The Rainbow Peace Caravan: A Nomadic EcoVillage
The Rainbow Peace Caravan was a nomadic multicultural activist community that traveled through Latin America for 13 years, from 1996 to 2009.
The Caravan was founded by Alberto Ruz Buenfil and Liora Adler (both founding members of Huehuecóyotl EcoVillage) with many other volunteers and activists. The original vision was to travel from Central Mexico to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina, at the southern tip of the continent, in one year. To the surprise of many, including the founders, the project actually lasted 13 years, traveling from Mexico to Brazil, visiting and working in 17 countries, hosting more than 400 volunteers (approximately 10 to 35 at a time), and seeding a culture of peace, ecology, and care for Mother Earth.
As a Mobile Community the Rainbow Peace Caravan applied many concepts from Permaculture and the EcoVillage movement including: consensus decision-making, communal spiritual practices, ecological practices (use of biodiesel when posible, solar energy, composting, recycling, dry toilets, and low consumption of manufactured products).
As a Mobile Education Center, The Rainbow Peace Caravan facilitated hundreds of educational activities throughout Latin America including: conscious theater performances, workshops on permaculture, ecology and recycling, decision-making and non-violent communication, art, dance, women’s circles and the sacred feminine, among others.
International Gatherings and Networking
The Caravan also organized convergences and International gatherings during their trip, bringing the Consejo de Visiones (Vision Council) model from Mexico to the rest of Latin America. The Vision Council events are essentially Bioregional Gatherings to hold space for local and international communities to come together and share social projects and ecological solutions. National gatherings promoted by the Caravan took place in Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Chile, and International gatherings in Peru in 2003 (Call of the Condor) and Brazil (Call of the Hummingbird) in 2005.
As an evolution of the Vision Council framework, the Caravan began hosting Peace Villages, bringing a new framework for creating experiential gatherings and temporary communal-living experiments. The Peace Villages incorporate Permaculture concepts with spiritual and ceremonial practices, building a temporary EcoVillage as a platform to share knowledge and work together. The concept and framework of the Peace Village have since been applied to diverse gatherings, including the Youth Camp of the World Social Forum now being multiplied in large-scale events around the world.
Mapping Culture and Community in Brazil
After years of service as a link between communities working for a better world in Latin America, the project was recognized in 2007 for its innovation and success. The Minister of Culture of Brazil, Gilberto Gil invited Alberto Ruz and the Caravan to design a national project in Brazil, creating ‘points of culture’ in different areas of the country (including Indigenous villages, Afro-Brazilian communities known as quilombos, and inner-city communities), bringing a message of ecology, peace, community, and care for the Earth to thousands of Brazilians.
After 4 years of work in Brazil, the project finally ended in 2009, completing what was one of the biggest and most popular projects to promote Permaculture and EcoVillages as a viable alternative for many people in the Americas and the World. Evidence of the impact the Caravan had can be found in the germinating seed that is the rising EcoVillage movement and other nomadic ecological projects currently circulating through Latin America, such as the recent creation of C.A.S.A. (the Council of Sustainable Settlements) with branches in different countries from the South.
Written by Leticia Rigatti of the Común Tierra Project,
www.comuntierra.org
see the caravana blog: http://caravanaarcoiris.blogspot.mx/