Issue #1: Launch of "The Machuca Elements" newsletter
Issue #1 | DECEMBER 2023
Welcome to the first issue of the Machuca Elements Newsletter! A weekly-ish newsletter about life, events, culture, spiritual development, education, communities, permaculture and regeneration in the Machuca Valley region of Costa Rica. Covering communities of Tacotal, La EcoVilla, Allegria, EcoVilla San Mateo, Maderal, Dulce Nombre, Libertad and anyone else living in the area.
Created for the local communities and written by the members of these same communities, this is a space to share news, major project updates, introduction of new initiatives as well as opinion pieces that are relevant to the area. But we have WhatsApp Groups already - why do we need something else!? Great question! The Newsletter provides a slightly longer-form format with a bit more editorial input as well a historic record that is openly available to everyone. A shared history of sorts that we can read now and later and celebrate our progress, perhaps even, dare I say it, for our children to read. Slower pace, longer form, more focused content that is thoughtfully produced and hopefully a pleasure to read!
The vision is that this newsletter will be fully decentralized and will be written, edited and published in it’s entirety by the people living in the area with direct input from the reader’s to ensure relevant topics are elevated. Yes, that means you are invited to participate and create, edit or review content before it’s published as well as steer the structure, frequency, type of content and anything else about this Newsletter. More on how to do that below. But for now, onto the News!
A Community Gathers to Design a Community
One day in early December, Bjoern put out a call to have a “Community Design Workshop”, the intention of which was to “begin to ground and align on a shared purpose, values and intentions for our community here and your individual role within while creating more cohesion in the group field to unlock our collective creative spark”… I know! I also read that twice. And sure enough, on December 9th and 10th, such workshop took place.
On Saturday, about 35 of us gathered at ESM and heard from Juan about Social Lab and the mission/vision work they’ve done with the emerging ESM community, followed by David who spoke about conversations taking place at government levels around Innovation and how Regeneration is a key theme that was coming up and how the developments taking place in Machuca Valley, in particular with existing and emerging communities is a great example of that theme which should be nurtured further. Oren followed with a conversation around regeneration and food security and spoke about the work they’re doing in Allegria to ensure there is a healthy and abundant ecosystem of agriculture producers that is able to both sustain itself as well as feed the people in the area with healthy, organic, regeneratively grown food, something that many of us here are passionate about. If you are a farmer or own land in the area and are interested in growing food, be sure to reach out to Oren. Finally Jon and Kerri from ESM spoke about their community building experiences and their interest in helping to nurture the invisible structures as well as provide various tools to create cohesion and trust among community members, bringing out the best in everyone, aligning on personal and communal true self. As the “new kids on the block”, they were full of enthusiasm and I hope their loving and committed energy remains strong. Lastly we closed with Alan leading us in a beautiful song to close the day, and then some logistics:
And yes, it didn’t take too long for us to go from a spiritual high into the classical logistical disagreements space, this one around where should day 2 be held. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that agreeing on building a more beautiful life together where we let go our egos and join a higher purpose is easy, walking that path in practice is full of challenges. It’s sort of like marriage, you agree to be there for each other and support each other until yada yada… You just don’t want to wash the dishes.
On Sunday morning, about 20 of us gathered at ESM for a workshop led by Esperide who shared practical tools from her experience living in a community for 30+ years. These ranged from mundane of having a welcome packet for guests so they know not to pee in the pool(no, I didn’t make that up!), to having a digital directory of common services(hint, we have one already: sanmateo.love), to having a weekly newsletter(hence this thing right here!) to communication and how to set-up containers where people can resolve their differences and communicate in non-violent ways, to establishing a “council of the wise” to hold space for those who may want to escalate and issue or concern.
A conversation around shared purpose took place where we arrived at a seemingly sad conclusion: we do not have one(surprise!) and its unlikely that we can agree on one beyond “live in harmony with nature”, which is so high level that everyone’s interpretation of that statement will vary to a significant degree as to make the statement meaningless. And yet, something brought us to this valley at this time and something is keeping us together, moreover everyone who showed up is obviously yearning for something more beyond the “nice eco-oriented neighborhood”. Perhaps it’s the Machuca River itself that brought us here? Perhaps it’s something else, but whatever it is, discovering that purpose will take time, effort and putting to practice some of the tools that Esperide has kindly shared with us.
In the afternoon, the group went up to the Allegria Yoga Shala, where we doubled in size from the morning to 40 people now! To start us off, Esperide did a guided walking meditation where we looked into each other and did a bit of time travel, going out a year, three, five and ten years from now(this Newsletter still existed then, I saw it!). Afterwards we went into more discussions around community building and in particular focused on identifying “guilds”, or groups of people with shared interest who can shepherd that particular area of life forward for the entire community. By the end of the day, roughly the following guilds were agreed upon and some(like this one!) were even initiated(Credit to Esteban for taking writing these down):
Co-creation of a welcome committee to help new community members understand the community agreements and values
Co-creation of a Guardians of the Water group to protect this precious treasure💎
Co-creation of a weekly newspaper to inform the community about events and news📰
Co-creation of a conflict resolution council to help resolve problems in an empathic and harmonious way💚
Co-creation of Game and Art festivals to promote culture and community connection🎨
Commitment to learning Spanish to improve communication. 🇨🇷
Co-creation of a circular economy with its own currency: Machuquita💲
Celebration of community events throughout the year, such as solstices and lunar cycles🌞🌝
Co-creation of inter-community councils to facilitate dialogue and collaboration between the communities of the Machuca Valley⛰️
After the workshop, everyone felt very energized and full of optimism. Hugs were given, volunteers raised hands, sometimes more than 2, WhatsApp Groups were created and the aftermath group chatter was very positive and filled with love.
So where does this leave us? For those that have been here a while and have sat in similar circles with similar positive-sounding outcomes, a healthy dose of skepticism remains, with big questions around how much of this energy will manifest itself in 3d reality and out of that, how many efforts will pass the test of time. Yet, there is a reason to think “Yes, but this time is different!”. The biggest outcome in my mind is the very fact that members from La EcoVilla, Allegria, Tacotal, EcoVilla San Mateo, Maderal & even Dulce Nombre came together, this in itself as far as I’m aware is the first time that happened. Hopefully the metaphysical gates will remain open, as will the physical ones and we shall see what energy passes through them.
Finally I leave you with a quick comment from Charles Eisenstein in one of his recent talks when he was asked about his thoughts on community, here is his answer:
How to keep this Newsletter going:
Want to read issue #2? Better yet, want to help create it!? We’re looking for submissions and volunteers to help shape this into a best Newsletter possible! Do you have a topic you’d like to share with the broader community in a longer-form? An event that took place or an initiative being formed that is relevant to others? Perhaps you want to write about gentrification risks and how to avoid them? About integrating ex-pat and local communities together? Learning Spanish? About the environment, permaculture, water, planting? Local organic food and markets? Perhaps something about construction and ways to do it in a more environmentally-friendly way? Schools / children education? The challenges of making a living locally? Spiritual practices? Art? Aliens? Astrology? No topic is taboo so long as it is relevant to the local community and is grounded in the daily life of Machuca Valley.
We’re still developing the publishing guidelines and for now keeping it fairly flexible, to submit an article, simply click here: