The last months in Crianzas Mutuas Colombia have been very exciting. From July 21-23, we gathered in the ancestral territory of Kumanday (also called “Manizalez”) to celebrate the First in Person National Encounter of Crianzas Mutuas. More than 30 radical alternatives from three different regions of the country (Caribbean, Pacific and Andean regions) gathered to share and mutually learn about their grounded experiences regarding four main topics: 1) ecological agriculture and eating, 2) healing, 3) autonomous communication and transmedia, and 4) the care of life and the territory. We had the opportunity to visit the places where alternatives are happening, both in the urban and the rural places; and to share our rooted knowledges during workshops where we learned how to harvest water, weaving hammocks and building dry toilettes. By sharing the word and the paths each of us have been walking to heal the weave of life, we can collectively build Buen Vivir or Good living. When we meet with other alternatives, we strengthen our hope, thus becoming able to entwine the multiple threads that each of us are in a beautiful, joyful and inspiring tapestry, in the weave of life.

We have also continued to nourish our regional meetings, both in Kumanday and in the Cauca valley. For instance, in Unitierra we held a meeting every Wednesday at the market of the city of Kumanday in order to learn about different alternatives. In the valley of Cauca, within the scope of the Project “Designing systemic regional transitions in times of social and climatic emergency”, we organized three encounters in order to strengthen the ties between four different grassroots radical Alternatives: Tejido de transicionantes por el Valle del Cauca, Asociación Casa Cultural El Chontaduro (ACCC), Asociación de Consejos Comunitarios de Suarez (ASOCOMS), and Asociación Cultural Casa del Niño y la Niña (ACCN).

The Tejido de transicionantes por el Valle del Cauca was created in 2018. The collective is composed of 30 people, including intellectual activists, Afrocolombians, feminists, rural and urban environmentalists, and academics. An important achievement of Transition Tapestry is the agreement on a fundamental perspective to travel the path we call “the big transition” (la Transicionada). We conceive this path as autonomic-territorial, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, agropolitan and pluriversal.

ACCC is focused on building fair societies, with gender equality, sexual diversity, and ethnic and racial plurality. Its lines of action are constituted along three intersectional axes: 1) Racial-ethnic; 2) Gender-based; and 3) Generational and territorial. Grounded in Afro-feminine leadership, its actions focus on working with youth, women, and children through the arts, popular education, research, and peace-building in response to structural challenges.

ASOCOMS is an organization of Black communities composed of three communitarian councils in the municipality of Suárez, Cauca. It works on behalf of the rights of Black people and nature, food sovereignty, and Good living (Buen Vivir) in ancestral territories. ASOCOMS works through strategic actions including the defense of the Cauca and Ovejas rivers against mining and energy projects, the right to prior consultation in the case of the Environmental Management Plan of the Salvajina Hydroelectric complex, agroecological projects and food transformation, and the mobilization of Black women towards care of life and ancestral territories. ACCN works through pedagogical tools with an Afro-inclusive approach. Its lines of action are focused on six strategic programs: women, gender and development, education and culture, health and housing, agricultural production, youth and childhood, administration and management. The majority of its resources come from international development cooperation.

Finally, we published the collective book Pluritopías, a book that recounts the conversations we have been holding since 2017 both inside Crianzas Mutuas Colombia and with Crianza Mutuas Mexico and Vikalp Sangam in India. The idea of this collective writing is to shed light on different places that are opening horizons of possibilities through concrete experiences that are rooted in the Earth. The guiding questions of these conversations have been: Who are we? What are we doing to defend life, abundance, and happiness in our territories, beyond the State, capitalism and patriarchy? What fabrics can we spin by sharing our worlds, hopes and processes? This book has been published by Color Tierra Press, and is a collective effort that had the support of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives and Universidad de la Tierra. It can be consulted and downloaded in the publications section of our website (only in Spanish).

Vikalp Sangam held its annual VSVikalp Sangam (India) Facilitation Team gathering in July in order to work on the tasks taken up during the last Core Group meet, discuss important proposals and catch up. Participants brought offerings of food, fresh ideas and new perspectives, which resulted in a truly connecting and joyful gathering, renewing bonds of affection. This year’s meeting was built upon last year’s foundation, and went a long way into reaffirming our vision for better facilitating the VS’ varied activities and goals. A more detailed report on the activities that will be facilitated in the coming months can be found here.

Vikalp Sangam has also been working towards strengthening its advocacy efforts to first, expose the false solutions that are threatening the alternatives, as well as articulating what are truly transformative alternatives. The Energy Conservation (amendment) Bill 2022, had proposed building carbon credit trading systems that alarmed many members, activists, civil society organizations, and movements of its potential disastrous impact on the future of India and its environment. In efforts to understand the implications on communities and other groups better, a group of concerned members have formed the VS Carbon Credit group to follow the carbon market and its impacts on social & environmental movement in India.

On the Vikalp Sangam Communications front, we are using Instagram collaborator posts as an opportunity to connect both with the Core Group and outside CG organizations; we did a collaboration with Grounded Imaginaries, Travellers University (CG member), and There is no Earth B. We also try to update social media from the ground by live tweeting and IG live, making sure to post content on important National and International Days. Further, we make a concerted effort to post content bilingually, Hindi and English.

The Movement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (MASSAMovement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (South East Asia)) is currently preparing for the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ ASEAN Peoples’ Forum (ACSC/APF) that will take place on September 1-3 in Jakarta, Indonesia with the theme: “Reclaiming Safe Spaces, Restoring Democracy and Equity in Southeast Asia!” This annual gathering of civil society and social movements in the region is the largest of its kind that engages on ASEAN issues. MASSA’s role in the conference is to maintain the critical perspectives on ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as an inter-governmental body limited only to its 10-member states with hardly any serious social agenda, and heavily influenced by neo-liberal geopolitics and autocracy.

MASSA will continue to lead the organizing of the Convergence Space on Alternative Regionalism (CS AltReg) spread out across the 3-day conference. This is a strategy to underscore the necessity to establish an alternative regionalism project administered by Southeast Asian peoples, and that counters the state-to-state modality of ASEAN governments.

Since 2020, CS AltReg, composed of workshops and people exchanges, has been a space especially among the grassroots and marginalized communities in Southeast Asia, to deepen the conversation about alternative regionalism based on their alternative practices and solidarity building. This platform also explores strategic actions that can strengthen people-to-people interaction, cooperation, and cross-border solidarity among the alternative practitioners.

In the 2020 conference held in Hanoi, Vietnam, a resolution was adopted on “alternative regional integration for Southeast Asian peoples.” The resolution noted the following: Since 2005, the ACSC/APF has been engaging with the official process, “presenting ASEAN leaders with “statements that reflect Southeast Asian peoples’ issues, concerns, and recommendations covering political, economic, social and cultural dimensions.”

An internal ACSC/APF Ten-Year Review (2005-2015), however, “concluded that ten years of engagement with the official ASEAN process have been regularly defined by a “prevailing silence and lack of attention and response to the observations and recommendations raised in all previous ACSC/APF Statements.”

This lack of attention by ASEAN governments to ACSC/APF recommendations have led the network to question the very purpose of ASEAN as a regional body with the 2017 Statement pointing out that “ASEAN continues to foster a regional integration model based on a “dominant development narrative that has bred economic, social and environmental crises, including extreme inequalities, extensive human rights violations, situations of conflict and violence, and wanton exploitation of natural resources that are overwhelming the region’s ecosystems.” The 2020 Resolution resolved that ACSC/APF “shall develop and adopt a new vision for engagement by civil society with ASEAN based on people-to-people interactions rather than state-to-state relations or purely market-oriented interactions” that will “lead to the establishment of a new peoples’ regional integration process.” This 2023, it is being expected that the resolution shall be acknowledged through the CS AltReg and a plenary session discussing the importance of alternative regionalism as a counter-narrative to the mainstream ASEAN regional integration process.