Updates from our Weavers

The Global TapestryThe weaving of networks of Alternatives of AlternativesAre activities and initiatives, concepts, worldviews, or action proposals by collectives, groups, organizations, communities, or social movements challenging and replacing the dominant system that perpetuates inequality, exploitation, and unsustainabiity. In the GTA we focus primarily on what we call "radical or transformative alternatives", which we define as initiatives that are attempting to break with the dominant system and take paths towards direct and radical forms of political and economic democracy, localised self-reliance, social justice and equity, cultural and knowledge diversity, and ecological resilience. Their locus is neither the State nor the capitalist economy. They are advancing in the process of dismantling most forms of hierarchies, assuming the principles of sufficiency, autonomy, non-violence, justice and equality, solidarity, and the caring of life and the Earth. They do this in an integral way, not limited to a single aspect of life. Although such initiatives may have some kind of link with capitalist markets and the State, they prioritize their autonomy to avoid significant dependency on them and tend to reduce, as much as possible, any relationship with them. is a “network of networks”. Each of those networks acts in different parts of the planet by identifying and connecting Alternatives. They are the Weavers. The following are the networks that currently weaves the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. In the following section, our Weavers from India, Colombia and Mexico shares updates from their recent activities and actions.

Introducing our new Weaver: Movement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (MASSA)

We are proud to present to you the official name of the weaver from Southeast Asia: Movement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (MASSAMovement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (South East Asia)). This is inspired by the word 'masa' or 'massa' in Southeast Asian languages which means the people or the masses.

MASSA Steering Committee is composed of the following organizations:

  • University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies Program on Alternative Development (Philippines)- AltDev is currently acting as the secretariat
  • ASEAN SOGIE Caucus (regional)
  • Asian Music for Peoples’ Peace and Progress (regional)
  • Asian Solidarity Economy Council (regional)
  • CIVICA Research (Malaysia)
  • Focus on the Global South (regional)
  • Fundasaun Hafoun Timor Loro’sae (Timor Leste)
  • Homenet Southeast Asia (regional)
  • Kdadalak Sulimutuk Institute (Timor Leste)
  • Konfederasi Pergerakan Rakyat Indonesia (Indonesia)
  • Milk Tea Alliance (regional)
  • Serikat Petani Pasundan (Indonesia)
  • Sustainability and Participation through Education and Lifelong Learning (Philippines)
  • University of the Philippines School of Labor and Industrial Relations Center for Labor and Grassroots Initiatives (Philippines)
  • Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation (Vietnam)

Building People-to-people Solidarities towards Alternative Regionalism in Southeast Asia 1)

The experience gained from the decades-long engagement of Southeast Asia civil society organizations and social movements with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has helped in guiding its future trajectories: to move beyond merely engaging the state-led regional body, and to be firmly linked with grassroots initiatives of peoples struggling to carve a better and more dignified life. An emergent movement in the Southeast Asian region called the Movement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (MASSA) is taking up this challenge to and doing this pioneering effort in building an alternative peoples’ regional integration based on the alternative practices from Southeast Asian grassroots. This is a long-term vision that cannot be accomplished overnight and will take years of perseverance and commitment to realize.

The ASEAN and Southeast Asian Civil Society

In 1967, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, represented by their respective Foreign Affairs Ministers, came together to form the Bangkok Declaration which gave rise to the creation of the ASEAN, an inter-governmental association for regional cooperation among governments in the Southeast Asia region in terms of economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative fields. Later on, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia, joined the ASEAN, bringing together ten Southeast Asian governments in its fold.

In the Bangkok Declaration, it was proclaimed that the ASEAN will “secure for their peoples [..] the blessings of peace, freedom, and prosperity” and that the association represents the “collective will of nations in Southeast Asia”. Fifty years after the inception of ASEAN, it has become apparent that its actions have been unsuccessful to meet this primary objective and has also clearly diverged from its claims to represent the peoples of the region. Issues and concerns of Southeast Asian peoples, especially those of the most marginalized, have yet to be meaningfully addressed by the ASEAN. Promises of progress continue to ring hollow in the ASEAN's practice over the five decades. Despite the association's pronouncements for a “people-oriented and people-centered ASEAN”, it acts without the meaningful inclusion of the marginalized peoples of Southeast Asia.

It is in this regard that the civil society organizations (CSOs) in Southeast Asia engage with the ASEAN and its constituent mechanisms, leading to the establishment of the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN People’s Forum (ACSC/APF) in 2005. The ACSC/APF is a network of Southeast Asian civil society organizations and social movements that has been engaging the ASEAN process to bring the attention to the issues and concerns of the marginalized — in the hopes that this will result to meaningful reforms that will bring about substantial progress that is felt by the grassroots (i.e.the working class, the peasantry, urban poor, fisherfolk, women, children, LGBTQ+ community, indigenous peoples, older persons, employees, professionals, students, persons with disabilities, and migrants).

Since 2005, the ACSC/APF has been engaging official ASEAN bodies and yearly summits done through parallel gatherings in the host country of ASEAN meetings. Discussions among CSOs across the region result in statements containing detailed recommendations for a more democratic, inclusive, participative, and ecologically sound ASEAN on behalf of the region’s marginalized populations. However, these proposals have been largely dismissed by the ASEAN. The engagement of ACSC/APF with the association has become tokenistic and mechanical in such a way that proposals are given each year without concrete results and the created space for engagement is still structured in conjunction with ASEAN practices. Even the ACSC/APF itself has acknowledged the futility of achieving concrete results from its engagement in the ASEAN process, as emphasized in the internal assessment of ACSC/APF in its ten years of engagement in the ASEAN process.

The ASEAN's avowed principles of being “people-centered and people-oriented” are contrary to how it operates—through market-centered and state-supported processes managed by national and regional political oligarchies and corporate elites to perpetuate control over Southeast Asia's natural resources and productive capacities. They will never give up their profit-making agenda and make way for civil society's hopes and aspirations. Starting in 1967 as a mechanism to support the United States-led Western faction of the Cold War, it has evolved into a tool of the neoliberal market-led agenda of development promoted by global capitalism.

MASSA: Forging a Regionalism from Below

Evidently, CSOs in Southeast Asia including the ACSC/APF must act outside the ASEAN framework, and explore a radical restructuring of CSO engagements with Southeast Asian states, and chart new modes of integration for Southeast Asian peoples. It is in this context that the Movement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (MASSA) has started. MASSA is a convergence of peoples and grassroots organizations working together to forge an alternative: a regional model of integration from below that challenges the ASEAN paradigm. This alternative regionalism is based on 'alternatives' — the resistance and non-mainstream development practices that Southeast Asian peoples are already doing on the ground — which are guided by cooperation, solidarity, mutual benefit, the commons principle, and joint development.

These above-mentioned principles are well reflected in MASSA’s logo (See Figure 1), taking inspiration primarily from the vernacular stilt houses in Southeast Asia and secondarily from the weaving traditions also prevalent in the region. These elements were chosen to communicate that the movement sees itself as both a shelter and a platform in which these alternative grassroots practices in Southeast Asia are nurtured and strengthened by way of weaving together solidarity and identity based on common histories, and aspirations. The arrows pointing up (which makes the roof of the house) symbolize the upward movement of Southeast Asian peoples in expanding their networks of solidarity and in building an alternative just future. The chosen colors symbolize the diversity of nations in the region. While the overlapping pattern seen at the center of the logo symbolizes the similar histories of people in Southeast Asia as well as their deep interconnections created by their shared experience of marginalization: elements that create the conditions for peoples to unite.

Figure 1. MASSA Logo

To build this alternative model of regional integration, MASSA undertakes the following:

  1. Surfacing the alternative practices through research and documentation and building a database of these;
  2. Linking and facilitating knowledge sharing amongst the alternative development practitioners through People-to-People Exchange;
  3. Popularizing and mainstreaming the alternative practices through regional workshops and conferences, solidarity actions, and social media platforms;
  4. Building and strengthening the solidarity between the alternative development practitioners;
  5. Expanding the solidarity networks of the movement by continuously engaging with other groups outside the network, either within the region or outside.

Initial steps were already taken by the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS) Program on Alternative Development (AltDev) after it was established in 2017. A total of fifty-six case studies of alternative development practices from the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Timor-Leste, Thailand, and Thai-Burma Border have already been produced. In 2020 and 2021, a total of sixty-three caselettes that highlight the struggle of the grassroots and marginalized communities and their COVID-19 responses have been produced.

AltDev, as the interim secretariat of MASSA, is also in the process of including cases of alternative development practices from areas outside of what ASEAN deems as part of the region, namely, Northeast India and Southwest China2). A People-to-People Exchange was also hosted in West Java and Jakarta, Indonesia by the Konfederasi Pergerakan Rakyat Indonesia, and the Serikat Petani Pasundan in July 2019. Participants from Laos, Thailand, Philippines, Timor Leste, and other parts of Indonesia were engaged as participant practitioners being oriented on existing alternative practices undertaken by the hosting organization and asked to participate directly. The exchange serves as an out-of-conference type of platform where grassroots organizations may learn based on real-life and practice-based experiences.

In November 2018, October 2019, and November 2021 (that was conducted online because of COVID-19), the regional conferences brought together alternative development practitioners from across the Southeast Asian Region. The goal of the regional conferences is for organizations to showcase their alternative practices and draw parallelisms from the models, issues, successes, and challenges, and all together create the movement for Alternatives that is now called MASSA.

Currently, MASSA has twenty-three civil society partners and networks from the Philippines; six from Indonesia; six regional groups; four from Timor Leste; four from Thailand; three from Vietnam; two from Burma/Myanmar; one each from the Thai-Burma Border, Laos, Malaysia, and Cambodia. The 14 Steering Committee Members of MASSA are as follows: University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies, Program on Alternative Development, currently acting as the secretariat; ASEAN SOGIE Caucus (Regional); Asian Music for Peoples’ Peace and Progress (Regional); Asian Solidarity Economy Council (Regional); CIVICA Research (Malaysia); Focus on the Global South (Regional); Fundasaun Hafoun Timor Loro’sae (Timor Leste); HomeNet Southeast Asia; Kdadalak Sulimutuk Institute (Timor Leste); Konfederasi Pergerakan Rakyat Indonesia; Milk Tea Alliance (Regional); Serikat Petani Pasundan (Indonesia); Sustainability and Participation through Education and Lifelong Learning (Philippines); and the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation.

MASSA’s priorities moving forward will revolve around the following undertakings:

  • Expand the database of alternatives by continuing the documentation of alternative practices across the region and beyond it
  • Strengthen the movement through knowledge-sharing initiatives, network-building activities, and regional solidarity actions
    • Maintain the engagement with regional and global networks and spaces that can bolster the discourse and support alternatives and alternative regionalism

References:

UP CIDS Discussion Paper: Deepening Solidarities Beyond Borders Among Southeast Asian Peoples: A Vision for a Peoples’ Alternative Regional Integration. University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies Program on Alternative Development. Quezon City. 2020. https://cids.up.edu.ph/discussion_paper/up-cids-discussion-paper-series-2020-04-deepening-solidarities-beyond-borders-among-southeast-asian-peoples-a-vision-for-a-peoples-alternative-regional-integration/

UP CIDS Public Policy Monograph: Towards a Peoples’ Alternative Regionalism: Cases of Alternative Practices in the Philippines. University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies. Quezon City. 2020. https://cids.up.edu.ph/up-monograph/public-policy-monographs-towards-a-peoples-alternative-regionalism-case-of-alternative-practices-in-the-philippines-volume-1/

UP CIDS Public Policy Monographs: Solidarity through Cross-Border Regionalism: Alternative Practices in Southeast Asia. Quezon City. 2020. https://cids.up.edu.ph/download/public-policy-monograph-series-2020-01-solidarity-through-cross-border-regionalism-alternative-practices-across-southeast-asia-volume-1/

COVID-19 Grassroots Report Volume 2: Southeast Asian Peoples in Pandemic Times: Challenges and Responses. Quezon City 2021. https://tinyurl.com/AltDevSEAcovid19v2

COVID-19 Grassroots Report Volume 1: Reinforcing People-to-People Solidarities towards a Regionalism from Below: Alternatives from Southeast Asia amid COVID-19. Quezon City. 2020. https://tinyurl.com/reinforcingp2pcovid

https://asean.org/legaldocumentparent/the-asean-declaration-bangkok-declaration-bangkok-8-august-1967/

https://asean.org/the-founding-of-asean/

http://www.asean-china-center.org/english/2010-04/24/c_13265663.htm

Vikalp Sangam (India)

Photo Credit: Ashish Kothari

Vikalp Sangam Core Group Meeting (1-3rd November)

The Vikalp Sangam Core group comprises about 80+ organizations, networks and initiatives. This year Core Group met at the beautiful Timbaktu Collective's campus in Chennekothapalli. 45 members representing 26 organizations met for 3 days and discussed several internal governance mechanisms, Vikalp Sangam's response to political crises, plans for future sangams among others.

A detailed report will be shared by early December.

Youth Vikalp Sangam

A fairly diverse group of young people met at the fourth Youth Vikalp Sangam in September 10-13, 2022. The Sangam was organised and facilitated by young people along with Kalpavriksh who belonged to youth networks or organisations: Bhoomi College, Yugma Network, The AdivasiPost, Devalsari Society, Mati, Let India Breathe, Blue Ribbon Movement, Travellers’ University many of whom have already been involved with the Youth Vikalp Sangam process in earlier years. The three-and-a-half-day programme included

  • Sharing of journeys and perspectives from diverse experiences (for example: activism against large dams; the discrimination experienced as a person from a scheduled caste; oppression faced as a forest dweller; challenges as an urban activist).
    * Inter-generational learning and dialogues, partly facilitated by presentations on the History of Ecological Movements and what strategies worked and challenges faced; issues relating to burnout and state surveillance
    * Sharing and discussing the flower of alternatives transformation framework
  • Using litigation and the Constitution as tools for justice and advocacy
  • Discussing contradictions within the movement spaces in terms of worldviews and approaches
  • Artivism (activism with the involvement of art) on building ecosystems for collective action
  • And importantly coming together in conversations and spontaneous dancing into the night, creating bonds and friendships between participants from diverse regions of India.

Wellbeing and Justice Sangam

In a context where most progressive, left, and radical groups and people in India have tended to shy away from the spiritual and cultural dimensions of socio-political action and challenges; limiting themselves to the definition of secular dimension as being absence of religious faith in their struggle for social and environmental justice, a Vikalp Sangam on the theme: Spiritual dimensions of Social well-being and Justice was held at the Pipal Tree’s Fireflies Inter-cultural center in Bangalore.

The Vikalp Sangam saw intense discussions taking place in the Indian context of the two most worrying factors considering the size of its population, and its distribution along communal and caste lines, viz. :

  1. The devastating effect of climate collapse would cause to its people in the form of food insecurity, large-scale migrations, resource riots, pandemics, famines, etc
  2. The current atmosphere of suspicion, mist-trust and intolerance among people andthe inevitable social breakdown between communities from various religious denominations.

Around 30 participants from different walks of life participated in this collective endeavor to develop a spiritual frame/lens that can act as a lynchpin for unleashing a radical political imagination into the world of substantive equality, justice and ecological resilience, along with bringing about a corresponding praxis of political interventions to bring about transformations at micro (interpersonal, family) and macro (community, region, state, nation, world) level. Some of the themes and topics that were structured into the design and discussions at the Vikalp Sangam were, relevance of spiritual dimension, spirituality and worldviews, exploring liberatory potential of mainstream religions, wellbeing and justice, and the way forward.

Indigenous and other Local Communities Worldviews Sangam (6-8th November)

Photo Credit: Vikalp Sangam

The Indigenous and Community Worldviews Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence), a gathering of Adivasi, pastoral, farmer and other communities, and civil society organizations was conducted on 6-8 November 2022. It was an attempt to highlight diverse ways of being and living and knowing of such communities across India, and to enable greater understanding and collaboration amongst them. The 30-odd participants included members of Adivasi or Indigenous communities like Warli, Mishmi, Dimasa, Gond, Soliga, Chakhesang, Oraon, Meena, and Lepcha, pastoral Maldhari and Van Gujjar communities, and Dalit women farmers from Telangana.

A detailed report from the Sangam will be shared in December.

Vikalp Sangam Communications

The objective of VSVikalp Sangam (India) Comms is to enhance outreach of Vikalp Sangam and related material on alternatives, to a wide audience, including and in particular, the youth. Some activities we perform are putting out stories, news, events on alternatives, etc on various ‘social’ media including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

VS communications has been now working towards reaching new audiences by engaging and amplifying stories of alternatives from across India. We are trying to engage with our audience using music/poetry, activities, etc. Our focus is now gender-centered content and to bring more representation of marginalised voices by working through language barriers and making mainstream stories accessible to the vernacular speaking belt and vice versa.

Crianzas Mutuas Mexico

MAIZE IS OUR LIFE, IT IS THE ONE WHO TAKES CARE OF THE COMMUNITY
He has allowed us to live and resist for thousands of years

Statement of the Espacio Estatal en Defensa del Maiz Nativo de Oaxaca (State Organization for the Defense of Native Maize in Oaxaca)

September 29, 2022, City of Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico

Photo credit: Crianzas Mutuas Mexico

The daily life of our communities in Oaxaca has always been linked to our way of being, thinking and acting. Our territory, our goods and the ideas that belong to our communities become part of our lives when we share them with others, just as maize has been shared for thousands of years throughout Oaxaca and many territories of the world.

Our culture is built day by day considering different aspects of life related to what we plant, what we eat, our languages, our ways of being together, our ways of organizing ourselves and our spirituality that is felt, thought, and lived in each town. Maize is present in all these areas in different ways and for many years, as our grandmothers and grandfathers tell us to this day.

Maize appears in many of the stories of our communities as an element that weaves life, unfortunately day by day those roots that link us to the land have been lost due to a system that has devalued what represents life connected to the land and the production of food at a community level, driven by large agroindustry linked to political powers that are connected to a capitalist system that seeks to strengthen industrial agriculture with its technological proposals such as the genetic modification of seeds, which break the natural cycle of life and aims to control it through these foods.

Recent times have been difficult due to the deterioration of our health closely linked to the change in our eating habits, the destruction of nature and food dependence, but at the same time have given us moments of dialogue about what it means to grow our own food to be healthy and decide what values we want to strengthen to collectively build a good life, in which we protect ourselves from the various pandemics, knowing that health is not only the absence of disease, but something much deeper that links us as peoples with the earth, water, plants and our ancestors. Part of our hope is that today 70% of the food produced in the world is due to the work of small producers in thousands of communities around the world.

Photo Credit: Crianzas Mutuas Mexico

Many towns in Oaxaca continue to practice innumerable and varied rituals associated with maize, which express and celebrate their own culture and fulfill specific functions in daily life, in agricultural work and in their relationship with Nature. We cannot forget that for several thousand years the food of the people was based on maize, beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, amaranth, chia, cacao, maguey and animal husbandry, linked to various forms of bonding with the land and generating a variety of dishes and drinks like those we see today in the gastronomic sample that we exhibit.

As peoples we have the right to a dignified life and to have tranquility in our towns so that the new generations have the opportunity to enjoy this wonderful thing that we are part of, such as maize. We have our own ways of feeding ourselves, of organizing ourselves, of relating, of living, of coexisting, of learning, of healing and of communicating that go beyond public policies based on capital and that are alien to our daily lives.

We declare ourselves in favor of the Defense of the Native Maize of Oaxaca, to define our own ways of linking ourselves with what we eat, putting at the center of life our community knowledge that ancestrally have been linked to the territory and that allow us to transform ourselves according to our own ways and in our own times.

We demand that the State:

Photo Credit: Crianzas Mutas Mexico
  • The prohibition of agro-toxins in general and not just glyphosate, since these poisons have caused deaths in human, animal, plant, and fungal communities all over the planet and in particular in Oaxacan communities that have been deluded by productivity and quick but dangerous results.
  • The prohibition of all transgenic crops in the country, not only maize, since the cultivation of these crops deteriorates the land due to the agro-industrial management given to them, at the same time that they are poisoned with glyphosate, the herbicide associated with these crops by the transnational seed company Monsanto, today, Bayer.
  • Support for the autonomous initiatives of peasants and organizations to make the land produce as our ancestors taught us, as well as with the innovations that are being generated in the communities themselves due to the challenges they face and that do not leave aside the elements that constitute communality.

Last November 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st, the encounter of Crianza Mutua Mexico took place, where experiences and life alternatives were woven taking into consideration the connection we have with food and the land. The encounter was held at Granja Kokopelli located in the northern part of the state of Veracruz where Amanda and Jesus welcomed us as hosts in an autonomous space that since 2012 they built from their living and thinking based on food, agroecology and permaculture linked to the environment around them. Their life is based on the principles of:

  • Living within the bioproductive limits of the planet (ecological footprint).
  • Constructing a healthier environment, with a calmer and more relaxed life.
  • Leading a lifestyle using as a guide a new culture based on the care of nature.

Around 30 people from different communities, organizations and collectives from Veracruz, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Mexico City and Puebla participated in the encounter. During these days, they shared their daily lives by sharing stories, participating in rituals, exchanging seeds, preparing food, working on the land through agroecology, recognizing the territory through the plants, trees and animals that inhabit it and also visiting the Tajin, an important archeological zone linked to the Totonaco people.

Throughout all these activities, life stories were shared that narrate the “entramados comunitarios” (community networks) that already live outside the dominant rules, especially those who have adopted practices of the principle of sufficiency from eating to try to have and use enough to live well and without falling into the “premise of scarcity” that constitutes the capitalist society, that is, the assumption that people have unlimited ends (they want everything), but their means are limited. This principle of sufficiency implies accepting with joy what one has and, if necessary, transforming and enriching the means one has, such as caring for the land, sowing and protecting seeds, raising animals and returning to the spirituality of life that links us to our ancestors. During these days we lived this Crianza Mutua (Mutual Nurturing) that links us with all the beings that surround us: water, trees, seeds, plants, animals, mountains and everything that embraces us in the territories.

Finally, in terms of the criteria that are framed within the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, we were able to exchange concrete experiences that have to do with:

  • Strengthening rooting processes that link us to what we eat.
  • Defending that first territory we call body in a collective way and retaking the spaces related to eating.
  • Recovering the ancestral forms that have nourished our communities for thousands of years.
  • Strengthening the organization of life around what we plant, grow, raise and eat, rooting ourselves to the land.
  • Recognizing and bulding from the local to break with the economic logics that seek to globalize existence and end the ways of eating at the community level.
  • Breaking with the dependencies on the market and the State that lead us to lose our food autonomy and feed ourselves with processed products that damage our health.
  • Recognizing the alternatives that already exist to strengthen our eating and constitute alternatives that generate hope.
  • Recognizing ourselves as part of nature to continue caring for life from the most elemental, which is our food, always respecting and thanking Mother Earth.

And this is how we lived part of this Mutual Upbringing ….

Photo Credit: Crianzas Mutuas Mexico
Photo Credit: Crianzas Mutuas Mexico

Espacio Estatal en Defensa del Maiz Nativo de Oaxaca State Space in Defense of Native Maize of Oaxaca Original Text: https://maiznativodeoaxaca.wordpress.com/2022/09/29/el-maiz-es-nuestra-vida-es-quien-cuida-a-la-comunidad/ https://maiznativodeoaxaca.wordpress.com http://www.facebook.com/EspacioEstatalDelMaizNativoDeOaxaca

Crianzas Mutuas Colombia

In this period Gustavo Esteva (co-founder of the GTAGlobal Tapestry of Alternatives and Crianzas Mutuas) and Yellen Aguilar Ararat (companion of the Transicionada por el Valle del Cauca and of the Pluriversidades de apie y Pluriversidad del río) were sown. Like seeds, they are born when they die. It has been difficult to understand the other ways of being present of our companions, but we have been learning other ways of accepting and conceiving death. The farewells of our friends invited us to celebrate life in all its manifestations. Thinking without dichotomies implies advancing in the understanding of departure… death is still part of life.
During this year we have participated and encouraged intimate encounters between each of the processes (intra-collective, inter-collective, intra-peoples, inter-peoples, inter-peoples). It is worth noting that these meetings are based on their own calendars and on the creation of meeting places, itinerancies and accompaniments between autonomous, self-managed processes, and on some occasions, taking advantage of institutional resources for university research seminars and formal pay meetings.

Encounters of the Rana y la Icotea (Frog and the Icotea) take place every Saturday. This is a place where dialogues between peoples and between worlds are conducted. In this place of encounter, of weaving, pedagogy is being de-pedagogized. The way to do this if by encouraging learning and conversations between the worlds of knowledge of the West and the knowledge of millenary peoples and from all the diversities. These conversations take place through open webinars, with simultaneous translation. These encounters have been rigorously organized and convened by Professor Juan Carlos.

Photo credit: Crianzas Mutuas Colombia

Processes and weavings self-convened and self-managed by the women of Cherán (Mexico), Tejinando Sentipensares and pluriversidades de a pie (Colombia).

- Itinerancy and accompaniment convened by the Women of the Cherán Collective from the processes

Weaving Sentipensares: self-convened meetings between processes, organizations and universidades de a pie

In process and what's next:.

Meetings of the Universities with the Pluriversidades de a pie and the Universities in movement.

Meetings of the Tejido de Transicionantes por el Valle del Cauca to build the state of the art and the realization of the water map from the Geographic Valley of the Cauca River.

Collective writing of the text: Pluritopías (in process): We are doing collective editing with a small group of delegates to deliver the final version of the book.

Meeting Weaving Sentipensares, political ecologies, and communal ethos (Unitierra Oaxaca and Unitierra Manizales).

1)
This is a shortened version of the publication: “Deepening Solidarities Beyond Borders Among Southeast Asian Peoples: A Vision for a Peoples' Alternative Regional Integration” which was published last May 20, 2020 by the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies Program on Alternative Development.
2)
Southeast Asia is a much greater entity than what ASEAN currently encompasses. Various scholars have argued that the region should not be confined to the ten ASEAN member states, but should include areas in other countries whose peoples bear similar cultural and ethnic characteristics as those who live in what has been normally referred to as Southeast Asia. In addition to Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste, both of which continue to be denied full ASEAN membership, references have been made of Southeast Asian historical affinities with parts of Northeast India and three southwestern provinces of China.