."

o sea, simplemente resolver, es lo que muchas cosas en internet no hacen. Hablan pero no acciones, y tú puedes hablar lo que quieres siempre y cuando no actúes. Ese es el gran truco de la red social. No hablemos todo, mientras no cambiemos nada.

Este entonces nada. Yo siento que el escrache pues hay que verlo así como, tiene una parte [00:45:00] chida para mí, sobre todo a puerta cerrada, como de procesos que yo llamaría, justicia reparativa, restaurativa, osea que no tienden a la imagen, puede crear una imagen, pero no es su fin su objetivo final, sino reparar daños específicos con soluciones específicas, no caso por caso, sin abstraer a ese, este versus un tipo de escrache liberal, blanqueado, espectacular, chafa, que lo único que ha hecho es contra insurgencia. Cada vez que hay liderazgos. "Ah, es un macho," no? Cada vez que hay movimiento sociales, "ah, trabajan para los rusos, trabajan para los chinos, este, reciben dinero, reciben dinero de tal, este." Ose y el escrache, si es una de las mejores herramientas, porque genera volvemos en el tema de narrativas y imágenes, no que contraponen lo que ha ganado.

Osea, yo te voy a dar un fondo a ti como activista para que hables del turismo, todo lo que tú quieras, siempre y cuando no hables de esto y de esto, okey, [00:46:00] entonces tu envía a cobrar y te va a super bien. Y te voy el súper famoso y que chido.

Pues esa es la lucha que nos vaya bien materialmente a todas. Pero a ti te censuraron. Te dijeron sólo hablas de, entonces, fíjate, volvimos al tema del escrache. O sea mucha de esa gente eescracheada. Voy a poner uno. Miguel Peralta. El caso de Miguel Peralta, para mí sería un caso de escrache, no este Miguel Peralta hoy está perseguido por el estado mexicano y mucha gente te va a decir que es un machista. Te va a decir muchas cosas, pero no te va a decir la otra parte, no? La parte política de su lucha, contra un gobierno que el gobierna, por no decir Samir Flores como un escrache, por no decir Hortensia Telesforo con un tipo de escrache.

O sea, si me estás cachando? O sea, y entonces que pasa que que desde arriba, como controla la narrativa y controlan la imagen y la distribución de la información. Te dicen a ver, yo te voy a pagar por una cosa, pero cállate la otra.

Entonces pon la banderita de colores. Y ya CDMX es gay y es trans, [00:47:00] pero nunca vuelves a hablar de clase social.

Por favor que el pobre siga siendo pobre. Ella solo habla Alf de trans, no? Si te das cuenta, es como el escrache. O sea, el escrache dice vamos a destruir el liderazgo político de Miguel Peralta poniendo ultra énfasis en su lado machista, que que yo no dudo que haya tenido como muchos líderes y como mucha gente, o sea, yo no estoy diciendo que no, solo estoy diciendo la manera en que se utiliza ese tipo de denuncias es para destruir el lado político. Muchas veces no todas. Mm, pero para poner un solo caso, y hoy, por hoy te estoy hablando de un caso de criminalizacion actual, como podríamos hablar de Samir Flores o Hortensia Telesforo y toda la contrainsurgencia. La contrainsurgencia es un tipo de escrache. Es que eso ya cambió.

También te repito, la gente más visible van y le dan premios y le dan atención. A la gente menos visible, la matan o la criminalizan como Miguel. Están a punto de meterlo a la cárcel 50 años si no le prestamos atención [00:48:00] a ese caso, no? Que es lo que quieren, que no le prestamos atención. Entonces a eso voy, o sea, casi que ni importa el crimen, casi que no importa la falta del daño, sino el manejo.

Hay como una economía, fíjate, hasta te diría yo, una economía de las quejas y una economía de la imagen que no estamos siendo conscientes. Estamos tan alejanadas, que nos vamos, por lo primero que nos dan "Ah, ese ese wey era un macho." Listo. Todo quedó o ese wey trabajo para china y hasta todo el trabajo que haya hecho, como trabaja para china, o como hablan de, por ejemplo, piensan las narrativas sobre ve Venezuela y Nicaragua y Cuba.

O sea, es impresionante. Es escrache, o sea. Quién te va a hablar bien de ese tipo de países? Está difícilisimo

Chris: o o al menos decir como, "no sé, no sé"...

Alf: o al menos decir, "no sé," pero lo que quiero decir es que el independientemente lo que han hecho Venezuela y los machismos de izquierda, [00:49:00] el manejo de ese error.

O sea, supongo, sí, yo creo que comete errores como toda la gente cometemos. El manejo es la parte más como las redes sociales, la distribución de esa información, es la que a mí me preocupa más. O sea, como, solo vamos a hablar de lo mierda, déjate claro, porque a Estados Unidos le conviene, que Miguel Peralta está en la cárcel, que Venezuela solo se una mierda, que China solo se una... que yo no dudo que tiene un lado de mierda, pero es interesante los límites del discurso.

No puedes hablar de lo hecho. En el momento en el que dice es algo bueno. Cancelada. A la cárcel. Se acabó el pedo. Entonces a mí eso me llama la atención, porque la gente cree que es un momento de libertad discursiva. El fascismo va ganando, no? O sea, y eso es Trump, pero y eso es el genocidio Palestino y Libanes.

Pero pero pero hay un síntoma de eso en que no podemos, no podemos hablar.

Yo siento que el [00:50:00] internet es mucho más facho que lo previo. O sea, yo me siento mucho más censurada que lo que yo veo que ha pasado en el siglo 20. Me explico? La verdad. O sea, yo veo los discursos del Che Guevara y digo no, pues en ese tiempo podías hablar.

Habla así hoy, balazo en la frente. Así es fácil. No amaneciste. Te desapareceria. Entonces digo, ganamos o perdimos en términos discursivos? No, yo pienso que perdimos porque tu ves la tele el siglo 20 y está hablaba sin que le den un balazo. Hoy, ya no hoy. Samir habló, lo mató Morena. Ya. Listo. O sea, hoy hablaban los Palestinos todos muertos.

O sea, entonces yo creo que perdimos con internet. No ganamos, pero yo pienso que el turismo te repito, o sea, y el colonialismo, entonces solo es como una partecita. Sinceramente, yo pienso que es como un pedazo chiquitito, de todo una cosa más grande. Claro que es una industria que ha [00:51:00] ido ganando mucha fuerza, pero para mí se habría un contra turismo y un peregrinaje.

Yo siento que hago peregrinaje. Fíjate, qué es lo que destruyó el o el turismo está reedificando cuando trato de acercarme los movimientos sociales, desde mi clase, o sea, desde mi color piel y todos mis contradicciones. Pues yo sigo a veces caminando, con gente que me ha enseñado cosas que nunca van a salir en el celular.

Adrede no sabemos la verdad. Aunque las posten, no me van a llegar. Y entonces yo creo que si hay un contraturismo y un yo pienso que tendríamos que ir a buscar en el tema del peregrinaje o la hospitalidad radical . Por qué? Porque había un tema sagrado, no? O sea, había algo sagrado en el peregrino. No era turismo nada más de placer, aunque tenía a su lado del compartir y ocioso, pero para mí se recuperáramos la capacidad de defendernos, varias cosas que nos han quitado, la capacidad de hablar que yo creo que nos la quitaran a base de premios y views, no a base de castigos, pues habría un [00:52:00] peregrinaje, por el lado político, no?.

Por ejemplo, me cuentan que el año que viene va haber en Brasil. No, mucha gente va a estar yendo a Brasil de diferentes latitudes. Y ese para mí, eso es contra turismo y peregrinaje político sagrado. No. Entonces la gente va o el Anticop, vas, o sea, el ir es súper importante porque tiras el suelo de la basura y estás cuerpo a cuerpo con una realidad que que el algoritmo imperialista quiere que no nos llegue, tu salir. Claro. El problema es que te insista. Está tan de moda, "muerte al turismo," que no es fácil hablar de que hay contraturismos muy importantes. Siempre lo han habido no? O sea, cuando los zapatistas dicen vengan, pasan cosas que no pasan.

O sea que hay que ir, no. A huevo, hay que ir. Entonces, y eso es un contraturismo. Y el zapatista está super consciente. No viene puro gringo aquí, puros güerito. Cuál es el pedo así se politizan. Sí, yo creo que es más de clase media no tratar de [00:53:00] buscarle la deriva y darle la vuelta a la industria. Mmm. Y simplemente decir merte a todo el turismo. Pues sí, en la teoría suena muy bien, pero en lo práctica va ganando.

Chris: Mmm, claro, y así pues me gustaría preguntarte también de ese hospitalidad radical, pero siento que muchos caen intentar a definir lo que es.

Pero entonces me gustaría nada más de preguntarte igual de peregrinaje, si quieres, de si has en tus viajes o en casa, o sea en tu colonia barrio, encontrado lo que llamarías tu hospitalidad radical, en el camino.

Alf: Mira yo, esto es algo que aprendí. O sea lo que lo que llama hospitalidad radical es algo que yo hice en la práctica toda mi vida y solo después empecé a elaborar. Pues yo me moví toda mi vida y me sigo moviendo principalmente en el underground.

Queda de contracultura. Y pero por ejemplo, yo en el punk, en las [00:54:00] patinetas, como en la izquierda radical en general, con todas sus ramas, toda la vida, he ido y han venido.

Y mi casa siempre ha sido la casa de mucha gente y es una práctica que no me había sentado a pensar, no?. Ese no quedarse en el hotel, ese tú llevar a la gente a pasear y mostrarle los lugares ocultos de la ciudad, no los lugares como limpios y en inglés. O sea, es algo que en el Punk y en el anarquismo de esas cosas está muy metido, no?

Y yo tengo casa en muchos lugares del mundo porque también he dado casa a mucha gente de muchos lugares del mundo, desde muy chavita, desde tours de skate cuando tenía 14 años, llegaba gente de todos lados y se quedaban en mi casa y yo no me daba cuenta de que es algo, que si tú te vas al peregrinaje, la hospitalidad radical o como queremos llamar, a lo previo a los boom's inmobiliarios, turísticos. Pues siempre existió no? Siempre he existido, no? Entonces nada. Para mí es raro hablarlo porque porque para mí, no se cuestiona, no? O sea, yo recibo gente todo el tiempo y me [00:55:00] recibe gente todo el tiempo de de mucho. Últimamente ya se hizo más internacional. Pero antes era más entre pues, las sociedades chiquitas, lo que sea.

Entonces yo te podía contar toda mi historia, a partir de ese eje, si tú quieres. Pero pero mi punto es que es una práctica que yo tengo integrada. O sea, no, nunca me la cuestioné. O sea, y yo como mucho lo que queda en la contracultura, lo que queda underground o sea, mucha gente así lo vive este. Y cada vez que a mí me invita, por ejemplo, la última vez que me invitaron a un pueblo, fue Yasnaya, que ya habíamos quedado de ir.

Porque el programa lo escuchan los Mixes y todo. Y yo le dije "claro que sí." O sea a mí en el momento en que me digas cuando voy, yo voy. Y para mí hay algo, o sea, tiene que venir de un pueblo como el Mixe, la invitación para que no sea turismo. Para mí, tiene que haber un receptor explícito y una invitación. O sea, es parte de la economía del regalo y esas cosas que, que en los sures siempre hemos hecho y en el abajo siempre hemos hecho consciente o inconscientemente.

Creo que ahora hay que empezar [00:56:00] a elaborarla también. Ahora que empezar a teorizarlo y pensarlo porque conforme avanza, la propiedad privada de la colonización, pues se va perdiendo esos comunalismos, porque son prácticas que los pueblos tienen, que las clases populares tienen, que los undergrounds. La gente se mueve todo el tiempo, todo el tiempo.

Solo no se mueve de maneras fancy y y cool. O sea, la foto no es la bonita del Instagram. Entonces, por lo tanto, esa práctica que a mí lo interesa es la práctica, no tanto la conceptualización o la imagen. Pues no la logramos reproducir y va ganando el turismo comercial. Por darte otro ejemplo, varios pueblos en el sureste también me hablaban de turismo alternativo.

Y, por ejemplo, armaban varias cosas con los pueblos alrededor pidiéndole permiso, volviendo al al 40% de la propiedad social y esa parte la constitución que habría que pedir que nos regresen, le pedían permiso a todos los ejidos. Entonces ibas en bici o pajareando [00:57:00] las cosas que hacen turismo normal, pero hablaban con los dueños de los ejidos con el de la propiedad social que yo y los zapatistas y mucha gente defendemos y le decían bueno, "voy a traer gringos que que como quieren que le hagamos. Pues da tu caguama" o "cuánto les vas a cobrar?" Y para mí es contraturismo, fíjate, y caminando con ellos en esos territorios.

Lo aprendes. O sea, escuchando programas de radio y leyendo libros va a estar cabrón. O sea, hay que ir, no este y fíjate que interesante, porque ese 40% de esa propiedad social, pues bien, que podría recibir la lana, que se le da el hotel? No? Porque mucha de esta gente está muy precarizada, entonces no simplemente decir "ah, a la verga, el dinero en el turismo," sino a quien se lo damos y por qué.

Cuando fíjate, yo veo en los pueblos ya iniciativas muy chidas de redistribución para este lado. Hay un montón de cooperativas muy chidas que redistribuyen lo opuesto a lo que hay un hotel. Pero volvemos al tema, pues como "no [00:58:00] son cool" y no tienen el diseño más chido y y no son influencers."

Pues nadie se entera que que hay prácticas comunalistas que incluyen la movilidad de entre pueblos y entre personas muy chidas. O sea, la verdad. Yo he visto muchas proyectos de cooperativismo contraturístico increíbles.

Entonces, bueno, eso. La gente que hace caminantes informativas, como pedagogías de caminantes como contraturísticas. Hay un montón de gente y un montón de cosas, historiadores radicales, ahí que hacen sus sus contradiscursos y llevan a la gente. Osea, yo creo que hay muchas, para mi, hay mucha esperanza ahí.

Lo que pasa es que no la conectamos. O sea justo el algoritmo hace que no la alcances a ver y que te quedes, o sea, esa información, pon tu que la postan, no te va a llegar, no? O sea, está diseñado pa que no te llegue. Entonces, pero hay un montón de cosas muy chidas. Yo no vivo esa [00:59:00] distopia triste, que mucha gente vive de "yo valio verga".

"Hay que dejar de movernos." Yo no lo vivo. Tampoco hay que ultra movernos. Yo pienso que el nomadismo en la clase media ya es una forma de de despojo también. Hay como no forzado en las clases medias. No abajo. Pero bueno, yo no lo vivo con esta doom ccomo sea. Condena. O sea, como de, ah, todo movimiento está de la verga, que hay gente muy esencialista que tu dice. "Todo turismo es una mierda."

Y diría, bueno, pues vives con mucha culpa. Wey está muy bien. Se llama catolicismo. Y y lo conozco muy bien. Hay otras formas. O sea sin tanta culpa, le puedes dar tu lana a gente chida y no va a solucionar el problema, pero vaya que está más chido que dárselo al hotel y al colonialista y al que rompió la propiedad social.

O sea, estás si algo haces, no es mínimo, pero algo haces. Pues eso a mi me ha tocado ver cositas que digo bueno, aquí hay algo no, [01:00:00] aquí hay algo. Pasa que también muchas veces iniciativas como rechazan "lo cool" no quieren ser muy visibles y no quieren ser muy famosas, pues ahí es el problema del comercio justo y el comercio alternativo, que busca, busca hacer un poco invisible a veces.

Eso es problemático, no? Porque entonces, como mandamos a la banda con la banda chida, si la banda chida no quiere que le manden banda siempre. O sea, no quiere hacer negocio, no quiere hacer negocio porque se vuelve capitalistas. En fin. Pero ese, ese es otro problema, no el problema del cooperativismo.

Chris: Claro. Ya pues, sobrebordando con temas y plática hermosa, Alf, pero si puedo antes de de terminar, me gustaría preguntarte sobre tu nuevo libro. No Existe Dique Capaz de Contener al Océano Furioso. Nos podrías contar un poco de que trata y cómo tus trabajos anteriores han influido en [01:01:00] ese nuevo?

Alf: Sí,

Chris: has mencionado un poquito, pero

Alf: ajá. Este es un libro que que pueden comprar en varias librerías Volcana, en Polilla y ahí donde estás con don Gregorio, pronto queremos tener en Jícara, en Utópicas, en casa Casa Tomada y conmigo en internet, y lo pueden descargar en el PDF.

Envíos. Yo hago también a todo el mundo. Pero, bueno, es un libro que básicamente, para decirlo en una frase, es mi experiencia y mi elaboración sobre el anarquismo o la izquierda radical en general. Básicamente. O sea, te cuenta un poco mi historia de vida y como yo lo viví, lo recibí. Y qué es lo que yo he investigado y pensado sobre una práctica?

Que en este momento la historia le podría unos ya anarquismo, pero en otro me momento se llama otras formas, pero sí, como antiautoritaria, etcétera. Entonces, el libro es eso. O sea, es un ensayo personal, pero también es un [01:02:00] ensayo político filosófico, no? Entonces van las dos. Te voy narrando mi vida, pero también te voy narrando la historia de estas ideas y cómo las hevisto, en la práctica y practicado hasta dónde he podido.

Mmm.

Chris: Pues este me voy a asegurar que esos lugares en al menos en Oaxaca y además en línea, van a estar listados en el sitio web del fin de turismo cuando lance el episodio y este, pues en nombre de nuestros oyentes Alf, me gustaría expresarte mi más sincero agradecimiento por tu disposición de acompañarnos hoy, hablar estos temas complejos y garantizar que esta disidencia tenga un lugar en el mundo.

Muchísimas gracias. Y cómo podríamos este encontrar tu trabajo en línea? O sea por redes sociales o

Alf: Si? Lamentablemente, me encantaría que no, no tuviera que ser por ahí. Pero no, no me [01:03:00] quedó de otra. Si, mi trabajo principalmente yo tengo dos libros afuera que se consiguen las librerías que mencioné.

Lo que hago como locutora se encuentra gratis en todos lados, es Un Sueño Largo Ancho y Hondo. Es u arroba @1slaaahh en varias redes sociales. Y nada le ponen ahí en internet y les va a salir gratis y como lo platicaba antes, pues todo va muy junto. Mi parte de ficción y mi parte pedagógica y política va bastante unificada.

Es más o menos la misma onda pero si, digamos lo más inmediato es escucharla lo que hago, llevo varios años haciendo, como locutora. Entonces nada más le da un click y ya está. Y les pido ahí que me den likecito que me den el porque hasta ahora no, no hay quien si, o sea, yo no trabajo para una [01:04:00] radio difusora que se encargue en mis redes y que yo nada más llegue a grabar y estaría bien a gusto, pero no, pues yo la autogestiono.

Entonces, por ahora, si es necesario, el likecito y el compartir.

Chris: Claro. Pues también esos van a estar en el sitio web de fin de turismo cuando lanza el episodio. Entonces, pues muchísimas gracias Alf.

Alf: Gracias, Chris.

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English Transcription.

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast The End of Tourism, Alf. Nice to talk to you today.

Chris: I'd like to start this off by asking you where you are today and how the world looks through your eyes?

Alf: Today I am in my kitchen. I work from there. In Mexico City, in a neighborhood called Iztaccihuatl. How does the world look? Well, look, I don't have a bad view. This is not a big building, but I have a nice view, right? I mean, my view is not blocked by another building or anything. You can see a lot of plants. And well, I guess you know that I am from the provinces. So I have always felt that where I live is like a little bit of a province in the capital, because there are no such big buildings.

This one and well, from here you can see it, I forget that I'm in CDMX now, you know

Chris: Thank you. Well, you are, among other things, the author of several [00:01:00] texts, including Pepitas de Calabaza and the very recent No Existe Dique Capaz de Contenedor al Océano Furioso. You also coordinated the translation into Spanish of the English text of Militancia Alegre:

Let Resistance Bloom in Toxic Times. (or Joyful Militancy) That translation was followed by a companion podcast with Pamela Carmona titled Emerging Joy: Undoing Rigid Radicalism. So, to start, I’d like to ask you how you came across the book Joyful Militancy and what led you to translate it.

Alf: I knew that book. I tell you a little bit about it in the prologue, but I knew that book, in the United States, because I had a band. I played drums in a hardcore punk band for many, many years. And so that's how I got to the United States and being [00:02:00] in the American underground, which was an important part of my life, being in California specifically.

I found that book in a cafe and I fell in love with it. So I brought it and first I read it in English with some people and very slowly I started to work on that book, translating. That's a longer story that's right there in the prologue, but well, I've been campaigning for that book for years. There were also a series of coincidences with very kind people like Tumba a la Casa, like the Canadian authors, the rights were given to us. The people from Traficantes de Sueno got involved.

I mean, there are actually a lot of people. It's like a network of networks, that book and a series of coincidences and favors and nice gestures from many people who made it come out the way it did, really. I mean, I think it's unrepeatable, that series of factors. Aha.

Chris: Oh, cool. All right. Well, that book was originally [00:03:00] published in 2016. After reading, re-reading, and translating that text, I'm curious to know what you think has changed since then, or what major differences you've seen between the rigid radicalism described in the book in the Anglosphere or North America, Anglo-Saxon, and the Hispanic or Latin American sphere?

Alf: Well, there are many things to say, right? The part that I confirmed was that I was working on that book, eh? Because let's say that I, this year I presented that book. I mean, and it did very well in Costa Rica. It was the last one. I ran out of copies. And let's say, I finished my work with Militancia in Costa Rica two, three months ago.

It's not that much, right? I mean, after the radio show with Pamela, it was presented in Costa Rica and it went very well, eh? And it was [00:04:00] reprinted, yes. That book was a success in many ways, right? And look at me. One thing that, as the years went by, I didn't like is that I feel that it has a very liberal side, I mean, there's a side where it's too soft, right? I mean, when criticizing the rigid, I feel that it goes too far from flexible, so to speak. So, and that happens a bit like with certain radicalisms in the north, which have to do with the rhetoric of friendship and tenderness as being so focused on care.

And so, I feel that without wanting to, as if to contradict the opposite, like machismo, rigidity, blah, blah, blah, they fall into something a bit... I mean, since that's the book or at least my reading of that book, at this point, I'm being too soft, because I think that the negative part of being a militant and organizing, well, it's important, right?

It's important to talk, isn't it? So, it's true that in the book, it's a good vibe, so to speak . I think that's why it's a success because there's a "pop" side to that book, a soft, sweet side, that's easy to chew. And it's good for activism, but there's a part of me that says, well, we have to talk about resentment, we have to talk about hate.

We need to talk about the importance of breaking up with each other, of fighting each other, without falling into punishment and blame and persecution. But I do think that the book doesn't quite achieve that with breaking up or negativity in general.

We should go elsewhere and I think that for the past year, since the genocide has intensified, it is time to rethink anti-imperialism, to rethink things that cannot be so flexible, right? I mean, they are killing, bombs are falling and it is not a question of whether the 20th will fall on us or not, or when the 20th will fall on us.

Well, there is an empire managing a genocide that has intensified very strongly over the last year. And that means that it is getting tougher, it is getting tougher. In other words, the political landscape has changed. And there are [00:06:00] processes where we can be very flexible and patient, but there are processes where we cannot, where we have to respond because the bomb falls on your head, that is, and that's it.

So I remember a bit like the transition from the 60s to the 70s, or the transition to the 20s, right? I mean, historically this is what has happened. Hippism ends and the guerrillas arrive. Anarchism ends and the communist party begins. I mean, there are moments where history consumes you and becomes a little more, well, I'm not going to be harsh, but yes, even in the north, the anarchists who came from writing that book as very Ticunist are becoming more leftist, more revolutionary, much more Leninist. And I think that has to do with, well, a kind of Leninism, well, modern or cool.

The Zapatista type in the Anglo version, but I think that has to do with the current conditions. I think that before the pandemic, after the pandemic, there are two planets, both because of the recognition of genocide, and because of what was done throughout the decade that for me ends in the pandemic. Well, there was a very cool side, but also a very valid side.

The insurrection is already here. And now we say no, it is not here. We are not stopping the United States, this empire, we are not stopping it. At other times in history, we have been able to put certain limits on imperialism. Not completely, but some battles have been won.

So, well, I think that book was of its time. I mean, 2016 and that anarchism of friendship and of connecting and flowing and all that side that is a bit hippie. I think it is very much of its time, of the last decade, but I think that time is no longer ours, because of the conditions. I mean, because we are reacting and responding and organizing ourselves against other problems.

Chris: Sure, sure. And if you could update it in your own words, what would be the most important issues [00:08:00] to change or replace?

Alf: I mean, look, I'm going to tell you about another book, but it's also from the north.

So, I don't really like giving it to them so much, but a book that, for example, I would respond strongly to would be this one that Traficantes gave me, now that I work with them in Madrid, called Towards a New World Civil War, by Lazzarato, right?

So I say, what happens is that he is a Leninist, right? So, he hits him hard, he hits him hard. I mean, but this has always happened, but there are several groups that are responding, right? I mean, for example, in the case of this book that Lazzarato just mentioned to you.

Well, he says that in the last 50 years, including militancy, which would be at the end of 50 years, politics as such was not discussed? So, if you apply Lazzarato to Militancia Alegre, indeed, it is never talked about that, well, the US government controls the world and is winning. I mean, and there were struggles in the 60s, 70s, which more or less managed to stop [00:09:00] that imperialism, the national liberations, for example.

The struggles began with Vietnam, Mahler and Cuba and ended with others. Were we able to more or less stop that imperialism of that time? But for example, Militancy never once talks about politics in a hard sense, right? That is, anti-Trump, for example, anti-global like global north or north and global. That is, in the sense that they govern the world, right?

And that is not discussed, right? I mean, at no time is it said, well, we, as the North, have a debt with the South, not only economically, but politically, right? I mean, in terms of not allowing the autonomy of the South. And Palestine and Lebanon are the, well, the most extreme case, right? Although here it is the same, right? I mean, the fight, the war against the Zapatistas is the same genocide, with the same bullet.

That is, the same investor, the same profits. It is the same genocide. So, but not talking about that, not talking about the merely political, [00:10:00] right? I mean, about how Morena works for the American government and kills the Zapatistas and the Central Americans. By not talking about these kinds of things as harshly political.

I mean, how Trump controls the Mexican militia, la la la. Well, it is a hippie book, isn't it? I mean, in the sense that, there the Leninists have a point. In this case, Lazzarato but many other gangs, when answering the anarchist gang. Yeah, the friendship is very cool and the... Let's tune in.

I mean, okay, but you're standing in a world that benefits from destroying this world that you and I are standing in, right? So, in many ways: the real, the symbolic, the economic. Tourism, for me, is just one chapter in that series of death industries. So no, by not talking about it.

I think that it is a book that omits the main place of enunciation, which is the empire, if it speaks of the empire, but I feel that it lacked the political aspect. That is, how the North dominates and controls [00:11:00] the South, the government of the North in particular.

By not speaking about that, he did give me a book that I don't know how it will age. I mean, I say, well, let's see how it goes, because it does serve the purpose that Tiqqun and those things served at the time, which was to respond to the vertical left, so to speak. But that moment, at least in the north, has already passed, right? And they themselves have already returned to verticality.

I mean, those who attacked Leninism, we are in this other one. So it's funny because they have their own cycles and we have other cycles of struggle, right? And other genealogies and other rhetorics. I mean, it's very different. There's the translation. That's why that book is so militant because, we had to defend our own context, right?

And to say, well, it's their genealogy, ours has other concepts. I mean, it has won wars and revolutions. There are many triumphs in our history in the south. In fact, in the north there are more defeats and instead, [00:12:00] the national liberations, well, practically all of them triumphed, if you think about it, against imperialism.

Of course it is no longer fashionable to talk about this because colonialism is already somewhere else... it has already gone somewhere else. Right? The majority of anticolonialism no longer comes from its genealogy in the struggles for national liberation or violence?

Violence is out of fashion and this book has something of that in it? How can we not talk about how in Mexico we had to shoot to recover a little of what we have? No! We have to talk about friendship, love, tenderness. That part is what I think no longer speaks much to our time and we'll see what will happen next, we'll see what will happen next.

No, although you are useful, right? I mean, a lot of people who are involved in activism live with a lot of affection from that book and that's fine. I mean, I think it's fine. I think it lacks the political and negative part, but well, we couldn't ask for everything from just one book. No.

That's what the Europeans did to us, bringing the Bible and [00:13:00] killing us under the pretext of a single book. So I think we shouldn't fall for it. That's right, it's colonial to want to ask everything from a single book. If that book gave what it had to give in its context and that context, for me, this is over. In other words, it was a useful tool that responded and now here's what follows.

Chris: Well yes, I remember that there was a footnote in the book by Silvia Federici and I have it.

The quote here said that

"What matters most is to discover and recreate the collective memory of past struggles. In the United States, there is a systematic attempt to destroy this memory. And now this is spreading throughout the world. Reviving the memory of past struggles makes us feel part of something bigger than our individual lives and in this way gives a new meaning to what we are doing and gives us courage, because it makes us less afraid of what [00:14:00] can happen to us individually."

And I feel like there is something there as well, I don't know if it's driven from above or if it's just a lack of memory, but yes, I feel that it is, it's very strong that there is a lack of lineage, in politics today, in contemporary social moments. But well, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your experiences with tourism as well. I would like to ask you about what kind of reactions you received, received as a result of the podcast and if those conversations changed your ideas about the topics discussed.

Alf: I had to ask Pame directly because I think she experienced it in her own way too. But well, it was really cool. First of all, the beauty of that program. There were several things. First, that program was supported by the American Institute of Anarchist Studies, and that [00:15:00] was nice, to have the support. I mean, not making ourselves so precarious. And also not having to ask shitty people for money to do cool stuff, no, that always feels good. Like not betraying the content, meaning that the form goes hand in hand with the substance, no. So, to start with, that was very joyful. Secondly, great joy, I always work behind closed doors.

I'm a little jealous of my work. So, I opened the door and worked with not only two people, they saw a podcast that there were four of us, five of us. That's very strange. I'd never done that. I don't usually do that. Yes, I work with people, but not with the microphone, not normally, eh?

I always work with groups and movements and things, but let's say behind closed doors, so to speak, or in specific circumstances. So, first of all, the consistency that I feel that this program had, how to align ourselves with an internationalist anarchism, which I think we need to recover.

Internationalism in general, eh? And I think that [00:16:00] Sometimes the fight against tourism unintentionally becomes very nationalistic and does not distinguish between migrant and tourist, these things, like in Mexico, are better than everything else. A little strange, but well, before I get lost, I think there was a nice internationalist gesture there.

I mean, between anarchists from the north and those from the south first and second, well, opening the microphone because it's not something I usually do or used to do until this year, so to speak, I mean, I've been doing monologue as a presenter for several years because I do my social part face to face, so to speak. And I could tell you many things.

But I was very excited about the program with Weaving the Revolutionary Organization, eh? I really loved it. I mean, it seems to me that they do important work. And it seems to me that our time is being thought of from the perspective of revolutionaries as well. Not necessarily like the last decade, the insurrectional and anything goes.

This one, I think that [00:17:00] is changing those approaches a bit, and it's precisely those who have been around for more than 20 years and are about 50 people organized from below with a lot of clarity and a lot of strength. Well, we made a very cool bridge, I didn't go into anarchism and other parts of the radical left, which normally we don't shake hands and we don't talk.

I mean, it's not common or easy. And when it happens, it's usually tense. And for me there wasn't any tension, on the contrary. There was a very cool complement to the outline. It's the last chapter of Emergente. Well, I mean, and I feel that it connects with Militancia Alegre. I mean, calling it militancy and not "joyful activism" was a provocation by the authors.

And I think that movement is like?, among many others that are mentioned, they are just militants, not activists, right? In other words, the activist has a very northern genealogy and very much from the nineties onwards. And I think that they, like the "cool ones" read that Militancia Alegre is still the coolest book, they don't usually look at it, the cool people, they don't usually look at that type of militancy like Thor. [00:18:00] They were all very cool, but I have a special affection for that last one, because yes, I think that we have to think of unusual alliances, like all radical leftists, try to articulate.

And for me, that was the closest thing. And I keep listening to it. And there are things that make me think, for example, what they say about the working class sectors, that there is an indigenous sector, so they fight among themselves and how they are sectorized, well, for me, there are several things that they make me think. They make me think a lot. And their work is very cool. It's just that, since it's not the coolest and nicest. It doesn't have this super design or anything. Well, a lot of people don't pay attention to them. So for me, it was important to give them the microphone and I really missed programs with them, to be honest.

So, for me, that was very nice, with the excuse of the book, because the truth is, we hardly spoke or very little. I would have been able to interview, for example, Raquel Gutiérrez. If I could, I would have [00:19:00] interviewed John Holloway. I mean, I would have continued. The thing is that the job of an interviewer is very different from what I do as a presenter, I mean, it's another path. And well, the resource. Well, there isn't one. Of course. Of course. Because we were able to even pay a little bit of money to the people we interviewed. We were able to charge ourselves a little bit. Pay the designer. It was very different from everything I do. This is not that program.

I insist on the internationalist support, whether small or large, well it was very nice to have, because normally you can't pay for interviews and things, which is funny with so much class struggle, with comrades who obviously have a hard time coming here.

Chris: Not anymore, it's very difficult, but yes, it was a very nice episode. And I'm going to put it on the El Fin de Turismo website when we launched this podcast and also for those who want to know, it's the last episode of Alegría Emergente. Well, speaking of your works Alf [00:20:00] in Pepitas de Calabaza, you explore some peripheral themes of tourism, from the Merida where you grew up, the chiqui loteros or those who divide large lots into small lots to sell them at a usually higher price, sometimes to foreigners. It's one of those themes.

How did your time in Merida influence your understanding of tourism?

Alf: First, I would like to extend the invitation to read my work. This theme of property and tourism and colonialism basically runs through all of my work, but the specific extent to which you are interested in Pepitas is also something I mention in the new book.

There is no Dam Capable of Counting and I speak specifically about how tourism, the tourism industry has been stealing from those of us who come from the working classes. We grew up at the bottom and so on, especially pleasure, leisure. Forget about the [00:21:00] land. If access to water, a series of things, no.

So, there is a bit more elaborate work done there, but effectively, from Pepitas. Well, for me, it is a topic that is central to my work. The topic of colonialism, because for me, talking about tourism is talking about current colonialism, internal and external colonialism, but it is the current colorism. In other words, it is a displacement, part of a process of displacement .

So, in Pepitas, well, that is indeed a protagonist, who, let's say, is the national bourgeois, to put it very theoretically, the small-timer, we call him regionally, who is the landowner. It is not Carlos Slim. In other words, he is not the richest, the richest, but he is, let's say, the medium-range landowner who can buy land and divide it up and sell it, speculate with the land, in the end. But in the south, he resists, last year, to raise the tone to the political again... Last year in the south [00:22:00] he resists, the National Indigenous Congress told us, that half of the land in Mexico is social property, right? And I talked about this when presenting No Existe Dique with Yasnaya Aguilar because Oaxaca is a different case and it causes a lot of envy.

There is a third form of land, which is communal land, but we are not going to get into the legalities. The southeast of Mexico, as Paco represents and I talk about in my second book, tourism has come in because legally, since 1992 the constitution was changed and the communal property has been broken and private property has come in, right?

So, to take it to a purely political level, fighting against tourism in Mexico today would be to demand that it cannot be sold, as in Oaxaca there is communal property, not in any other part of the country as far as I know, that land cannot be legally sold. So, not to abstract, or rather to be specific, tourism is advancing, by the first world, in collusion with [00:23:00] with the upper class third worlder, in this case, Paco, to break up social property and introduce individual or private property, right? If there were a mechanism that the Mexican revolution left us, that legal mechanism could not allow tourism to exist in Mexico , at least not legally .

So, since 1992, what was left of the Mexican revolution fell apart and was fought with bullets. We have to recover that negative. In 1992, things changed, we lost what we had won in the revolution. And then tourism exploded. And that is very noticeable for people from the south.

I mean, if I tell you how I went to Tulum for the first time, and when I returned to Tulum 10 or 20 years later, or how I went to Zipolite for the first time. And that's the result. I mean, I can write you 30 books, but all of that is the result of a specific little part of the constitution that I mention in my second legal book, which allowed us to destroy what we won in the Mexican revolution, [00:24:00] which is collective property, in some cases indigenous property, in other cases, simply social property of the working classes.

And I have brought this up with many people and I learned about it by being with the people in the territory, for example, with the assembly of Maya Muuch Xiinbal territorial defenders. They taught me in practice this whole series of mechanisms and defenses by walking with the people, being there. I mean, because sometimes you have to be there to understand the magnitude.

I mean, if you think about it, the many indigenous peoples and popular classes own hectares, 40% of the country, it is in their hands at the level of legal property, but private property is gaining, no, no. And for me, tourism is just a small piece of this current colonizing project, which is taking away from us the little that we gained in the Mexican revolution. Well, we gained several things: public education, public health, all of that is being privatized. But it is very crazy land and territory, because it is very specific. I mean 40 percent versus [00:25:00] 60 percent, an article of the constitution, we must not lose sight of it, I mean. There it is. But look at the belly button of the fart. Aha.

Chris: Mm, thank you. I would like to propose some questions, some provocations. Perhaps in regard to how tourism and rather, more recently, the so-called invasions of tourists, digital nomads to Mexico since the pandemic and other places as well. I mean, it's not just Mexico, but obviously there are other places.

And well, there are certain things that have come up in other podcast episodes, regarding rigid radicalism, and how I see it sometimes as cultures of disposability, which I feel is something fundamental and also unknown in how it works, well, modernity, the colony, that whole trajectory [00:26:00] of shit.

But we see it a lot. I feel it, I feel it on social media. So, I would like to ask you, what do you think about the effects of social media in the contexts of contemporary struggles, but also in this context of tourism, of the invasions in Mexico. So my question is, how do you think social media contributes to rigid radicalism?

Alf: Eh? Well, look, I think that they don't only contribute rigid radicalism, that is, responding very quickly. I think that the algorithm is designed and that is known by the majority, I hope, I suppose this to generate these echo-chambers that they call it. So, I think that the minimum, that is, the most x is that it generates rigid radicalism. I think that in reality the [00:27:00] The far right is winning in the world through social media. And I'm not the one saying this. This has been proven. I mean, Milei , Trump and all the fascism in power, which unfortunately exists, I estimate half the planet, Bukele, etc., Bolsonaro, have a lot to do with what Chumel Torres would be here, with what Eduardo Verastegui would be here. It has everything to do with it, right?

And I think that critical thinking, whatever we want to call this other anti-fascist side, we have not taken that seriously enough as an enemy, right? Because returning to negativity, resentment , well, that is a new enemy. For me, we must destroy it.

I made room, that is, as I have to do. So, I also talked about this with Benja, Yasnaya's partner, the day of my presentation at Volcana. I mean, what happens is that a lot of leftists, a lot of critical thinking and everything, don't want to do pop. So the right is doing [00:28:00] pop and that's why Trump won, and that's why Milei is in power, because they make a kind of pop social networks.

They are not afraid to reduce thought, to provoke. They are not afraid because they have the power, obviously, they control the world. Specifically, Trump, right? So, we, from fear and from a strange classicism, a strange machismo, as if we say that "pop" is bad because it reduces.

Being an influencer is bad because it makes the abstract. It reduces it. It simplifies it. And that is a problem. It is a big problem that for me has to do with the problem of schooling. But to answer you, and I think that social networks support current fascism, more than anything else, I think more than anything else. And that is why we are governed by celebrities and we are in a new phase of politics as a spectacle. And we were not there, we return to militancy as a book that no longer responds to this era, I do not feel that Obama was that.

I don't [00:29:00] feel that PRIism and PANism were like that. We are in another moment, then, as always the left or whatever you want to call it, the thought, the general antifascism, which I don't care about the concepts, as always we are slow, slow to react. Why? Well, because it scares us.

Social media, I think they are bombarding us emotionally with genocide. I think that the way they are handling the image of genocide is destroying the mental health, finishing off, if not, it would have already destroyed the mental health of a good part of those of us who are against Trump and Milei , to say the love that I hope we are more than half of the Earth again, this is what I like to believe.

So, I think we are slow because they want us to be, because they have ruined our mental health. And that makes us slow to respond with the same strength as them, that is, we lack influencers who are a little rougher, to say it as it is, that is, a little more as strong and provocative as them.

I [00:30:00] feel that the influencers on this side do an important job, but very softly. I mean, it's very low-key. Very well behaved. When you listen to Bukele, you listen to Milei or Trump speak and they are the provocateurs, really. This one, they are not afraid to say stupid things. And the left, yes. Yes, they are afraid to screw up.

When they don't realize that what they are doing is provoking in order to move, right? I mean, people know it's an exaggeration. Milei, Bukele and Trump's voters know that they say a lot, that he's a drunk, that he's saying stupid things, but they go and vote.

Chris: Sure.

Alf: The left is failing to raise the tone.

On the contrary. I mean, the more it goes down in the background and the more little Palestinian flags, the more well-behaved we are. And then, ah, "well, let's talk about Palestinian culture, which is very important. It's very beautiful. But I bet that there would be influencers saying let's throw bombs at them and let's kill them, it would be stronger, right? I mean, it would scare them, as it would happen, if history happened in the 70s. This did happen. If we scared them, we don't scare them anymore. And I think that has everything to do with how imperialism today is an algorithm. Before it was something else, and it is an imperialism of the mind and of emotions.

And it's just how they handle the image. I mean, it doesn't matter what they show us, but the way in which Trump's speech is used and the way in which the image of genocide is used, not the genocide. That doesn't matter to them, but the use , they blast us , they blast us all the time.

So we can't articulate. We can't recognize each other. We start competing, we fight, and it's because they're winning. There have been other moments in history where this side really scared me without idealizing it because it can also be very sexist. This one scared Trump and the Trumps. I mean, they [00:32:00] shit themselves and said no, no.

So, well, they are going to kill, right? And so, there was something positive there. There was something positive there and that was lost, our own ability to be scary and to defend ourselves. It has been lost. I mean, and it is very material, because they kill defenders of the territory every week, as well as Palestinians and Lebanese with the same gun, the same weapon. Every week they kill them.

So, of course it is scary to raise the tone. Not because I feel like they are going to kill you. There is a ghost. So, I think that social networks are entirely to blame and that they are managed wonderfully, perfectly, social networks and the Internet because it allowed imperialism to become...

So you carry it everywhere, you want fascism. And that's on the little screens and on the cell phone. They handled it very well. The one who explains it most well is Adam Curtis, in Can't Get You Outta My Head. And I think that we have to take that [00:33:00] even more seriously, because people just say "ah, damn Chumel Torres." No, dude. I mean, he's the cancer of this society. I mean, I can't explain it. He's a real enemy and "ah, he's just some weird PAN member over there." What I mean is that we don't take it seriously, it's like we're not reading the empire in its new phase and how it's run.

Chris: But then, do you think that the ways we can undermine the algorithm is by, getting off the screen? I mean, how is the algorithm also becoming not only internalized in the movements, according to me, but in the mindsets of people and within the movements?

Alf: Of course I don't have an answer, but it occurs to me that this has already been tried many times, such as creating our own technologies. What happens is that they will never be as attractive and powerful, as a class of those who control the earth, because for some reason [00:34:00] they control it and they are winning, right? Because they have all the resources and all the intelligence placed there.

So, if the movements can already have social media, but their posts have no reach and that is managed from above. So this is a deeper problem that has to do with the problem of the image and its management. That is, by controlling the algorithm, the empire, what it is controlling are the images and the narratives. They manage them, that is what I mean by imperialism. That is, we see what the empire wants us to see and that is the end of it. That is, it is a new phase because you do not necessarily have the gringo governing your country as it was before the national revolutions, for example, but you have the cell phone that will only show you what is convenient for the gringo government or the majority.

So breaking the algorithm is breaking the empire, that is, the truth, that is, it is nothing else. And that makes it [00:35:00] cool is cool and uncool, which is usually more important, is not seen and does not have access to resources and does not generate cool images. And if you manage to get an image, it has no reach. In other words, it is very noticeable for my work.

I mean, if I upload my kitty 500 views, if I upload the type of things we are talking about 5. Yes, of course. It is super obvious, not the handling of the image and management. So, well, we have to go back. We have to go back to self-publishing. We have to go back to free media as they have been doing for several decades. I mean, and redo it, recover it, rethink it.

People who are going to Mastodon on social media. People who are getting out of the algorithms, the ugliest ones. I mean, I don't know how much we're going to achieve. I mean, that's why I, my political side, I live it more in person. I mean, I go. I try to go now that Lucio's 50th anniversary is celebrated every year, to make people, to be with the people, to be people. I mean, because [00:36:00] of course if I don't go, I'll never find out.

And if I don't walk with, as I told you, the Mayan assembly, even for five minutes, I won't understand that the main problem of all this is simply an article of the constitution, right? So, I mean, let's say that they post it on the Internet. Who listens to it? Nobody, very few people, but that's because of who controls it.

That the information doesn't arrive, no. So, of course. So that's what I'm getting at, that is, there is a problem with the image. I mean, there is a big problem with the image because of what the extreme right and fascism have achieved perfectly well in our time. It's that people prefer recognition and likes, not the prize, rather than real reparation.

And so social media is based on a new model of counterinsurgency and political pacification and neutralization, which is, I'll go, I'll give you a prize, I'll go and show you, I'll give you a like, but so you'll shut up, no. And so you don't say things, [00:37:00] we are saying, it is a single article.

If we go back to the article, we will stop a good part of the colonialist and tourist capitals today, etc. In other words, what I mean is that they go and reward you, they go and like you so that you become more peaceful. And there was a strategic change that we are also very slow in itself, because in the seventies they killed you, the politically organized middle classes. Not today. Today it is not like that.

Today they kill the people from below, the defenders who live and inhabit the popular classes, the territory and the middle class are rewarded so that you keep quiet. So, how do they reward you by making the algorithm see you a lot and you talk a lot and produce a lot of content, but it is content. I repeat, very well behaved.

It's a soft content, which omits the political parts, which omits topics of imperialism versus insurgency, blah, blah, I mean. It talks about everything else, ways of life, radical tenderness, [00:38:00] alternative consumption, solidarity sisterhood, everything you want, except if we don't cut off Trump's head, that condition doesn't stop. I mean, I don't know if I explain myself.

Except for the most important thing, I mean, I'm caricaturing it. By cutting off Trump's head we're not going to stop journalism, but you get my drift. They're handling censorship and we're already talking about techno-techno-feudalism. We're giving away content that supports imperialism and we don't realize... we're so alienated right now with the algorithm that we work for it for free.

No? And it includes me, that is, my PDFs are free. My radio is free. I am a slave to the Internet and that's it, right? And then, to the extent that we don't know it, we feel the negativity of that dispossession and how we all work for the empire. We like it a lot, so we alienate ourselves more, right? I mean, because I don't charge for my radio stations.

I don't charge for the PDF [00:39:00] literally. It dispossesses me and makes me precarious in a harsh, direct sense. The problem is that saying it is strong because people, well, as they listen to your program or mine, and it costs us MXN $5. Well, people buy the friend and say, great, they see me on the internet. When only people who think like you are seeing you.

And no one else. I mean, not a single follower anymore. People who already thought like you, before coming across your content. So, in reality we are not achieving propaganda, right? And I think it is super important, because to the extent that we always work with those who think like us, we are not pushing the fascist 50 percent, on the contrary, we respect it and we say, well, I work with the 50%. I stay with the 40% of social property and I never push private property or the fascist 50%.

And there you are, it's very comfortable to talk to each other. Well, don't let anyone bother you, don't let anyone send you [00:40:00] bots. Because what they do to me is they attack me on the Internet, right? So, every time I say what needs to be said, they send me bots and they scare me, like many people, no, they threaten you.

And all of this is perfectly managed, in Mexico since Peña Nieto, by Peña bots. These technologies are felt very clearly. Many times they are Israeli. It is felt very clearly, right? And they work perfectly well, because they pacify and neutralize wonderfully. People are already stopping what they have to say because you feel that... I mean, because you feel the opposite effect, censorship is felt as a reward.

Chris: Totally. Thank you very much. Alf. I would like to provoke a little bit this idea that the algorithm is only softening us. In softening, you said? In softening. Yeah. Yeah, because well, [00:41:00] it also seems to me that the algorithm is asking for, putting in, reinforcing the anger.

And I recently discovered, I discovered a book called Discard Studies, which attempts to formulate hypotheses not only around the social histories of waste and pollution, but also of exile and displacement. And the idea in discard studies is that all of these things are very closely related to each other.

Social media also creates a platform for social expulsions in the form of cancellations or escrachees, for example.

Alf: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So, also if the rhythm is imposing, inviting us to be more peaceful, I feel that there is a way that is imposing, pushing, inviting us to discard, throw away, the [00:42:00] people among social movements, that is, among social movements, also in the interpersonal way.

And I wanted to ask you about that and the consequences for long-term struggles.

Alf: Mm-hmm. Look, I feel that it was discussed in particular in the second episode of Alegria Emergente with a guest named Tomás Calles. We talked about that with him. Look, I feel that this topic is very complicated, because for me, the escrache , well, what I know most today is the escrache that comes with gender, with sexual abuse. And at the same time, I think that we have to do a complete genealogy of the escrache because the escrache , every time... I mean, if we take it out of gender and put it in politics, class, race, and everything else, this one, if you notice, all the time, going back to the 50% fascist and the non-fascist, the 50 % fascist has narrowed to the 50% non-fascist.

This is all about the control of narratives and images. I mean, [00:43:00] If you see the image, for example, and for me, it is a form of escrache , and for our time. If you see how the United States created the image of Cuba, it is a form of escrache , right? I mean, like, I'm going to speak really badly of those guys. I'm going to say, I'm going to publish all the books and all the content that speaks badly of Cuba, right?

And for me, there is a kind of escrache there, a pre-escrache, so to speak. So, in political terms, I tell you again that I feel that the leaders are missing in this whole discussion. There have always been and will always be ways to manipulate and destroy when people are doing more or less cool things, well, they will look for you where and there they will screw you, right?

And the government also participates in this with its bots, right? And its handling of information, the distribution of information in particular. So, I feel that escrache must be seen as part of the counterinsurgency, not all escrache is , because there are escraches that, for example, do not become public and become processes, for example, [00:44:00] of... that is, public denunciation is not punitivism as an exercise in public exemplary punishment, there are escraches or specific denunciations, which rather become exercises in restorative justice, behind closed doors, which have been effective.

And I have learned about several and I have been invited to several processes. This one and with several movements. I have realized that justice was exercised by ourselves . Yes, carried out to repair specific things with specific solutions without making an image, without giving the algorithm what takes away all our time - time, energy, without giving it the photo where it says "to make your cool escrache speak..."

I mean, just solve it , that's what a lot of things on the Internet don't do. They talk but don't act, and you can talk whatever you want as long as you don't act. That's the great trick of the social network. Let's not talk about everything, as long as we don't change anything.

This then nothing. I feel that the escrache , well, has to be seen as such, it has a part [00:45:00] It's cool for me, especially behind closed doors, like processes that I would call restorative justice , that is, that don't tend towards image, they can create an image, but that is not their final objective, but rather to repair specific damages with specific solutions, not case by case, without abstracting this , this versus a type of liberal escrache , whitewashed, spectacular, cheap, that the only thing it has done is counterinsurgency. Every time there are leaders. "Oh, he's a macho," right? Every time there is a social movement, "ah, they work for the Russians, they work for the Chinese, this , they receive money, they receive money from this , this." And the escrache , yes, it is one of the best tools, because it generates narratives and images, not that they contrast what has been won.

I mean, I'm going to give you a fund as an activist so you can talk about tourism, whatever you want, as long as you don't talk about this and that, okay, [00:46:00] then you send to collect and it will be great for you. And I'll make you super famous and that's cool.

Well, that is the fight, so that we all do well materially. But they censored you. They told you that you only talk about, so, look, we returned to the subject of escrache. I mean, a lot of those people who were escrache. I'm going to put one. Miguel Peralta. The case of Miguel Peralta, for me it would be a case of escrache, not this Miguel Peralta today is persecuted by the Mexican state and many people are going to tell you that he is a sexist. They are going to tell you many things, but they are not going to tell you the other part, right? The political part of his fight, against a government that governs, not to say Samir Flores as a escrache, not to say Hortensia Telesforo with a type of escrache.

I mean, are you catching on? I mean, what happens then is that from above, they control the narrative and control the image and the distribution of information. They tell you, look, I'm going to pay you for one thing, but keep quiet about the other.

Then put up the colorful flag. And CDMX is already gay and trans, [00:47:00] but you never talk about social class again.

Please let the poor remain poor. She only talks about trans, right? If you notice, it's like the escrache. I mean, the escrache says we're going to destroy Miguel Peralta's political leadership by putting ultra emphasis on his sexist side, which I don't doubt he has had like many leaders and like many people, I mean, I'm not saying no, I'm just saying that the way in which these types of accusations are used is to destroy the political side. Many times, not all. Mm, but to give just one example, and today, for today I'm talking to you about a case of current criminalization, like we could talk about Samir Flores or Hortensia Telesforo and the entire counterinsurgency. The counterinsurgency is a type of escrache. That's already changed.

I repeat, the most visible people are given awards and attention. The less visible people are killed or criminalized like Miguel. They are about to put him in jail for 50 years if we don't pay attention [00:48:00] to that case, right? That's what they want, that we don't pay attention. So that's what I'm getting at, I mean, the crime almost doesn't matter, the lack of damage almost doesn't matter, but the handling of it.

There is a kind of economy, I would even say, an economy of complaints and an economy of image that we are not aware of. We are so far removed that we go, based on the first thing that comes to mind: "Oh, that guy was a macho." That's it. Everything is left, either that guy worked for China and even all the work he has done, how he works for China, or how they talk about, for example, the narratives about Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba.

I mean, it's impressive. It's a public escrache, I mean. Who's going to speak well of that kind of country? It's very difficult.

Chris: Oh, at least say like, "I don't know, I don't know"...

Alf: Or at least say, "I don't know," but what I mean is that regardless of what Venezuela and the left-wing machismo have done, [00:49:00] the handling of that error.

I mean, I guess, yes, I think he makes mistakes like everyone else. The handling is the part that worries me the most, like social media, the distribution of that information. I mean, like, we're only going to talk about shit , let 's be clear, because it suits the United States , that Miguel Peralta is in jail, that Venezuela only knows shit, that China only knows... I don't doubt that there is a shitty side, but the limits of the discourse are interesting.

You can't talk about what's already been done . The moment he says it's something good. Cancelled. To jail. That's it. So that draws my attention, because people think it's a moment of discursive freedom. Fascism is winning, right? I mean, that's Trump, but that's the Palestinian and Lebanese genocide.

But but but there is a symptom of that in that we cannot, we cannot speak.

I feel that the [00:50:00] The Internet is much more fascist than before. I mean, I feel much more censored than what I see happening in the 20th century. Do you understand? The truth. I mean, I see Che Guevara's speeches and I say no, because at that time you could talk.

He speaks like that today, a bullet in the forehead. That's easy. You didn't wake up. You would disappear. So I say, did we win or lose in terms of discourse? No, I think we lost because you watch TV in the 20th century and he spoke without being shot. Today, not today anymore. Samir spoke, Morena killed him. That's it. That's it. In other words, today the Palestinians spoke, all dead.

I mean, then I think we lost with the Internet. We didn't win, but I think that tourism, I repeat, and colonialism, then it's just like a little part. Honestly, I think it's like a little piece of everything that's a bigger thing. Of course it's an industry that has [00:51:00] been gaining a lot of strength, but for me there would be counter-tourism and a pilgrimage.

I feel like I'm on a pilgrimage. Look, what tourism destroyed is being rebuilt when I try to approach social movements, from my class, that is, from my skin color and all my contradictions. Well, sometimes I keep walking, with people who have taught me things that will never appear on my cell phone.

We deliberately don't know the truth. Even if they post them, they won't reach me. And so I think that if there is a counter-tourism and I think that we should go looking for it in the subject of pilgrimage or radical hospitality. Why? Because there was a sacred subject, right? I mean, there was something sacred in the pilgrim. It wasn't just pleasure tourism, although it had sharing and idleness at its side, but for me we would recover the ability to defend ourselves, various things that have been taken from us, the ability to speak that I think they took from us based on awards and views, not based on punishments, because there would be a [00:52:00] pilgrimage , from a political perspective, right ?

For example, I'm told that next year there will be a pilgrimage in Brazil. No, many people are going to go to Brazil from different latitudes. And for me, that is counter-tourism and sacred political pilgrimage. No. So people go to Anticop, you go, I mean, going is super important because you clean up the ground with garbage and you are face to face with a reality that the imperialist algorithm wants us to not get, you go out. Of course. The problem is that it insists on you. It's so fashionable, "death to tourism," that it's not easy to talk about there being very important counter-tourism. There have always been, right? I mean, when the Zapatistas say come, things happen that don't happen.

So you have to go, no. You have to go, of course. So, and that is counter-tourism. And the Zapatistas are super aware. Not only gringos come here, only güeritos. What's the problem with this way they become politicized? Yes, I think it is more middle class not to try to [00:53:00] find the cause and turn the industry around. Mmm. And simply say death to all tourism. Well, yes, in theory it sounds very good, but in practice it is gaining ground.

Chris: Mmm, sure, and so I'd like to ask you about radical hospitality as well, but I feel like a lot of people fall into trying to define what it is.

But then I would just like to ask you, just like on a pilgrimage, if you like, if you have found what you would call your radical hospitality on your travels or at home, that is, in your neighborhood.

Alf: Look, this is something I learned. I mean, what is called radical hospitality is something I have practiced all my life and only later did I start to develop it. Well, I have been active all my life and I still am active mainly in the underground.

It's counterculture. But for example, I've been in punk, in [00:54:00] skateboarding, as in the radical left in general, with all its branches, all my life, I've come and gone.

And my house has always been the home of many people and it's a practice that I hadn't thought about, right? That of not staying in the hotel, that of taking people for a walk and showing them the hidden places in the city, not the places that are clean and in English. I mean, it's something that is very much in the punk and anarchism of those things, right?

And I have a house in many places around the world because I have also given a home to many people from many places around the world, from a very young age, from skate tours when I was 14 years old, people came from everywhere and stayed at my house and I didn't realize that it is something, that if you go on a pilgrimage, radical hospitality or whatever we want to call it, before the real estate boom, tourism. Well, it always existed, right? I have always existed, right? So nothing. For me it is strange to talk about it because for me, it is not questioned, right? I mean, I receive people all the time and I receive people all the time from a lot of people. Lately it has become more international. But before it was more between , well, small societies, whatever.

So I could tell you my whole story, based on that axis, if you want. But my point is that it is a practice that I have integrated. I mean, no, I never questioned it. I mean, and I eat a lot of what remains in the counterculture, what remains underground, I mean, a lot of people live it like this. And every time someone invites me, for example, the last time they invited me to a town, it was Yasnaya, which we had already agreed to go to.

Because the Mixes listen to the program and everything. And I said, "Of course." So, for me, the moment you tell me when I'm going, I'm going. And for me there is something, I mean, it has to come from a town like the Mixe, the invitation so that it's not tourism. For me, there has to be an explicit recipient and an invitation . I mean, it's part of the gift economy and those things that we have always done in the south and in the south we have always done consciously or unconsciously.

I think now we have to start [00:56:00] to elaborate it as well. Now we have to start theorizing and thinking about it because as it progresses, the private property of colonization, Well, these communalisms are being lost, because they are practices that the people have , that the popular classes have, that the undergrounds have. People move all the time, all the time.

It doesn't move in fancy and cool ways. I mean, the photo isn't the pretty one on Instagram. So, therefore, the practice that interests me is the practice, not so much the conceptualization or the image. Well, we can't reproduce it and commercial tourism is winning. To give you another example, several towns in the southeast also spoke to me about alternative tourism.

And, for example, they set up various things with the surrounding towns asking for permission, returning to 40% of the social property and that part of the constitution that we would have to ask for back to us, they asked permission from all the ejidos. So you went by bike or birdwatching [00:57:00] the things that normal tourism does, but they spoke with the owners of the ejidos with the one from the social property that I and the Zapatistas and many people defend and they told them well, "I'm going to bring gringos who want us to do it. Well, give us your beer" or "how much are you going to charge them?" And for me it's counter-tourism, you see, and walking with them in those territories.

You learn it. I mean, listening to radio programs and reading books is going to be awesome. I mean, you have to go, not this one and look how interesting, because that 40% of that social property, well, who could get the money, who gets the hotel? No? Because many of these people are very precarious, so we don't just say "ah, fuck the money in tourism," but to whom do we give it and why.

When you look at it, I see in the villages very cool initiatives of redistribution in this direction. There are a lot of very cool cooperatives that redistribute the opposite of what a hotel does. But we return to the subject, because "they are not [00:58:00] cool" and they do not have the coolest design and they are not influencers."

Well, nobody knows that there are communal practices that include mobility between towns and between very cool people. I mean, the truth is. I have seen many incredible counter-tourist cooperative projects.

So, well, that's it. People who do informative walks, like pedagogies for walkers, like counter-tourism. There are a lot of people and a lot of things, radical historians, there who make their counter-discourses and take people. I mean, I think there are a lot of them, for me, there is a lot of hope there.

What happens is that we don't connect to it. In other words, the algorithm makes it so that you don't see it and you stay, I mean, that information, you say that they post it, it's not going to reach you, right? I mean, it's designed so that it doesn't reach you. So, but there are a lot of really cool things. I don't live in that [00:59:00] sad dystopia, that a lot of people live in, like "I'm worthless."

"We have to stop moving." I don't live it. We don't have to move too much either. I think that nomadism in the middle class is already a form of dispossession as well. There is, as it were, forced dispossession in the middle classes. Not below. But well, I don't live it with this doom whatever. Condemnation. I mean, like, ah, all movement is fucked up, there are very essentialist people who say, "All tourism is shit."

And I would say, well, you live with a lot of guilt. Dude, that's great. It's called Catholicism. And I know it very well. There are other ways. I mean, without so much guilt, you can give your money to cool people and it's not going to solve the problem, but it's cooler than giving it to the hotel and the colonialist and the one who broke social property.

I mean, if you do something, it's not minimal, but you do something. Well, I've seen things where I say, well, there's something here, no, [01:00:00] there's something here. It also happens that many times initiatives that reject "what's cool" don't want to be very visible and don't want to be very famous, so that's the problem with fair trade and alternative trade, which seeks to make people a little bit invisible sometimes.

That's problematic, isn't it? Because then, how do we send the gang with the cool gang, if the cool gang doesn't want to be sent gang all the time. I mean, they don't want to do business, they don't want to do business because they become capitalists. Anyway. But that, that's another problem, not the problem of cooperativism.

Chris: Sure. So, overflowing with topics and beautiful conversation, Alf, but if I can before we wrap up, I'd like to ask you about your new book. No Dam Can Hold Back the Raging Ocean. Can you tell us a little bit about what it's about and how your previous work has influenced [01:01:00] that new one?

Alf: Yes,

Chris: You've touched on it a little bit, but

Alf: Yeah. This is a book that you can buy in several bookstores, Volcana, Polilla and there where you are with Don Gregorio. We soon want to have it in Jícara, in Utópicas, at Casa Tomada and with me on the Internet, and you can download it in PDF.

I send them to everyone. But, well, it's a book that basically, to put it in a sentence, is my experience and my elaboration on anarchism or the radical left in general. Basically. That is, it tells you a bit about my life story and how I lived it, how I received it. And what have I researched and thought about a practice?

At this moment, history might call it anarchism, but at another time it is called other forms, but yes, like anti-authoritarianism, etc. So, the book is that. I mean, it is a personal essay, but it is also a [01:02:00] political philosophical essay, right? So it's both. I'm telling you about my life, but I'm also telling you about the history of these ideas and how I have seen them, in practice and practiced them as far as I could.

Hmm.

Chris: Well, I'm going to make sure that those places, at least in Oaxaca and also online, are going to be listed on the tourism website when I launch the episode. And on behalf of our listeners, Alf, I'd like to express my sincere gratitude for your willingness to join us today, to talk about these complex issues and to ensure that this dissidence has a place in the world.

Thank you very much. And how could we find your work online? Through social networks or

Alf: Yes? Unfortunately, I wish it wasn't going to happen. But no, I [01:03:00] had no other choice. Yes, my main job is that I have two books abroad that can be found in the bookstores I mentioned.

What I do as a broadcaster is free everywhere, it's Un Sueño Largo Ancho y Hondo. It's @1slaaahh on various social networks. And if you put it there on the internet it will be free and as I was saying before, everything goes together. My fiction part and my pedagogical and political part are pretty much united.

It's more or less the same wave, but yes, let's say the most immediate thing is to listen to what I do, I've been doing it for several years, as a broadcaster. So you just click on it and that's it. And I ask them there to give me a like, to give me the reason why, until now, no, there's no one who can, I mean, I don't work for a [01:04:00] radio station that takes care of my networks and I just record and I would be fine, but no, well, I manage it myself.

So for now, if necessary, the like and the share.

Chris: Sure. Well, those are also going to be on the end-of-tourism website when the episode launches. So, thanks a lot, Alf.

Alf: Thanks, Chris.

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