Sanare Ecosocialista
Today, on October 29th, in the mountain towns of Monte Carmelo and Sanare, Venezuela, people from around the world are coming together for the annual gathering of The Guardians of Seeds. Two years ago, this international gathering produced a document titled “The Declaration of Monte Carmelo,” a declaration which resonated around the world, sowing far-seeing vision and concrete practices throughout the global ecosocialist movement.
When Ecosocialist Horizons translated this declaration into English, we were subsequently invited to Venezuela to attend the Fourth Congress of Biological Diversity in Paraguana, June 2013. From there, we went on to visit the mountain village of Monte Carmelo and its neighboring town, Sanare.
(The town of Monte Carmelo seen from above. Photo by Quincy Saul)
In Monte Carmelo, we met Juan José Escalona Betancourt and Juan Ramón Escalona Betancourt, twin brothers, known throughout the community as “los morochos,” who live in a small house on the mountainside above Monte Carmelo. For the occasion of the Congress of Biological Diversity, they produced a remarkable document, titled “Sanare Ecosocialista”.
Los Morochos outside their house, together with Gabriel Garcia, one of the founders of the Semillero Socialista de Monte Carmelo. Photo by Quincy Saul.
This document combines poetry, art, interviews with local community members, clippings and excerpts from other books, and more. It is a grassroots document, compiled on worn wooden tables amidst seeds and farming tools, and distributed as photocopies to friends and comrades. In form and content, it demonstrates a dialectical fusion between ancestral cosmovision and production, and the theory and practice of 21st century socialism. It also represents the ongoing creative tension between state power and popular power which characterizes the Bolivarian revolutionary process. The result is ecosocialism: Not an ecosocialism of the academy, but an ecosocialism (re)discovered and nurtured in door-to-door interviews, in historical research into indigenous spirituality and oral traditions, an ecosocialism that finds expression in poetry and music, in the duendes of the mountains, and the seeds which unearth the history of Abya Yala.
Click here to download “Sanare Ecosocialista”: SANARE ECOSOCIALISTA
We hope that ecosocialists around the world will find inspiration in the words and work of los morochos, and in the revolutionary example that the people of Sanare and Monte Carmelo give to the world; a fire on the mountain to light hearts and minds for generations to come.
