[This article is part of ZNetwork.org‘s series, Activist Diaries.]

How to handle scarcity

It’s the end of May, and a storm is brewing. The sky is grumbling in preparation, but it may not release the rain. Sometimes, the sky seems to get worked up like this, provoke us, then simmer down and let the grey clouds wander off without giving us any water. We’re going through a drought. Dry and wet seasons are normal here in central Mexico, but the dry season is getting longer and hotter.

I look out the window at the patio floor to check for rain drops. I pace, work, and look again. I have put buckets out to collect the rain. Free water. Hopefully. Because, while the Walmarts and rich suburbs, soft drink companies and nearby Volkswagen and Audi factories never run out of water, in the poorer parts of the city, we’re trying to exist on just a few litres a day. The WHO says 50 to100 litres are necessary to meet basic needs. Instead, we try to wash clothes, dishes, our hands, and ourselves with 5 to10.

It’s been like this for months, and I’m extremely stressed, and I can tell my neighbours are too.
When important things are scarce, people have different ways of coping depending on the community and contexts they are immersed in and what experience they have in overcoming difficulties. Some people turn selfish and violent, defending what little they have with lies, corruption, threats. Others come together, recognising they need each other and that collective solutions bring better outcomes for everyone.

We have had deadly and destructive earthquakes here in Puebla, and I saw the way normally disinterested people organised to collect building and food supplies and take them to where they were needed. When I lived in Venezuela and we faced three to nine-month periods without basic things like cooking oil or milk (there was rarely ever liquid milk, but then milk powder would become scarce) – as part of an opposition strategy to destabilise – communities came together to create or maintain community gardens, to distribute subsidised food among the neighbours fairly, and to collaborate with farmers.

Lately, here, I’m seeing a bit of both approaches. Neoliberalism, branded with US-imposed unfair trade deals and economic policies, and the ongoing trauma of its imperialism and domination, sees a lot of people emulating the greed and individualism in their own relationships and philosophies. One neighbour has been stealing what little water there in our building’s cistern just for herself, verbally abusing and threatening anyone who challenges her. Others have come together to pitch in for a water truck.

Climate change, resource looting by the Global North, organised gang violence and narcos (the private water company here has ties to organised criminals and two different gangs run my street) aren’t theory for us. It’s not a far away news story. It is a daily and real worry and interestingly, the water and heat issues also foster a deeper connection to the planet and her systems. Because one day of rain can make a difference — to us, to the plants we go, and to farmers and their vegetables that are then sold on my street.

We come first

For the first years that I became an activist, I thought that fighting for a better world involved sacrifice. I had read somewhere that Fidel Castro once said that shaving his beard was a waste of 10 precious minutes that could instead be used on reading and education or organising and so on. I roughly implemented that idea – that the struggle is the priority – in my own life. While I was never cruel to myself or others, I didn’t rest very much.

Now, in some ways, I still do that. I work a lot and I make big life decisions, such as not having children, so that I can give us much time and energy to caring for life through movements, journalism, and writing. Like many, I really struggle with the idea of just getting on with my own life when there is so much systematised destruction, violence, hunger, injustice, environmental problems. But the stress I am dealing with and the anger I feel about these things means that when I fight and organise, I am doing it for me too.

Calm, measured neutrality is the myth of very privileged people and media companies who would like everyone else to believe that distance from an issue brings clarity and gives them more authority and expertise than others. Actually, outrage and empathy are wise. Interconnectedness, giving a shit, collective demands, and caring for each other is more insightful, clear, and intelligent.

There’s a massive power imbalance when people or media try to speak for others or even when charities condescendingly claim to help others (loftily building wells or whatever for people in Global South countries as though they don’t know how to build their own, as though that has anything to do with what is causing the water issues or poverty). Alternatively, when we are fighting alongside others and for ourselves at the same time, we are building our own agency. Condescension and distance aren’t just attitudes, they are relationships. Who is making the decisions? Who are they really making them for? The essence of sovereignty – from personal sovereignty through to communities, women, workers, and Latin America’s sovereignty in the face of the US – is that we are looking after ourselves. We know what we need.

So putting ourselves first can involve rest (hell, rest is everything, just in terms of clear thought, joy, mood, and stress), but it isn’t just about shaving a beard or using skin creams and fitness watches, as the marketing industry and mainstream media would make out. It is fighting for our rights. We deserve much much more than memory foam pillows or ten types of tea. We deserve a world that listens to us, that treats us humanely and respectfully, and that puts us before the profits of arms companies and the mass production of shitty, useless, plastic goods.

Tomorrow night, I’m going to a protest against a rubbish dump. Indigenous communities in an area called the Cholultecas, about 45 minutes from Puebla city, have shut down the dump for almost three months now, holding 24-hour guards at its entrance. Symbols of rampant consumerism and plastic dependence, the dump is also deeper below ground than regulations allow, which means the toxic chemicals are making their way into the underground water system.

And so, as I hope like hell for rain, I know how important that water is. I’m going to the protest in support and solidarity, and to listen and learn. But in many ways it is my battle too. Everyone, everywhere, benefits from the struggles for water, for the environment, for women’s rights – not just women, not just Indigenous compas. We would all benefit from cracking down on the world’s biggest polluters – not just the Global South, which is facing the brunt of climate change.

Planting

The next day, at the rubbish dump protest.

There are green parrots in the nearby sunflower farms. In Spanish, sunflowers are called girasoles (girar – to turn, sol – the sun) because as the sun rises and sets, they turn to face it. The nearby volcano is backlit by a long and gentle sunset. The rubbish dump looms tall in front of us like an overly dull, skin-stripped, ugly, fabricated mountain.

The protest camp is a tarp-draped space, and we sit around on old chairs, sharing nuts, swatting away the red beetles that are drawn to the lights. Dogs stroll in between the chairs and demand attention. As it gets darker, people scratch at their arms and legs. The mosquitoes bite, then hide.

In a meeting, they decide on various other actions; a protest and press conference in Mexico City, where the regulatory body is, and to plant trees near the edge of the rubbish dump. A call will go out and community members will bring fruit trees and native trees. And like that, they will use the trees to recover their land, and to restore life.

Growth

About ten days later.

Rain has become everything to me. It rained for hours yesterday. After about eight months, the rainy season is finally starting. The worst of the heatwave is dimming. It is still much hotter than it should be though.

Because there will be rain, I plant herbs and vegetables in pots on my urban, concrete patio. It feels good. In a week or so, shoots will show. In a month or a few, I should have chard, cherry tomatoes, capsicum, cilantro, basil, and more.

Activism can be less satisfying. We plant ideas and movements, but so often the compositional change that results is harder to perceive. Its subtly seems wildly disproportionate to our efforts. But like the way water erodes what seem to be the strongest rocks, you don’t see it happening in the moment, but a hundred years later, the change is fundamental.

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Tamara Pearson is a Mexican-Australian author, journalist, and activist. She writes a free weekly newsletter, Excluded Headlines, with a summary of Global South news.

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