Home can be a stormy place. It can be a place of constant friction when its inhabitants grow away from each other. In the case of my family, Friday dinners were the best example. They never ended with the same number of participants and always with a bad tone. We just couldn’t hold it together as a family, not even for one hour.
Perhaps it was my father’s cold front, my mom’s repeated chicken recipe or the emotional and aggressive reactions of teenagers, but despite the love, we had zero understanding of conflict management and eventually my entire family structure collapsed.
If the interaction between 5 family members can be such a big challenge, how would you go with an extended family of 30 or 40 people?
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I’m sitting at a family dinner table with Tonia. Tonia is the same age as my mom, but that’s where the similarity ends (besides the Jewish connection). I meet her on the opposite side of the world, in a small eco-village an hour away from Mexico City. Tonia is so eager to share her story, that she doesn’t even offer me a glass of water and dives straight into a deep conversation about collective living.
The story of Huehuecoytle, the eco-village Tonia lives in, is a romantic one. Huehuecoytle was founded in 1982 by a group of international artists and activists who traveled together around Latin America, performing improv theater and delivering art education in remote settlements. After 12 years on the road they decided to settle down on this piece of heaven that locals consider special spiritual land. Huehuecoytle is considered one of the first modern eco-villages in the world. Over the last 30 years it has become a pilgrim site for many tourists, activists and students.
The community members have built everything themselves, using the most innovative and sustainable methods of that time, while respecting the local indigenous traditions. Their special sense of aesthetics and the implementation of art work in almost every block, created a real paradise. However, as I have learned throughout my travels, no place is Utopia, and Tonia, with her endless number of stories, is the perfect spokesperson for telling things as they are.
Behind the romantic story of the group there is a deeper truth about our social needs as human beings. As much as we consider ourselves individuals in the western world, we do seek a sense of belonging to something that is bigger than ourselves. Tonia, who grew up in a conservative Jewish family that later became more Hasidic and radical, describes the isolation and loneliness she often felt as an outsider as the main reason for seeking a different community.
Reflecting over my own experience, it seems common that “radical” collectives are usually formed by individuals who hold certain societal trauma. Perhaps it is a desire to get back at those who rejected them or abused them, and to find solid ground or influence with alternative groups.
In any case, we all have some emotional trauma and we bring it with us wherever we go. In groups these traumas are triggered easily, causing friction and affecting others if not being held accountable by those who own them. This friction is the main reason why collaborations and communities crash in the first couple of years of their formation, and indeed my conversation with Tonia always goes back to the challenges in the relationships within members of the community and conflict management.
For her, the community’s inner conflicts brought to her the realisation that her desire to join this adventure was the result of a difficult childhood, which didn’t fulfill her needs as a young women growing up in California.
“Once I realized my personal motives, I brought it back to the community and prepared special workshops for members to reconnect with themselves and discover their own unmet needs. I quickly discovered that despite the open-mindedness and radical views of my comrades, some didn’t want to go deep and touch those places within themselves.”
Other attempts to manifest a conflict management frame have been made throughout the years by different professionals who visited the community, yet despite their efforts, no core principles were adopted to this day.
However, even without a solid structure, Huehuecoytle has survived for 35 years. Perhaps due to the mature approach of realizing that conflicts between members are an integral part of the process of living together, rather than something that is explosive, and should be solved internally as possible.
Another community member, Pernila, tells the story of her first relationship as an example. When she and her husband decided to split up, they stayed in the community and quickly got involved in other relationships with other members of the community. Accepting things as they were and without letting jealousy take over, both Pernila and her ex husband stayed to live in the community with their new partners without causing a storm that would have excluded anyone.
Tonia agrees that this kind of conflict work should be handled individually and outside of the community (by means of co-counselling) in a mature and compassionate way. If resolving those personal conflicts fail, naturally the person involved will gradually withdraw from the community.
But what if conflicts are about core principles rather than domestic drama? Originally, the members of Huehuecoytle didn’t plan to grow old together and the structure of the community emerged organically throughout the years. Therefore, not many rules have been integrated into the original structure, and they have been gradually added as the community matured and new members with new ideas showed up. The economical and social structure that has formed over time does not always support the initial intentions behind the idea of community. This in itself creates another layer of conflicts, mostly between veteran members and new ones. Tonia mentions more than once her frustration with the direction the community is heading: “If new members join in and change the core values of our collective, the place might as well become a condominium!”
Without a solid structure for conflict management, all those small frictions encroaching on the community’s core values become a bigger question about trust. Here we hit a sensitive nerve. Growing old in an intentional community is never easy. Without a state-run, support system for the elderly, the members can only rely on one another for care. Tonia and the original members of the collective are all in their seventies and are dealing with the same fears of growing old as any other. Even worse: without the kids who left the nest to explore other worlds and without new members who don’t share the same close bond as they do from their years of traveling together, Tonia and her comrades are very vulnerable.
“It’s not as easy anymore to maintain what we have built through the years. The communal garden is overgrown and no one has any interest in reviving it. I cannot do things around the house the way I used to and I’m afraid it won’t get any better. There is no pension or retirement home to take care of the individuals when they are less competent and there is not enough solidarity inspiring faith in the collective.”
Very rarely our dreams allow us to look so far ahead, far enough to realise the reality of our elder years. The romantic idea of growing old together with partners, families or friends rarely considers the details of how it needs to happen in practice. Accepting change is key, knowing that not just your body will change, but also your environment and the people around you. But change is also unpredictable, and preparing for it can easily fail.
“Faith and the waves of the ocean…” Tonia sighs with a bitter smile, summarizing the uncertain future of Huehuecoytle.
After spending half of her life in this place, will she need to relocate to make sure her need as an elderly person will be met? Can remote communities stay diverse and active to support their initiators? Perhaps such thought process should mature before we do, keeping us from relying just on faith.
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