Building an Artificial Progressive State from Carlos Torres

Friday, June 23, 2006

This post should probably be posted in spanish too, i guess i'll translate it later, so here goes:

What if we gathered 101 mexican hippies and went to live in a mexican town with 100 inhabitants?

Well, after about three years, we (the hippies) could all get new voting cards with our new addresses and just elect one of us as mayor.

(that was the short, comic-book version of it, so here goes the "a-little-closer-to-reality" version of the plan):

What is the state with the least population in mexico? Nayarit, inhabited by half a million people.

So what if we could come up with 500, or better yet, 5000 progressive, holistic, eco-spiritual liberals to go and live there as teachers in elementary schools and universities and other key jobs providing us access to the youth of the state? Of the 500,000 inhabitants, only 200,000 are actually old enough to vote. So 18 years from now, the other 300,000 (the ones we will -by that time- have educated in the mother-earth-loving ways of sustainability and community) will be voting too, so basically we could set ourselves the task of appointing a liberal, mexican-born governor for 2024-2030.

Once at that point, we can start remaking the local laws inasmuch as the mexican constitution allows us to.

People who come from other countries will probably not be able to vote, but there are many ways to contribute to the massive shift in values (from catholic-sponsored submission to self-organizing ecologically aware suficiency and wellness)which we intend to produce. I hasten to point out that i'm not proposing picking a fight with the catholic hierarchy, much less the secular powers-that-be, but rather a gentle integration of ever widening sectors of local society into community-building activities.

Here are some examples of specific strategies that can help gain the people's confidence, one soul at a time, in order to be able to draft with them a new social pact for the state:

-Getting teaching jobs.

(I guess i don't have to explain that one)

-Establishing autonomous community centers providing communitary daycare, basic healthcare and internet services.

(Here's where all those euros and dollars you blonde guys have been making in your industrialized countries fit in) Once we manage to get our man in the governor's office, we can legislate so that it'l be easier for foreigners who have helped our transition out of barbarity to become citizens.

This is a specially impotant strategy, for it garners us the attention of precisely the part of the population which, despite being the one that really keeps things going has been most debased in their collective integrity and self-image: the women.

If a young rural woman in her mid twenties finds she can leave her beating husband while leaning on the support of the local autonomous community center for daycare and work (at the local organic co-op) she will be grateful. Perhaps enough to even invite her sisters and cousins to either do the same or at least inform their catholic-raised husbands that they have a choice not to take the blows silently anymore.

-Establishing the appropriate autonomous mechanisms (perhaps i shold say organisms) to help peasants and farmers "go organic" and using our little computers and college diplomas to set up a distribution network of organic food for fancy citypeople who'll pay for it rather well worldwide.

-Establishing a worldwide support net that goes to the rich-but-kinda-progressive fellows elsewhere and puts out a hand for donations to speed everything up.

Now some of the things we could accomplish:

-Ban styrofoam (etc.)
-Tax ostentatious luxury
-Hyper-tax beef and pork
-Hyper-tax alcohol and tobacco
-Build lots of libraries
-Teach meditation in public schools
-Engage the huichol indians in a state-wide spiritual education program (in the long run, growing lots of greenhouse peyote grafted on faster-growing opuntiae for the mystical experiences ot those that choose to so have them)
-Address the age old problem of intitutionalized sexual repression of the young
-Build more schools
-Harness the wealth of the tourism industry on the coast to fuel social change
-Give away prescription cocaine and/or heroin to addicts to avoid their spread im the local community
-De-ciminalize marijuana
-Everything else that uptight people in governments have not allowed people to do despite it being a good idea.

-Et cetera.

I welcome everyone's comments, additions or criticisms