Full Moon Reflections

Liliana Gutierrez is a graduate of the Academy Fellowship Program based in La Paz, Mexico.

As you look at the moon tonight and enjoy, take a moment, take a breath, feel the circle you belong to, feel the circle you are… take a moment and surrender to the full simplicity and power of a circle.

It is 8 o’clock in the morning, María, a six-year old, enters her classroom. She knows her place in that place, she knows she sits there in front of a blackboard and a teacher. He, in front of her, will teach her some of the stuff that he knows very well, he will also call her attention if she does something wrong and, he will reward her if she memorizes 3 times 3, times 4, times 5… not too bad.

María enjoys going to school, she loves the break when she sits with Mateo, Emiliano, Fernanda and Nicolás… and then, right at the center of their circle, they place their lunch boxes, their Pokemon cards and all that little stuff they took, with no permission, from home to school. She enjoys that because she loves Natalia’s green eyes, she is fascinated with the little hole between Emiliano’s teeth and she loves when Mateo explains to them the next adventure in which they will, again, defy every warning they have gotten from their parents. She likes it because they talk about the things they fear, the things they cherish and when they are sad they hold hands and, for a second, they are unbeatable.

Try and remember…. we all have felt like María feels, happy when the break begins and we sit in a circle with our people and we have the conversations that really matter, and, yes, oh yes! confused when we are, only, spectators. Humans… creatures that need certainty and crave for control, we get confused so easily. We treasure science and tech, both give us answers to, at times, irrelevant questions… at the end we end up exhausted, we are running to stand still.

Largely, definitions of authority, knowledge, power, and wealth are created linear and based on hierarchy. My own authority and power are less if I share them, knowledge is generated by and for the elites, wealth is not equally distributed. And then, the most important issues of our societies are treated in isolated spaces… in thousands and thousands of classrooms where some know and others don’t, spaces where the few command and others will never have the chance to make a choice, spaces where eyes sights do not find each other, spaces where eye sights are fixated… where no silence is shared, no laughs are shared.

Our dear Elinor Ostrom observed the phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons, this idea refers to the depletion of resources that by belonging to everybody are in custody of anybody. Think about commons as tangible assets such as clean air or safe water, or natural resources like fisheries. Ostrom observed and noticed several cases in which communities were very successful in protecting such assets. Were these communities guarded by strong governments? No, ok, maybe some very generous wealthy guys have acquired and protected them… well, no …no? then, what? Elinor describes five characteristics present in such communities: communication, trust, capacity to monitor, a system of sanctions and a shared vision.

The five characteristics emerge, beautifully and strongly, in circles.

Structure creates behavior. In a circle, like those that María enjoys at break, the concept of authority becomes collective power, it emerges and it is distributed, circles can contain both: noise and silence and hence are sources of creativity. In a circle, eye sights find each other and therefore, commitment is borne.

I have seen how these circles of women and men are formed, always begin with doubts, with curiosity, with discomfort and, always, end with commitment and with sisterhood. Some of you know this. In La Paz BCS a community known as El Manglito rescued a fishery that was collapsed, managed to get the government to recognize them as legal custodians of that resource, thus giving the kick start of a business with a legitimate community base. You can read all about this story here. In el Manglito, during the darkest hours of the wave of violence last year in La Paz, the community re-took its streets in the most amazing Christmas celebration: we enjoyed a street film festival were original movies produced by the children of El Manglito were exhibited, set up a soccer tournament and broke piñatas, of course we were afraid but we were also powerful and present of the magic of our circle, we had created peace.

In el Manglito people have been sitting in circles for a while, sometimes just to try to chew harsh realities, in others to talk about possible transformations, others to organize small and large actions towards possible and shared scenarios, others to share fears and silences. In circles, they waited and despaired and created and grew, little by little they are becoming a circle, within a circle, without beginning, without end.

…about 70% of fisheries globally are over exploited, fishing communities throughout the world suffer tremendous processes of social degradation making them highly vulnerable to both addictions and to fattening the ranks of organized crime, the entire ocean suffers tremendous processes of ecological degradation…. it is my invitation tonight while you and the moon are together that we should pay attention to the path marked by circles, because in them lies the tremendous power of transformative conversations from which self-organization and collective action can emanate, in circles we gain peace to enter into the necessary revolution, all around a great circle.

And join me in thinking about Maria, a little human who needs certainty, savors control and falls into confusion, but also a little human being that feels inside her heart, when she is in a circle with her friends, the most enormous force that lives inside all of us, the force that takes us always back to the circle.