Anarchy Works.pdf - Infoshop.org

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Anarchy Works
We didn't let the Federal Police forces standing guard
stop our celebrating or our mourning. The whole
tourist pathway in the center of the city, Macedonio
Alcala, was full of life. Protest music was playing
and people danced and watched the creation of our
famous sand murals, called tapetes. We dedicated them
to all the people killed in the movement. Anyone
who wanted to could join in to add to the mosaics.
The mixed colors expressed our mixed feelings of
repression and freedom; joy and sadness; hatred and
love. The artwork and the chants permeating the
street created an unforgettable scene that ultimately
transformed our sadness into joy ,llo
While artwork and traditional festivals played a role in the
development of a liberating culture, the struggle itself, specifically
the barricades, provided a meeting point where alienation was shed
and neighbors built new relationships. One woman described her
experience:
You found all kinds of people at the barricades. A
lot of people tell us they met at the barricades. Even
though they were neighbors, they didn't know each
other before. They'll even say, "I didn't ever talk to
my neighbor before because I didn't think I liked him,
but now that we're at the barricade together, he's a
compafiero. "
So the barricades weren't just traffic barriers, but
110 Diana Denham and c.A.S.A. Collective (eds.), Teaching Rebellion:
Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca, Oakland: PM Press,
2008, interview with Yescka.
became spaces where neighbors could chat and
communities could meet. Barricades became a way
that communities empowered themselvesYl
Throughout Europe, dozens of autonomous villages have built a
life outside capitalism. Especially in Italy, France, and Spain, these
villages exist outside regular state control and with little influence
from the logic of the market. Sometimes buying cheap land, often
squatting abandoned villages, these new autonomous communities
create the infrastructure for a libertarian, communal life and the
culture that goes with it. These new cultures replace the nuclear
family with a much broader, more inclusive and flexible family
united by affinity and consensual love rather than bloodlines and
proprietary love; they destroy the division oflabor by gender,
weaken age segregation and hierarchy, and create communal and
ecological values and relationships.
A particularly remarkable network of autonomous villages can
be found in the mountains around Itoiz, in Navarra, part of the
Basque country. The oldest of these, Lakabe, has been occupied
for twenty-eight years as of this writing, and is home to about
thirty people. A project of love, Lakabe challenges and changes the
traditional aesthetic of rural poverty. The floors and walkways are
beautiful mosaics of stone and tile, and the newest house to be built
there could pass for the luxury retreat of a millionaire-except that
it was built by the people who live there, and designed in harmony
with the environment, to catch the sun and keep out the cold.
Lakabe houses a communal bakery and a communal dining room,
which on a normal day hosts delicious feasts that the whole village
eats together.
Another of the villages around Itoiz, Aritzkuren, exemplifies a
certain aesthetic that represents another idea of history. Thirteen
III Ditto, interview with Leyla.
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