The End of Tourism

On this episode, my guest is Nandita Sharma, an activist and scholar whose research is shaped by the social movements she is active in, including No Borders movements and those struggling for the planetary commons. She is the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020). She is a Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, and received her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Show Notes

* Racism in Vancouver: turning lead into gold

* From European colonies to the nation-state

* The inversion of “native” and the creation of “migrant”

* From “foreigner” to “colonizer”

* Essentialism, embodiment, and blaming the other

* Land vs territory: belonging within a nationalist logic

* No borders: migrant crisis or border crisis?

* What do we limit?

* Everyday nationalism

Homework

Official Website: https://nanditasharma.net/

Bluesky @nsharma101.bsky.social

Hydra Rising: The Enduring Struggle for Freedom, Mobility, and the Commons

Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants

Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada

Transcript

Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Nandita, to the End of Tourism Podcast. Thank you for being willing to join me today to speak about your work.

Nandita: It’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Chris: To begin, as we always do here, I’d like to give our listeners an idea of where you’re speaking from today by asking you where you find yourself and what the world looks like where you are.

Nandita: I’m currently in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. And we have had a very active hurricane season this summer and going into the fall. So I’m really reminded of how connected the world is. I’m on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but what’s happening in the rest of the world is directly affecting us here. And not in a good way in this case because of the climate catastrophe we find ourselves in.

Chris: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. It’s been a very dry wet season here in [00:01:00] Oaxaca as well, and people like myself - urban people - can worry, but we do know that the level of crop failure in this region and beyond is catastrophic. So, it surely makes one wonder what’s to come.

Well, earlier this year, Professor, I came to your work through an interview you did with Fiona Jeffries that ended up in her 2015 anthology, Nothing to Lose But Our Fear, an interview entitled “Terror and Mercy at the Border.” I was so impressed by the nuance and depth in your words that I immediately bought and read your book, Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants. Reading that book, I was inundated by even more nuance and depth and your unflinching capacity to not take any particular ideology or history for granted, and to point out the many contradictions in how most people today, I [00:02:00] think anyways, are deeply confused by popular understandings of nationality and nationalism, migration and border politics.

And so it kind of confirmed for me a degree of mythopoetic suspicion that you lay out in your book, where you write at the beginning, “God has since been replaced by the new religion of nationalism.” God has since been replaced by the new religion of nationalism.”

And so, before we dig into the details, I’d like to inquire after why you decided to study and write about nationalism and border politics, and if there was anything in your life or travels that influenced such a path.

Nandita: I think that the greatest influence was moving, when I was five years old, from India, where I was born, to Canada, to Vancouver, Canada. That was an [00:03:00] incredibly traumatic experience for me. Not because of the moving part. I was very excited to be moving. It was the same year that the first moon landing happened. So I was very excited to see the world that was seen from up above by those astronauts. But when we landed in Vancouver, it was a racist nightmare. It was the first time that I had seen my parents denigrated and harassed on the streets, and watching them not really being able to deal... like, not really being able to change that was profoundly traumatic. Traumatizing. And there wasn’t a day that went by in my childhood that I wasn’t made to feel like I didn’t belong where I lived. So I think that eventually [00:04:00] I was able to understand that in addition to racism, there was some kind of dimension of space and place and this idea that I was out of place needed to also be addressed, and that only happened by understanding nationalism.

Chris: And is that what you decided to study immediately? Did it take time to kind of gather in the shards of what had culturally been broken in that place, to take the next step towards that particular apprenticeship or study?

Nandita: Yeah, that’s a really great question, because it did. I first understood that what was happening to my parents and my brother and me and many others around us was because we were classified as immigrants. So I was very interested in that category. One of the first jobs that my mother had in Canada was working [00:05:00] as a farm worker, so that connected me...

You know, she would bring me and my brother to the farms in the summertime because of lack of childcare. And so, we would work on the farms in the summers. So that connected me to what I later came to understand: a whole category of workers called “immigrant workers,” and people classified as immigrant workers are enduring. So I entered my formal kind of study into what happened to explain the trauma that I was experiencing by looking at immigration policies, and it was really only through activism and finally realizing after working with people who had been deported, for not being able to meet the criteria of refugee, that I came to understand that there’s no such thing as a fair and just immigration policy, which is what I fought for up [00:06:00] until that time.

Like, we need a better immigration policy. We need it to be non-discriminatory. We need more numbers. You know, all of those kinds of things that you call for with immigration reform. And it was only when I realized that no immigration policy can ever meet the needs of people around the world to be able to live where they need to live, that I adopted both a “no borders” politics and an understanding that what needed to be studied was the social process by which we became “migrants” or how some people become “illegal.” And therefore, how some people become “citizens,” right?

So the whole thing was then opened up like, “let’s question the entire system that we live in that takes it for granted that one’s nationality, [00:07:00] one’s immigration status, is going to be a major determinant of your entire life and what happens to you.”

Chris: Well, I’m just so grateful to hear that and that you would take the traumatizing moments or contexts of your life and perhaps your parents’ lives as well, and gather them up, and perhaps instead of weaponizing them, which is so often and too often what happens in our time, is to find a way to understand how it came to be this way.

And I think that that’s by and large what you do in your books. And so I’d like to begin by asking you about this dynamic and binary between “ natives” and “migrants.” You know, it seems to me that for most people today the concepts of “native” and “migrant” are so deeply ingrained, and that the ways we understand them are so deeply ingrained that there is a sense that they’ve always existed in the way that we consider them to be today [00:08:00] or to exist today.

And in your book, Home Rule, you write, quote, “Today, the exemplary national subject is someone laying claim to being a native of national territory. “The imperial binary of European and native has thus been flipped into the national binary of national native and migrant.”

And so, Nandita, I’m wondering if you’d be willing to touch on how this change happened over the course of history, how the changes in history have come to reconfigure our notions of “native” and “migrant.”

Nandita: So I think it’s good to start with the understanding that people who want to rule over others, and control their lives and control their labour and control their land, [00:09:00] do so by separating themselves from those whom they rule, to elevate themselves into a category and a set of stories or myths that tell us that they deserve to be elevated above all others, right?

So, under European imperialism, one of the mechanisms of doing that was to invent and then elevate European-ness above all those that they were colonizing, and all those that they colonized were classified as one kind of native or another. Right? And usually according to the colony that they were living in. Right?

So my parents were both born as the “natives of British India.” That was the official kind of state category that they were placed [00:10:00] in. The category of “native” was meant to signify or tell the story that these are inferior people who are not living up to the high standards of European civilization and therefore need to be under someone, under European tutelage, right? So that was the grand narrative of European colonialism, right?

And I think that these narratives are really important to study because it tells us how

those who are being ruled over come to participate in these sets of relationships.

Colonialism, of course, was challenged, always. Right?

No system of oppression and suppression and exploitation and stealing of land is ever unchallenged. So they were always challenged. By the 19th century, the greatest [00:11:00] challenge to colonialism came from nationalists in the colonies, right? Not all those who opposed colonialism in the colonies were nationalists, but the nationalists won out. And the nationalists in the colonies, the anti-colonial activists who were nationalists, the story that they told is that “we’re not native, because native had come to be associated with all things negative.” Right? “Backwards,” “ uncivilized,” “savages,” et cetera.

“We’re not natives. We, like the people in Europe, are members of nations. And so we want to shed that kind of native status and have national self-determination over ‘our land’ and ‘ our futures.’ And they won, right?

Clearly, the world that we live in today is an effect of their [00:12:00] victories, in part. We have the colony of British India that my parents were born into became the nation-state of India in 1947. I was born into the nation-state of India. And that was supposed to be this liberatory moment, right?

You know, “you are masters of your own destiny, of your own territory. You’re in control. You’re no longer being ruled over. You now are the ruler.”

And so that was the narrative that I was brought into. And how the “national” became the “national-native” (as I put it in the book) is an important story of life in those former colonies and what are now nation-states, because no nation-state has ever delivered on all of the promises that it made, [00:13:00] right? So the anti-colonial movement that was nationalist in India, where I was born, failed to deliver on any of the promises that they had made to the people who fought for it, for those promises.

Land was not given back, right? People were not respected and treated with dignity. People’s labour was still not their own right? It was being exploited by others. And in fact, all of that intensified under the nation-state, the sovereign nation-state. And so, within each nation-state there was the politics of each nation-state and the conflicts and the struggle to figure out why we were not getting the equality and the dignity and the prosperity that we had been promised. So, [00:14:00] rather than look to the rulers and go, “Okay, this isn’t working out. These rulers are actually they’re actually not in it for us,” it became “actually it’s these other groups of people. They’re not really members of the nation, and they are the reason we are not prospering and why there’s no justice.”

So, quickly, in India, religious minorities, like Muslims, for example, well, I mean from the start, the very, the very minute when the clock struck for independence in India, Muslims in India were absolutely demonized and cast out as an “other,” right? So the native became this way of understanding who were the “real” nationals. So it wasn’t the same “native” that existed under European imperialism. This was a new “native.” It was [00:15:00] the “native” who the state really belonged to and who the state really represented.

Chris: That’s incredible. I mean, I think that’s one of the really not shocking, but just fascinating aspects of Home Rule, that there was this kind of inversion of who is native and who is foreigner and the context under which those words were used.

I remember I interviewed a Mixe thinker, Yasnaya Aguilar, many seasons ago, and she mentioned how most people in Mexico would refer to her and her people as “indigenous.” But she said, “You know, that’s not something I want to be called because that’s in fact not what I am in the conventional sense of the word, because that word, that term, was an imposition.” It was something that was given to certain types of people based on a kind of imperial mindset of categorization and classification among the Spanish who came [00:16:00] here. So I’m reminded of that a little bit as you speak.

Nandita: Yeah, that’s so important that people who are being categorized as “indigenous” or “native” are rejecting that term. That’s something that we don’t hear enough of, in part, as I discuss in my book, being “native” or being “indigenous” has become an increasingly powerful mechanism through which to lay claim to land or to other resources, and of course, most importantly, to the idea of sovereignty over territory. So it’s really heartening for me to hear more and more people who are classified as “indigenous” rejecting that, precisely as your friend said, because it is another state category used to rule over us.

So if I could just go back and mention one thing. I had been [00:17:00] studying nationalism for quite some time before I looked at this category of “native,” and I came to look at the category of “native” after I moved to Hawaii to work and to be with my partner. And it was because here in Hawaii, what was happening in the 1990s and 2000s was that the people who were not native Hawaiian were all being reclassified by some sovereignty activists, whether they were native or not native, as “colonizers.” And that was a real shock to my system that the descendants of indentured plantation workers, or the descendants of enslaved people, or any other person who moved to Hawaii [00:18:00] was automatically classified as a “colonizer” simply for not being native.

So I was really troubled as a migration scholar that human movement was all being collapsed into this idea that if you’re not native, you’re a colonizer, and that fits so perfectly with a nationalist mindset, because a nationalist mindset is this idea that only some people belong in any particular place in the world. “ There are some people who belong, and everyone else is out of place.”

You know, and going back to my childhood trauma of being cast as out of place, it felt like something I had already experienced before, that “native” was increasingly being used as a way to determine who really belonged or not. And therefore, interestingly enough, your citizenship status, whether you were a citizen of the United States - which [00:19:00] controls Hawaii - or you weren’t, was no longer the most salient point in politics. It was whether you were “native” to the land.

And after studying it in Hawaii, and living through it and continuing to live through it in Hawaii, the study that I did that ended up being Home Rule (the book) looked at this from around the world. And the biggest flip that happened was actually in Europe. Under European colonialism, “Europeans” were in a separate category from “native.” They were elevated and separated from all of the colonized people that were called various kinds of natives, but now people in Europe were calling themselves “natives.” And they were calling themselves, you know, “the natives of England” or “the natives of Wales” or “the natives of France” or “the natives of Sweden” or “ the natives of Greece” or wherever, against those who were being categorized [00:20:00] as “migrants,” right?

So this category of “native” was being taken up, not by those who we usually think of when we think of “indigenous” or “native,” but basically across the world and across the political spectrum, from neo-Nazis in Europe calling themselves the “natives” of one European nation-state or another, all the way to the left calling for anti-colonial liberation. They were all using this term “native,” and it was “a native to a national territory that the native should be a part of.”

Chris: Yeah. I mean, the research you’ve done on this is incredible, and I’m personally one who deeply, deeply appreciates the inquiry and analysis around contradiction. It’s slightly different, and I wanted to maybe ask you a little bit about this. Because of the dynamics around tourism here in Mexico, certainly during [00:21:00] the pandemic and certainly shortly after the lockdowns, there was what many described as a kind of “invasion” of “ gringos,” mostly Americans or white Americans, to Mexico.

And what happened very, very quickly and for justified and unjustified reasons at the same time was a strong degree of backlash. And what happened was you started to notice that not only people, but movements themselves, organizations who were traditionally leftist, were undertaking the same kind of logic and rhetoric against the tourist, against the gringo, that you would hear and that you still hear espoused by, for example, far-right gringos in the United States against Mexicans.

And so, there was an incredible, maybe not confirmation, but clarification in your work as to the way in which the logic of nationalism [00:22:00] knows no borders, we might say, that it doesn’t solely belong to the people that we might call “extremists” or the causes that we might call “fascist,” “fascistic.”

And you very eloquently, in your book, speak to this. And so anyways, I’d like to offer you a deep bow of consideration for that.

Nandita: Yeah, I think that it is really important to acknowledge how we misrecognize the problem when we make the problem the so-called foreigner, right? What is being misrepresented in this idea that some people don’t belong, right? Some people are foreign to a particular place, that they should “go home,” et cetera, right?

What I think we’re misrecognizing when we say “go home,” what we’re really upset at are [00:23:00] the disparities and inequities in the distribution of wealth and resources in our world. And what we get angry at, instead of the social relationships that produce this outcome, we get upset at the embodiment of those disparities in a figure, someone who stands in for the “West” or the “outsider,” the “foreigner,” et cetera. So I think that is something that the left has not fully understood.

The right obviously traffics in misrepresentation and misunderstanding, right? The far-right would cease to exist without misrepresentation [00:24:00] and concerted efforts at propaganda against particular groups of people. For the left to do that is much more worrisome, because the left is supposed to be the place where we take a cold, hard look at what’s going on, analyze it so that we can move forward, right? And what the left is also supposed to do and supposed to understand is that “ rule through division.” I know it’s a cliché - the whole kind of divide-and-conquer strategy. It’s one that works, and it keeps on working, right?

Chris: Right.

Nandita: We fail to acknowledge how connected we all are to one another, how each of us is positioned in this world to our collective disadvantage, right? Like, how an American tourist in Mexico or [00:25:00] in Hawaii is not going to change the world. That tourism as an industry is a capitalist endeavor to make money, and there are people in Mexico who are Mexican nationals who make money off the tourism industry, just as there are Hawaiians in Hawaii Hawaiians in who make money who make money from the tourism industry, just as there are transnational corporations in each of these places, in Oaxaca and in Hawaii, that make money off of tourism. It’s a capitalist industry.

So just simply saying, you know, “Gringo” or “Yankee, go home,” is not going to solve the problem, especially given that the problem is not just the Gringo or the American or the Yankee. The problem is this system of capitalism that we come to know each other through, right? We come to know each other through these [00:26:00] incredibly exploitative, destructive mechanisms. And instead of saying, “Let’s change the destructive mechanisms,” we go after each other’s throats, right?

Chris: Absolutely. Yeah. And admittedly, there are architectures, economic and cultural, if we can call it that, cultural or anti-cultural architectures that to some degree dictate the behaviours of both tourists and migrants in the places that they arrive in.

And it’s not to say that they retain the same value, but that there are a lot of these deeper structural issues at play. And I’m curious in terms of what you’re speaking to about belonging, about this question of home.

In Home Rule, you write that, “Living outside of one’s national homeland previously was rendered by all nationalisms as resulting from crisis and as [00:27:00] crisis-producing. In that process, human mobility across national boundaries was pathologized as a vector of contamination, something that can only be rectified by passports, borders, citizenship laws, and the ongoing politics of who belongs and who doesn’t.”

And so I’m curious in your work around, around nationalism and the nationalism that the nation-state procures, I’m curious if you think our contemporary crisis of belonging and not belonging, this question of home and where home is, if that is affected by national consciousness or this logic of nationalism?

Nandita: It’s really hard to imagine the ideas of belonging that are not informed by nationalism today. When I hear people talking about their love [00:28:00] where they come from, it’s mostly not about the rivers and the oceans and the trees and the forests and the other living beings and the mountains. It’s about homeland. And it’s about ancestral place, right? That, “this is my place because this is the place of my grandparents or my great-great-grandparents or a hundred generations of my people have lived here; therefore this is my place.

And a lot of that way of thinking is said to be a love of land, when I would argue is that it’s really a love of territory, and those two things are not at all the same.

Land, air, water, is our planet, our Earth. It’s the actual place that we need to live in order to thrive, in order to exist. Territory [00:29:00] is when land and air and water is turned into the property of one or another group of people, and territorial notions of belonging, which is what nationalism feeds into, are the ones that are the ones that create borders criteria for who really or who really this belongs. Like, “Have your ancestors lived here for generations?” Or, “Were they the original people that lived here?” And if not, then “who the hell are you? You don’t really belong here. Why you go don’t you go back to where your ancestors are buried?” Et cetera, et cetera, right?

So, we talk about that in terms of, “Oh, this is the way all humans have always thought, forever.”

And it’s just historians and archaeologists and sociologists like myself will show, study after study, that this is not, in fact, how people have always thought, that [00:30:00] these are relatively new ways of understanding ourselves, that movement has been a part of human history from the beginning, that people can, in the present and in the future, develop a very, very deep sense of place and belonging that has nothing to do with where their ancestors are buried. And that is the truth that nationalists cannot deal with, right?

Nationalists cannot deal with a borderless world. They cannot deal with the freedom to recognize the freedom to move on our single shared planet, which is the actual land and air and water that we live in.

I was talking earlier about the hurricanes, right? Like, it doesn’t matter where those greenhouse gases [00:31:00] were created. In the end, wherever they were created, it’s going to affect me here in Hawaii no matter what. It’s a shared planet. You can’t wall it off, and we’re living with the consequences of the fact that it’s a shared planet, and instead of responding in a way that could help us figure out collectively how to continue to live on this shared planet, erecting more and more borders. The borders are the target borders are hardening. Nationalism is intensifying. Fascism is storming across our entire planet right now, and at the eye of the storm is that figure of someone who doesn’t belong where they live, right? That is the core of fascist belief everywhere, right? It’s “let’s go after [00:32:00] that person who doesn’t belong here, and once they are eliminated, whether that’s through deportation, detention or extermination, once they are eliminated, we will all be fine. That’s the fascist promise. That’s also the nationalist promise, right? And so one thing that is very, very clear to me, having studied nationalism for most of my adult now all nationalists and all nation-states bend towards fascism, because every single one of them relies on the figure of the migrant or the foreign outsider who doesn’t belong to justify their existence, to justify why the citizen should get more than everyone else on the planet.

Chris: Wow. I mean, wow. You just laid a mine or a bomb down in [00:33:00] my mind, and it’s gone off in all different corners. I don’t know if it was your work or somewhere else where I saw it. The contention that “fascism is just capitalism or nationalism having an existential crisis.” Like, the difference between the two is so insignificant. But I guess liberal democracies do their best to make that difference happen.

Nandita: I mean, that’s the scary part, right, is that embedded in liberal democracies, with their valorization of citizenship and therefore their problematization of migration, lies fascism.

Chris: I mean, I interviewed a woman from quite an incredible organization called No Name Kitchen, largely based out of the peripheries of Europe. And she said to me that, at least for her and her colleagues and comrades, to really understand the politics around mobility, especially “international mobility,” in our time, we need to reconfigure the understanding of what’s often called the “migrant crisis” as a “border [00:34:00] crisis.”

And I’m wondering if that’s something that is also part of the way that you look at the world through your work?

Nandita: Yeah, absolutely, and I love the group No Name Kitchen. I think they’re just doing absolutely important and crucial life-saving work and crucial solidarity work. I just love that organization. But I would say, yes, it’s a border crisis, but ultimately it’s a crisis of citizenship, right? When we’re talking about the world that we live in, and how it leads to fascism across the world, what we’re talking about is this category of “citizen” that we all feel attachment to, because it’s the source of our rights. It’s the source of our identity for many people.

Yeah, and it’s real. Like, there’s a materiality to citizenship, because if I can enter [00:35:00] the United States without question because I have a US passport, the US cannot deny me entry into the United States because I’m a US citizen. That’s what citizenship means in a world with borders: you have to be allowed back in and, according to the law, you’re not supposed to be deportable. You’re not supposed to be.

That’s it. That’s ultimately what citizenship ensures you, if you can prove it, if you can prove you’re a citizen, which many people cannot. But it also becomes a source of, like, “Do I get access to social benefits?” “Do I get access to the formal labour market?” “Do I get access to higher education?” “Do I get access to housing?” You know, so citizenship becomes this material basis in which we are trapped into supporting a [00:36:00] system that is going to lead to fascism, because it’s going to be done in our name, right?

It’s going to be, “we need to go after migrants because they’re destroying all the things that only belong to you as a citizen.”

So, when I talk about being a no borders activist, clearly it means that people should have the freedom to move, and the freedom to stay where and when they choose to. But it also means the abolition of citizenship, right? The abolition of the category of “migrant,” that is the category that states use to deny you free entry, right? The category “migrant” that they use to deport you is dependent on the category of “citizen,” right? We exist in a relationship to one another. There’s no such thing as a migrant without a citizen. So, all of us can participate in ending this [00:37:00] path towards fascism by rejecting our capture in these state categories that ensure that we buy into it in a big way, right? So that’s the culture. We live in a culture of exclusion, of borders, of not belonging in the name of “I belong, therefore you do not.”

Chris: Yeah, yeah. This is something I really wanted to ask you about as well: the question and concept and movement around “ no borders.” Because not all of them certainly, but a lot of the activists I interview whose communities are overrun by tourist industries and economies, especially the ones who have endured it the longest and in the worst ways. Hawaii actually is one example.

But certainly, the tourist capitals of Europe, Barcelona and Venice. When I ask, you know, “ what message might you have for people who want to visit your place,” right? [00:38:00] And there is a kind of consensus on one side that, you know, “ learn the language, learn about what’s happening here, get in touch with local cultural centers or organizations about how you can be a good guest.” Right? And then, there are other people who say you know, “If you want to help us, if you want to be a benefit to this place, don’t come, because we simply cannot handle any more of what’s already become of tourism anyways,” right?

And so, when I think about this in the context of no borders, if we remove, for example, nation-state borders from the world, from the lines on the map, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we immediately remove the lines in our minds, right? That logic of national consciousness or nationalism doesn’t simply disappear just because we remove the borders from the [00:39:00] maps or abolish passports and citizenship and that kind of thing.

And so I’m curious, what do you think, or what have other people put forth in regards to that consideration, if you’ve heard such a thing?

Nandita: Yeah, I think that it’s important to point out that the devastation that tourism has caused in places like Oaxaca or Hawaii or Barcelona or Venice is happening in a world with borders. Right? It’s happening in a world of nation-states and borders. It’s happening in a global capitalist economy in which some people, particularly those in the rich world with rich world passports, have very few barriers to jetting off and participating in the capitalist tourist economy, right?

So the devastation that is currently happening is not as a result of no borders, right? It’s happening within this system, because as the world of [00:40:00] nation-states that we live in is not at all evenly distributed, right? Like, some people, like me with my US passport, can move visa-free around much of the world, right? Whereas, of course, someone with the passport of my cousin in India has very few places in the world where they can move visa-free, right?

The other thing to point out about no borders movements is, and perhaps it’s the problem with the term no borders movement, is that we are focused, of course, on pointing to nation-states and national borders and immigration controls as a major mechanism of global capitalism and of inequality and injustice and death and misery. But a no-borders movement is also an anti-capitalist [00:41:00] movement, right? It’s not one that simply is saying that, “We want everything to stay the same. We just don’t want there to be any passports.” Right? So, you know, because there is a far-right version of that, right? There is a far-right version or even a liberal version of “let’s eliminate borders, but keep capitalism in place,” so as to more easily exploit groups of workers and freely move them around the planet as corporations need. Right?

A no borders movement is not simply about the abolition of borders. It’s also about the abolition of capitalism. No borders activists, in my experience, are looking at freedom as a necessary requirement to live on this planet in [00:42:00] peace and in harmony with the rest of the world, right? That is what is needed - is freedom, and particularly the freedom to move, and to stay. So I think that this dystopian nightmare of a no-borders world, or the world that no-borders activists want to bring about, just means that there’s going to be, instead of 10 million people in Barcelona every summer, there’s going to be 100 million people, right?

Because the borders will be open and they’ll all be rushing in, right? I think that dystopian fear is the fear that nationalists foster and stoke, right? That a world without borders will be a world of chaos, will be a world of devastation. And ultimately, the fear is the hordes, right? “The hordes will move in.” And so, we just really need to question, like, is that what’s wrong with the world, [00:43:00] right? Or is there something much deeper that we need to address?

Chris: Definitely. From the tourist point of view, I imagine that displacement being like, “okay, we can go anywhere now because we have the passports and we have the money.” And then just how that has already damaged the places that people live in, tourist locales anyways.

Nandita: You know, tourism is a capitalist industry. I don’t know of a single capitalist industry that doesn’t absolutely destroy the lives and the ecologies of the places that it lands in. Like, it just does. What capitalist industry doesn’t do that? The garment industry, the automobile industry, the fossil fuel industry.

It’s just a system of death. So here in Hawaii, for instance, the tourism industry is really kind of like a focus of anger and hostility, and then the anger and the hostility isn’t directed at the capitalist world system. It’s directed at someone from Idaho who’s come to [00:44:00] Hawaii for a vacation, right? As if that’s going to solve anything.

But it’s also the entire system, right? How do most people in Hawaii get their food? It’s shipped in. 90% of our food is sold in the market here, because land has been taken up for other uses other than growing food, and it’s privatized, so even if you could have a farm, you’d have to pay a fortune for it. Most of our food gets shipped in on ships that are a major source of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases. So it’s like there’s no innocence. There’s no outside to this system, right? So, if all the tourists went away, it’s not like Hawaii would become this self-sufficient ecological paradise. And even if it were, as soon as there is a nuclear [00:45:00] meltdown somewhere in the world, all those greenhouse gases from the rest of the world are going to come here anyways.

So just to acknowledge reality, is almost like a call that we it’s like a call that we to think of ourselves as part of this Earth, rather than this one tiny little place in it, because we’re not going to solve the biggest problems in the world with that kind of thinking.

Chris: And without asking you for the Bible on how we get there, I’d like to ask, just as a kind of follow-up, about limits. It’s something that we approach quite a bit on the podcast.

In your other book, Home Economics, you write “Nation-state practices have historically embarked on vigorous acts of limite, the structuring of strict differentiations that both organize and make common sense of systems of apartheid or the existence of two or more separate legal regimes [00:46:00] and practices for differently delineated groups.”

Now, I’m curious, given the consequences of tourism, but also migration, do you think it’s possible for communities to enact grassroots-level limits on visitors to their place, not necessarily in the context of the way the nation-state does in terms of saying, like, “Okay, we’re only going to allow this many people in,” or anything, but perhaps in the quality of the invitation, the quality of how people interact with each other, the kind of intergenerational lineages that might come together as a result of a grassroots willingness to engage in hospitality? This is to say, without collapsing into a politics of exclusion or NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard). Maybe the question is: how do you think we might apprentice a new skill of limits that isn’t conflated with prohibition or exclusionism?[00:47:00]

Nandita: I think that what we need to limit are not other living beings moving into where we currently are, but limits on what we allow to happen, limits on anyone trying to rule over us, limits on anyone trying to say that they govern a particular part of our world, limits on the devastation of the land and the air and the water that we all need to live, right?

Those are the limits that we should be talking about understanding. I was in Greece; I can’t even remember when now, I think it was maybe 10 years ago. There was a fire burning around Athens, a massive fire that was moving very, very quickly. And my friends and I were there for a feminist, no borders, [00:48:00] summer camp that we were teaching at, and we were travelling to Thessaloniki, which is north of Athens.

And we were going in the opposite direction as all the firefighters who were streaming into Athens and the surrounding areas to put out the fire. And when we got to Thessaloniki, we saw the news, and my friend translated for me a woman, an older woman, who had to escape her home by going into the ocean, right? Because it was either the mountain was on fire, or there was the ocean. So she went into the ocean and waited to be rescued there. And remember, this is 10 years ago. This is in the midst of what the far-right and European political leaders were calling the “migration crisis.” People fleeing Syria, people fleeing this incredible war in Syria, and devastation in other parts of the world, coming to Greece, as hopefully, a place of safety.

And this older woman who had [00:49:00] lived in this village her entire life and was now sitting in the middle of her bay waiting to be rescued, was saying that while she was sitting there, she thought any one of us could be a refugee in fifteen minutes. And that’s the ethos that I think that we need to bring with us on this planet, especially in the middle of a climate emergency that we’re in right now.

Last week there was a hurricane that potentially was a category four hurricane that could have landed on my island, the island that I live on. You know, my house would have collapsed; I would need to flee. Any one of us might have to do that in this world that we’re living in, right? When the droughts happen, and there are no more crops. The hurricanes come, the glaciers fall.

Movement is who could it be going to be life, [00:50:00] and so who of us is going to want to say that in the name of limiting who comes to where I am, I’m going to allow the limits of me going somewhere else, because that’s the trade-off, right? We have this kind of imagination as a sovereign, like, “I am going to sit here and determine who gets to come here.” But what if I need to go where some other person is sitting around acting like a sovereign or a state and saying, “You don’t get to come here”?

That’s the reality of the world that we live in, right? And many of us, especially in the rich world, where I currently am based, we have this imaginary that “it’s never going to be us. It’s always going to be someone else, so we want to set all the limits.”

I think that’s a fool’s game, particularly now.

Chris: Thank you for that incredibly sobering reflection, Nandita. [00:51:00] Yeah. I don’t consider myself an expert by any means, but I do see that being very much a part of the trajectory that we’re heading in.

Nandita: Yeah, and I would say that the people who have profited from the fossil fuel industry and profited from making the world reliant on the fossil fuel industry for food to come to Hawaii, for example. They know about the climate emergency that we’re in, and I think that’s a large part of why we’re seeing a fascist storm raging across our world right now, right?

They’re putting into place the camps, and the border control, and the surveillance systems to keep us in our place, wherever they determine that place is. Right?

So I think a politics of “all of this is our place, this is our planet, us and all the other beings on this planet, this is ours” is the kind of politics that we need to be advancing.

Chris: Amen. Thank [00:52:00] you so much, Nandita. This is a beautiful spot to end at, but I have one final question, and I really, really want to ask it. And I think it might also be a good send-off. And I’ll start with a little last quote from Home Economics, in which you write: “It is vitally important for us to expand our definition of nationalism to include any discursive practice that works to reproduce, ideologically as well as materially, the imagined community of the nation and present it as always realizable. Nationalism, therefore, should not be seen as limited to those chest-beating exercises in which notions of national blood and soil are brought into play. As author Michael Billig well points out, ‘ banal nationalism permeates our lives. It shapes our identities, the [00:53:00] many social interactions we have on a daily basis, and our modes of thought.”

And so this was a really kind of incisive wondering that I had before reading your books and before finding out about banal nationalism and just wondering why we use the term nationalism only to apply to extremists when it seems that, on a daily basis we are interacting with people of different national backgrounds, or quote origins and employing what we might very superficially call nationalism. When I meet someone maybe from Zimbabwe or Germany, all of my kind of media-bound or superficial notions of what a Zimbabwean or German is or should be are employed in my projection of who they are before ever meeting them.

And so, I guess my question [00:54:00] is, do you think that this form of banal or light nationalism, do you consider it a form of nationalism? And secondly, do you think it affects our inability to recognize the ways in which the “light” form of nationalism might feed the heavier, extreme form of nationalism?

Nandita: Yeah, I think the kind of everyday nationalism that you’re talking about, how we see each other as nationals, right? I’m always asked where I really came from, because obviously I don’t fit the racialized imagination of being Canadian or being American, being from the US.

This way that we look across a room full of people or at an airport and we’re nationalizing everyone, right? “ This is someone from here, and this is someone from there.” An everyday form of nationalism that absolutely props up the fascists in the world, right?

I was [00:55:00] recently in Vancouver visiting friends and walking through a park that I grew up playing in the neighbourhood that I grew up in. And two people screamed at me to go back to where I came from. So it’s like that’s everyday nationalism. Like, “You look like someone who is from another nation and who has its own place in the world, and you are in my place now, and I get to act like I own this place and tell you to go back to where you came from, right?”

So I think that everyday nationalism is what fascists exploit, right?

They exploit the fact that we’ve defined community as a nation. They exploit the fact that we’ve defined rights as rights that belong to nationals, to citizens. They [00:56:00] exploit the fact that when we think of land, we only think of territory, and not actually land. That’s what fascists exploit, is that everyday nationalism.

Chris: How superficial can we get in this regard? When I meet someone new here in Oaxaca, the question is almost always, “Where are you from?” And I tell them. If I say Canada, because I understand that’s the question they’re asking or if that’s the generic contextual answer that they’re looking for, is that part of the national logic or consciousness that also feeds and breeds the fascism that you’re talking about?

Nandita: Yeah, absolutely, because fascism is an inherent part of nation-states and of nationalist thought, and nation-states exist not only in the rich world, but also in the poor world, right? They exist in the former colonies of Europe, and [00:57:00] they exist in the former centers of Europe, right? So, where I was born, the nation-state of India, there is a Hindu fascist government in power right now, right?

So, fascists are not limited to Europe or to the United States or the rich world, right? It is a global phenomenon, and we ignore that at our peril, right? We romanticize these former colonies that are now nation-states at our peril.

Chris: I think that the work that you’re doing, this way of breaking the spell or trying to break the spells around national logic and consciousness is just so deeply important and, unfortunately, I think, from what I’ve seen, so deeply overlooked.

And so, it’s really just a great honour to be able to speak with you today and to get to hear you really offer us some of the tools to break the spells of national consciousness or nationalism or national logic in our own [00:58:00] lives. And so, of course, on behalf of our listeners, I’d like to offer you a deep bow. Thank you for your willingness to join me today, Nandita.

Nandita: Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate this chance to talk about something that is given very, very little airtime. So thank you for doing that.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, personally, I feel like I could speak with you for hours, but you know, I don’t want to take up so much more of your time, but maybe we’ll have that opportunity again at some point.

Nandita: Yeah. We’ll see each other somewhere in the world, hopefully.

Chris: May it be so. And for our listeners who might be interested in following your work, they can do so and purchase your writing via the links at nanditasharma.net. And also, you’re active on Blue Sky under the handle of your name. But I’m curious if there’s anything else, any other projects you’d like to draw our attention to before we say goodbye?

Nandita: I’m working on a [00:59:00] book of ... a co-edited book that I worked on with my pals Bridget Anderson and Cynthia Wright, is coming out in the spring, in March of 2027. And it’s called Hydra Rising: The Enduring Struggle for Freedom, Mobility, and the Commons. And it is an edited volume of essays written by contributors who are all showing us that this world that the No Borders movement is calling for is already here, right?

People are already moving without state permission, and they’re creating solidarity between people categorized as either “migrants” or “citizens.” It’s already happening, and those are the movements that we need to foster, like you mentioned No Name Kitchen, right? Like, these are actually happening already and need our support.

Chris: Beautiful.

Nandita: Thank you.

Chris: Yeah. Thank you so much, Nandita, [01:00:00] and have a beautiful day.

My writing and interviews exist and persist via a gift economy model. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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.

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

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.

My work is based in the gift economy. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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.

My work is based in the gift economy. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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.

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.

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.

My substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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.

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

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?

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.

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 f**k 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 s**t. 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.

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 f*****g 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? "F**k 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?

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 s**t 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 s**t.'

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 s**t, 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.

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.

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.