There is a community beyond the Casa. People that come here, that participate, that feel they are in a space where they can express themselves, do the things they are passionate about, and share together, and the idea of working for something bigger than personal benefit, those are the things that make a community. Even if no-one lived here, the community would exist…we are building a different way of living. – Ángela
When the Casa de los Ningunos first opened its doors in La Paz, Bolivia, the word “community” was not particularly on people’s lips. The house was conceived as an ‘environmental school’ a space where its inhabitants and supporters could dedicate all their time to environmental activism, and where meetings, workshops and film screenings could happen. But soon after starting the house project, two members of the Casa had the opportunity to travel to Portugal to visit the Tamera community. They came back from that experience enthused with the idea of community as a response to the climate crisis, as Gadir explains:
If we look at climate change as a consequence of structural problems, then we have to go to the root of the structures, step by step. And this project for me has been a very important step towards that root. But I still need to move forward more.
Intentional Communities
What is a community? The word can mean simply a neighborhood, or it can mean an ‘intentional community’ where people come together not only to share living space or land, but to share a lifestyle or a vision for a different way of relating to one another. Intentional communities take many forms: cooperative housing projects, squats, occupied abandoned villages, ecovillages and others.
In the Bolivian context there are many populations who self-identify as communities, from indigenous communities to collectives that form around various aims, including the making of music. While in the global North most intentional communities are innovations set up to go against the grain of aspects of modernity, in Bolivia there are many rural communities that have been using elements of ‘intentional community’ organization for hundreds of years, such as collective decision-making.
The Casa combines a number of these concepts: yes, it is a house where people share living space. But there are as many or more people who identify as part of the community of the Casa and don’t live in the house, as there are living in the house. So the community of the Casa goes beyond living together: it is people’s inspiration to keep working for social change, their vision for a different world, and the collaboration between people to find the way towards that vision. In the Casa this goes beyond activism or political work, being also about deconstructing internalized ways we have of relating to one another.
Two members of the Casa travelled to Tamera, a community in Portugal, in order to learn from their example: Tamera is a community with a difference. Originally founded in order to develop a ‘a non-violent life model for cooperation between human being, animal and nature,’ the community members realised that without incorporating the healing aspects of love and human community, not only would the project not be successful but their wider work for peace would be more difficult too: ‘there can be no peace on Earth as long as there is war in love.’
These concepts manifest in principles of how the community members relate to one another such as free love, working to end the war between the genders, and the importance of truth in their communication; but also in sustainable practicalities such as autonomous energy production, designing water retention landscapes, and food production in harmony with the local ecosystem. The tangible practical work goes hand in hand with the intangible, more internal work of changing societal structures within ourselves.
After the visit to Tamera, the concept of community as a shared experience where love is present as a healing element was gradually incorporated into the vision of the Casa. For Angela, the key is about transforming the nature of the relationships:
“Community is about love. When you work with people you love the work has a different meaning….here we are building different relationships; the intention is very important. After this experience I couldn’t work another way.”
What does community mean in the Casa?
The Casa is still very much a space for activism, with workshops on climate change, cultural events like full-moon gatherings, and Comida Consciente. But there is another, invisible level which the members of the Casa are working on. What does it mean to go from just living together to intentionally building community? For each person in the house it can differ in meaning, even if the common thread of love is shared and acknowledged by all.
For Apniuq, building community has to do with the shared vision:
Personally, I don’t know what a community is. But what I do know is we’re experimenting with being a community in the broad sense. What is community? – a group of people who share things like territory, language. And those would be the indigenous communities that still exist, to give an idea of the differences between those communities and the Casa. We are an intentional community, this concept that is more or less globally accepted, in the sense that you decide a common motive together, in our case to resist the system, to change ourselves, and to propose alternatives.
Apniuq explains how community is more than living together: “In the wide view, of global community, it’s about thinking about the common good over your own personal gain. This doesn’t mean I let go of my individuality. It means that no matter where you live you take more control over your decisions, of how your actions impact around you.”
How is the Casa different from other intentional communities?
Some might think this talk of love is fluffy, but the truth is that this is a direct challenge to the principles that got us into these crises in the first place: individual gain over the collective, profit above all else, the oppression of marginalized groups that is woven into our day to day relationships. From Gadir’s point of view, love is essential to social change: “If you really love, war and violence shouldn’t be possible, because you couldn’t carry out those kind of acts against someone you love, it makes no sense.”
In many cases, there is a spiritual aspect to the work of ecovillages and other intentional communities; it isn’t normally so common to observe it in urban settings. But the closeness to the knowledge and rituals of past generations that even young urban Bolivians still have – it is common to see people burning k’oas (offerings to Pachamama or Mother Earth) all over Bolivia – is visible in the Casa. This knowledge is also part of the inspiration for the Casa’s values.
While the experience in Tamera influenced the Casa a lot, the Andean Vivir Bien (“living well”) philosophy has been a powerful source of inspiration along the journey too, especially for Apniuq and Angela. Vivir Bien is not a dogma, but as Latin American scholar and philosopher Eduardo Gudynas says, it is a way of life and a form of development that sees social, cultural, environmental and economic issues working together and in balance, not separately and hierarchically: “It helps us see the limits of current development models, and it allows us to dream of alternatives that until now have been difficult to fulfil.”
The concept of the good of the community over the individual good is present in Vivir Bien: “In Spanish, the verb convivir – to coexist or live in community – comes from the words for ‘living’ (vivir) and ‘together’ (con). Vivir bien is convivir – to know how to live in community with everyone and everything. The vision of living well does not deny the existence of the individual, but rather, places her always in the context of the community.”
How does community help change the world?
While focusing on developing new ways of relating to one another in community, the Casa de los Ningunos doesn’t lose sight of the big picture – the system change we need, and the building of the alternatives to the current system. By living according to their values, the Ningunos create an example that inspires others and demonstrates that it is possible to live differently. And in contrast with many intentional communities, the Casa’s city center location gives the Ningunos the opportunity to find ways to “live well” in the city and share these experiences with the local society.
Apniuq sheds light on how he sees the Casa as system change:
What do we change? For me it divides in four elements: resisting the system; social and political advocacy for a transition from this system to another; generating personal consciousness and changing our personal habits; and lastly, putting it in practice, the experience of living the first three.
Angela expands on these ideas:
Reflecting on our activism, on climate change, which has to do with poverty and other social issues, is no longer about cleaning garbage off the streets, or giving money to people, but about changing the values that generate these injustices. For example, once we have something we share it. If we can all learn to do that, injustice could disappear.
Community challenges
But living in community also implies a series of complex challenges, especially around decision-making. As Yumey explains: “In the beginning where you had worked, your resumé, carried weight…when we talked about it, we wanted to make it equal, that no one would be the boss. But sometimes even without intending to these things come out.”
Gadir attributes these complexities to the need to step into the conventional economic system to sustain the project monetarily: “The conflict came about because there was an economic situation that we needed to deal with immediately, and there were different opinions around how to do that.”
Those who live at the house are very aware of the issues of privilege and power, and there is a clear intention to work through them. Angela recognizes that this is not necessarily simple though:
In terms of personal change, we’ve seen many changes in ourselves in comparison with others in our society…habits are the base of society. But there are personal changes that are more difficult [than changing habits], things that are very ingrained in us from childhood. And these things are the base of the system – they have to do with power relations.
Changing paradigms
One of the main elements that the house is working with to address these situations is conscious communication, a technique for talking and listening that is focused on building healthy relationships. For Apniuq it’s been a help: “For me personally it’s encouraged me to build capacities that I didn’t have before, like listening to others, using more appropriate language, for example speaking of agreements and not rules…”
Gadir explains how it’s influenced their meetings and beyond:
At the very least we start our Monday meetings expressing how we feel. Otherwise how are we to know? If you shout at me, then I know it’s not at me, I know the root of what you’re feeling. And if I don’t know, if I only see the expression on your face, I can start to imagine other things.
Living intentionally in community means a conscientious effort to take into account and deal with internal aspects of oppression and justice: privilege, power, how you communicate. For many, changing these paradigms is the base of social change. But the Casa actively engages with many sectors of society for wider changes too, such as consumption habits and climate change activism.
The two go hand in hand: encouraging people to explore the values they hold helps to engage them in activism for social and environmental justice. Gadir feels that without community system change isn’t possible:
And that’s why we need community, because in community you can set up all the necessary structures. You need education, food, economy. And that is political. Because the political is not about political parties, it’s about how you structure your society, even your mini-society of four people.