Producing for Self-Consumption and its Use-Value, an Inheritance that Continues to this Day

In the 19th century, the native inhabitants of the town of El Comedero Grande were workers of the El Copalillo hacienda¹⁰ (large estate), dedicated to raising large livestock (horses and donkeys) for transportation and cultivating agricultural lands. They founded, perhaps unknowingly, what is known as El Comedero Grande in the northeastern part of the lands near the mountains that initially occupied the hacienda. In that place, there was an area for feeding the wild animals, where the workers built some houses to settle and take care of the livestock. The factor that determined their settlement there was the production-consumption process oriented towards satisfying basic reproductive needs: food, shelter, and clothing.

The economic context of this time calls for a reminder that haciendas were the basic unit of economic production in the countryside, and wages were not a determining factor for choosing a job; rather, haciendas guaranteed their workers their livelihood in kind: housing, food, health care, and religious festivities, while indebtedness in the “tiendas de raya” (company stores) acted as a coercive element for workers to acquire basic food and hygiene supplies through indebtedness, which was paid to the guarantor—the hacienda owner—with work. Therefore, it can be considered that monetary payment through daily wages was important for the subsistence of the original populations in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was not conclusive.

At the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, in the context of land reform, the lands of the El Copalillo and the adjacent San Juan haciendas were taken to form the ejido nucleus in the locality. Over the years, grandparents, parents, and children continued the hacienda’s economic-productive tradition, which was adopted by the inhabitants of the locality: livestock breeding and grain cultivation. However, the breeding of large livestock was replaced by that of small livestock, as this type of herd implied lower expenses for ejidatarios and farmers. Similarly, the cultivation of grains carried out in the hacienda became the planting of corn, beans, and sorghum for family consumption. Thus, only when the harvest was—and is—abundant, the inhabitants divided the product, allocating some for self-consumption, some for animal feed, and the rest for sale.

The crisis in the Mexican countryside beginning in 1970 led to national agricultural products facing open and rapid competition in the international market. Later on, a deep structural crisis of the ejido¹¹ took place. After the land reform¹² was completed, the conditions were created to fragment and privatize the collective land ownership. Although the ejido did not immediately disappear, the groundwork was established for this to happen in the long term.

In a context marked by these characteristics, it is plausible to consider that the agrarian reform guaranteed access to land for farming to people dedicated to agricultural work, however, this did not lead to the provision of tools, supplies, technologies, and financing to face an increasingly aggressive international market that affected the national production of the primary sector. This situation of structural and generalized crisis at the national level greatly affected localities that were not fully integrated into the dynamics of the investment market, such as El Comedero, which ended up reinforcing the migration of peasant population to the city and to the United States: “I went to the United States and bought a tractor, an old one, from the seventies, but with that I work on my father’s and my own land” (anonymous, personal communication, April 4, 2022).

Currently, it is frequent in the community to find that the adult children of the older ejidatarios help their parents to sow the land. However, working in the field continues to be a traditional activity inherited from ancestors that satisfies certain immediate needs of the reproduction process. If we add to this the existence of small gardens that some families have in their homes, it is observed that the land continues to be the nurturing element that provides the basic consumption goods to reproduce life in the community.

At this point, critical theory is taken up again in order to understand production for self- consumption, based on use-value. Human beings reproduce themselves through the consumption of certain material goods, whose production is not given as such in nature, but is the result of the transformative action that workers exercise on it. In other words, this is known as the labor or workforce that is put into motion to produce certain goods required for human consumption; this labor force produces goods for self-consumption.

Therefore, we are dealing with products endowed with a use value that satisfies a system of needs and/or has a utility according to the development of society and the specific moment. Referring to ^{Marx (2001)}, it is possible to consider that the values created or produced by the force of labor are considered for use and, at the same time, contain an exchange value, which is precisely the investment in labor time.

The product for self-consumption involves a use-value created by useful work, but the raw materials and tools used by the producer—necessarily acquired as commodities—contain past labor in the means of production, which is preserved by being transferred through concrete labor to the final product as constant capital (^{García Vela, 2011}). For example, the tractor, the seed, the fertilizer, the animal feed—in short, the inputs and instruments used to produce use-values— always have a past value added to the value of the final product.

In the case of self-consumption, planting ensures the food that families need to sustain their process of reproduction, so its value to the inhabitants is much higher. Since it has a use-value (food consumption), it contains within itself a production and work process that required care, attention, and support, which was carried out by the children or the family during the planting process. Therefore, although money does have a value, the strategy of producing for self- consumption relaunches other life reproduction processes that do not depend solely on obtaining a salary to buy food. In this sense, the production-consumption process that starts from the natural context is sustained by the production of use-values that guarantee, to some extent, the reproduction of the household unit.

In production for self-consumption, there is a process of transformation of goods obtained from the natural context, using tools with a past value of use and exchange—since they were acquired in a market—. However, it is a work that does not exclusively derive in sale, but also enables self- consumption. Therefore, it moves from the realm of the mercantile to that of consumption, which satisfies a set of needs, making the daily reproduction of life possible. Thus, traditional cultivation and self-consumption observed in the production-consumption process in the community occur based on a system of needs, which is satisfied with strategies inherited from ancestors in their productive work and a given natural context. The combination of these variables shapes the production-consumption system of the locality.

Despite this, the world of use-values—in this case, of self-consumption—“is permanently dominated, conditioned, harassed, and deformed by the rhythms and demands of capital” (^{Linsalata, 2015, p. 327}). Productivity and the national and global overexploitation of natural resources are increasingly overwhelming. These dynamics break, fracture, and disrupt metabolic processes of exchange of energy and care between society and nature.

The Metabolic Fracture Between Ecosystem and Society

The current economic devastation that has plunged rural populations into a structural crisis is not a new issue. In fact, competitiveness and processes of overexploitation that dominate much of the human production-consumption process —among many other factors that fuel the frenetic pace of productivity—are causing severe disruptions in climate change, reflected in either excessive or scarce rainfall and the depletion of subsurface resources such as minerals or water for domestic use.

Conceiving the territory as an ecosystem—that is, as a large interdependent sphere between inhabitants, natural resources, and land use along with biotic and abiotic communities—allows us to reflect that when it is overexploited, it will affect others, as we are immersed in a continuous territory. In this sense, the community of El Comedero, being located in an area of intermediate water catchment closure and semi-arid zone, experiences the acute consequences derived from the structural economic crisis of the countryside and the ruptures of the society-nature metabolic pathways.

Based on the results of the participatory research workshop called “Collective care in the management of material goods for daily reproduction”, it is possible to affirm that the participants recognized the havoc caused by the climate change crisis in their locality. The workshop allowed the detection of four interrelated problems with the natural context: deforestation, the cutting of firewood to replace the use of gas due to its high cost, water scarcity-drought in seasonal farming, and open-air burning of garbage.

These problems are closely linked to daily reproduction and respond to a metabolic fracture in their relationship with nature. In the search to direct a part of their production towards commerce and thus obtain the monetary income they require to cover other goods of production, in recent months the villagers have increased livestock breeding, for which they needed to expand the pasture that serves as a feeding place for the animals.

Products that have a use-value for the reproduction of life are crucial (for example, cleaning the river that runs through the community or planting maize for self-consumption), but they are insufficient to sustain life. In this context, inhabitants also require monetary income that allows them to acquire necessary and/or complementary products for their daily reproduction. For this purpose, the ejidatarios have opened up land for pasture in order to expand the zone of bush feeding for the animals and achieve greater control of free grazing that affects plant biodiversity. At the same time, the comuneros (communal landowners) have requested the restitution of lands that the ejido owners are occupying as pasture, while the local settlers have settled on other lands to build homes. As a counterpart, the growing disorganization among the ejidatarios, comuneros, and avecindados (local settlers) has greatly hindered the possibility of establishing clear and common rules among those involved in matters related to livestock breeding and land use for grazing.

In the face of this panorama, the natural environment is the most affected, since the loss of vegetation cover is mainly a consequence of deforestation carried out to gain land for agriculture, overgrazing, and the use of firewood for cooking, which is compounded by soil erosion caused by the aggressiveness of the wind. These circumstances subject soil and water resources to great stress, “since they reduce the fertility of the arable layer and diminish the soil’s capacity to retain, release, and transport water, whether it be for crops, grass species, shrubs or trees” (^{FAO / ONUAA, 2015}).

This is expressed in prolonged drought, high temperature and low humidity, which together cause a deterioration of physical, chemical and biological properties due to the disarticulation of the plant-soil binomial.

One of the problems is that the trees are running out; I think that from the time I have been here and from what I saw when we were children, the community was more beautiful because there were fewer people, more trees, more spaces, but now it is overcrowded because of the people or because we don’t have awareness or don’t see the situation we are causing, and anyone builds anywhere and that has affected the community a lot. Rather, if you had a piece of land, you should plant trees to have vegetation and oxygen, but we don’t do it (anonymous, personal communication, December 13, 2021).

One of the main consequences of disturbing vegetation is soil degradation. This situation leads to a greater dependence on irrigated crops as they put pressure on aquifers, which results in higher costs for producers. However, faced with rising prices to establish and expand irrigation areas, local farmers have opted for rainfed agriculture, which sometimes, due to climate change, delays harvest or reduces yields, exacerbating the structural crisis of domestic units in terms of production costs.

Another practice that is tied to the disruption of the society-nature metabolic pathways, which exacerbates climate change and functions as a family reproduction strategy, is related to tree felling. In the municipality, mesquite trees commonly grow, which are characteristic trees of the arid and semi-arid areas of Mexico. Mesquite is an excellent soil fixer that improves fertility and prevents desertification because its deep roots help retain water; this could improve soil moisture management, which is essential for food production.

However, among the municipalities with the highest consumption of firewood used for heating or cooking, Irapuato ranks third (^{INEGI, 2020}). Unfortunately, the mesquite is strongly affected by these actions. In El Comedero, families often use firewood to reduce the combustion costs involved in cooking. Occasionally, firewood obtained from logging is sold within and outside the locality. Families buy firewood bales from their neighbors, while some villagers go to the mountains to bring back denser firewood. Another group of people uses the already dry wood on the ground.

Upon realizing the existence of this environmental problem, the population has focused its attention on solutions that, although partial,¹³ are well-intentioned and above all linked to their capacity for social organization, such as the promotion of reforestation activities.

Although the residents reported having started a reforestation program in the town the previous year, they acknowledge that it did not yield the expected results, as the trees donated by the government for planting required a lot of water and did not survive the climate. They also expressed the need for environmental education workshops.

Well, I think that nature, in a way, has charged us for what we have done to it. It would be important to make people more aware of not throwing more garbage, burning less garbage, or also being mindful that, if I have a dry tree, then try to plant another one (participant of the “Reproductive Care” workshop, personal communication, April 1, 2022).

The residents also urged to pay attention to education processes aimed at promoting knowledge about environmental care. An alternative that could be considered in these types of localities is the implementation of long-range popular education processes that promote sustained environmental care. This involves making much more organized efforts involving a larger number of people so that the actions taken have long-term results.

For example, for reforestation to produce expected results, efforts made should be adapted to the topographic characteristics of the locality and incorporate the knowledge, wisdom, and practices of the population in the field and understand their customs, rhythms, and time of care, because the residents themselves vividly know the natural species prone to develop in the area: “when I go to the hill, I carry a handful of seeds to plant and see if they grow” (participant of the “Reproductive Care” workshop, personal communication, April 1, 2022). The imposition of entirely new processes in environmental care can result—as happened in the locality—in reforestation failure.

In the last activity of the workshop, called “Collective care and management of material goods in rural communities,” in a combination of responses, the participants expressed their collective desires and needs in their territory; that is, they thought and expressed what they would like to exist in the locality. These desires were related to better care for the environment and, to achieve them, made evident the need to implement collective work, which they have already been developing, but which requires more frequency to consolidate them and greater capacity for co- responsibility; in colloquial terms, “to come to an agreement”.

It should be noted that at least once a year, the community organizes cleaning days; for this purpose, the neighbors self-organize at the church, without the intervention of a formal authority, except for the delegate, who calls the community through the trumpeter, the person who plays the trumpet and announces that there will be a neighborhood meeting. The meetings serve to determine, jointly and publicly deliberating, who will be part of the cleaning day. Generally, the groups of participants are distributed by rotation. This means that the group of people who participate in one cleaning day do not participate in the next one, and a different group is selected, and so on until the cycle is completed and the group that participated in the first cleaning day is reached again.

In terms of environmental care, it was observed that the community has two opposing practices: on the one hand, environmental care is perceived, and on the other hand, the fracture in the care provided to the ecosystem is evident. This is called border territory, meaning that it is on the borderline between care and the fracture of it. Thus, although environmental care is not overlooked, it is blurred because at times the priority is to achieve an economic income that is a complement and source of other goods required to sustain the production-consumption process, which ultimately satisfies other vital needs from the context of the inhabitants.

In this sense, El Comedero is a border territory because it has very clear signs of collective and public environmental care, but at the same time, it is experiencing internal ruptures in these relationships. These ruptures create a border between a breakdown of the social fabric rooted in the place and a disconnection from the space.

Rootedness and Affection to the Territory

In El Comedero, three ways were identified through which inhabitants build connections or roots with their territory. The first is that land, as a space or place to build a house, is donated by parents or grandparents to current generations; the second is related to emotions and the joy of living in the territory, as it generates in its inhabitants a sense of freedom and tranquility; and the third refers to participatory organizational processes for managing and caring for common goods, which generate links between members and with the space-territory.

According to what was observed in the community, the relationships with the land as a material condition for reproduction, treating it as their own, make the reproduction and conservation of the community possible. Therefore, the primary objective is not the creation of surplus value or exchange value, although it is possible to create it through the market relations they undertake, but rather the functional goal is the personal, domestic, and collective reproduction of the community entity, which is produced and reproduced thanks to collective work organized in social ties and expressed in the management of common goods that satisfy immediate requirements of life. Therefore, immediately, the land appears to them as a wealth of means of life, and from them, individuals and the community relate to themselves as producers of the conditions of their reality.

The first type of connection mentioned—the donation of land from parents to their children— arises from customary law, “in which custom becomes a converging right in a social and cultural heritage” (^{Acebo Ibáñez, 1996, p. 51}). Families in the community are descendants of people who worked on the hacienda, and when the ejido nucleus was created as a result of the agrarian reform, their ancestors received the proportional ejido allotment corresponding to each family’s distribution of hectares. Over time, extended families reproduced in the area and their living space remained in El Comedero, based on customary rights¹⁴ to land and work.

In addition, there is another group of families made up of much more recent generations; generally, they lack documentation to prove their ownership and settle on the land through a verbal donation or assignment from their parents. It should be noted that the ejido holders often make verbal commitments and donate meters of land to family members who require a space to build their home. Such practices remain part of customary law, even though in institutional normative terms the documentation may not meet the requirements of the state and the law; among them, they respect intra-family commitments as part of oral rules transmitted from generation to generation.

In general, the inhabitants expressed openness to immigration by accepting the arrival of new neighbors to the locality. However, discrepancies in social relations regarding population growth can be observed. The first of these discrepancies is evident in the status of titular ejidatarios and those who are not. Clearly, titular members have a voice and vote in ejidal assemblies, which organize work and tasks often directly related to some collective management that includes the inhabitants. For example, for the construction of the multipurpose hall, the ejido donated the land, while the inhabitants and ejido members cooperated with labor and made a financial contribution to carry out the works.

On the other hand, families in El Comedero have grown thanks to the kinship they have cultivated with people from other localities, who have settled in this locality through family networks, as well as through the residency established by ejidatarios who previously did not live in the locality. Before potable water, electricity, and internet arrived in the locality, ejidatarios who were landowners did not live in the ranch but in Irapuato. When these services were introduced in the locality, they returned to take part in their lands and work them. Compared to the avecindados (individuals who have settled in the town of El Comedero, but who are not landowners), ejidatarios perform an important role in convening and managing within the community.

Certainly, the second circumstance that contributes to rooting themselves to the place was observed in the focus groups, when people expressed their interest in living in the locality and stated that they have no prospects of moving for the following reasons: a) their parents inherited that land to them, b) in previous decades, when there was no electricity, people went to the city of Irapuato, but there they perceived a lot of insecurity and little “freedom”.

I worked in Irapuato for a long time and honestly, I didn’t like it; I used to talk to my husband because his parents moved there, but I didn’t like leaving my ranch, because here I can go into my room and see all the trees; there, you’re locked up and don’t see anything. Here, there is security and a lot of peace (participant of the focus group with women, personal communication, December 2022).

The places-territories allow experiencing emotions that give meaning to a space and confirm “the importance of spatial dimension in determining what we like to look at and where we like to be” (^{Ellard, 2016, p. 37}). The people who participated in the focus group perceive their locality as their home: “when one comes by the road from the ravine and one enters here, one feels ‘now it is really my land’” (participant of the focus group with women, personal communication, December 2022).

The exclusivity of space, spatial boundaries, local fixation of proximity or distance, all influence social formations, and living in a space generates rooting, not only due to cultural and social factors, which are highly binding for its residents, but also due to the history that such belonging generates and the “genetic (race), geographic (environment), economic (function or occupation), and psychological (thought) factors” (^{Acebo Ibáñez, 1996, p. 160}).

In subjective terms, it was observed that the participants associated freedom, security, tranquility, and happiness with their territory as their place of living; in fact, the words tranquility and freedom are the most frequently mentioned in the in-depth interviews and focus groups. Interestingly, the term most expressed by men was tranquility, while in the case of women it was freedom, which may be associated with the fact that in the locality of El Comedero assaults and unsafe routes are rare while in urban spaces they are experienced more frequently. It may also be associated with the spaciousness of the rural environment, which allows for the enjoyment of open spaces, while in urban areas, constructions and population density create a sense of space constriction. In the case of men, the expressed perception of tranquility is likely associated with work in the field, which is often quiet and removed from city noise.

Evidence suggests today that exposure to natural landscapes produces a series of beneficial consequences ranging from better health, both mental and physical, to better relationships with neighbors and happier and safer living environments (^{Ellard, 2016, p. 41}).

From psychology, it has been observed that our attraction to nature is related to its fractal properties, that is, to the geometric figures that repeat themselves in it at various scales. These figures are perceived in branches, plants, and generate a spectrum of energy that “could be related to our patterns of preference” (^{Ellard, 2016, p. 45}).

These patterns linked to the natural context and the sensations of trust and security they convey, as well as choice and cultural inheritance, root residents and families in their origins and generate collective bonds. Thus, people “tend ‘to settle’ locally in a space that is shaped by its uniformity” (^{Acebo Ibáñez, 1996, p. 3}). When there is a sense of belonging to groups and organizations that involve people intimately, a social rootedness is generated linked to the way the individual participates in the bonds that have taken shape, so to speak, in the land; this gives rise to a common inheritance between ancestors and contemporary inhabitants.

Rootedness implies the existence of a terrestrial space, appropriated and valued—both symbolically and instrumentally—by human beings to generate living conditions that allow them to enhance their creative being when satisfying symbolic and meaningful needs of reproduction through care, security, and freedom found in space. It should be noted that being born or living in a particular territory does not automatically produce the construction of symbolic rootedness in it. Rootedness implies a struggle to defend what is considered common and one’s own.

The territorial rootedness of the people of El Comedero is associated with their homes:

I have lived here all my life, and I have shared everything with my family here. When I go to Irapuato or somewhere else, it’s a headache because of the noise and stress, but here I am happy. (...) when I return, I say, “I’m back”, from here to there is my home, and it feels that way (anonymous, personal communication, April 3, 2022).

This provides clues that the construction of territory has to do with seeking, living, and feeling at home, taking care of it and perceiving it as a safe place. Home spaces “shape our first routines of thought and memory” (^{Ellard, 2016, p. 76}) and are often associated with a set of positive values: privacy, acceptance, comfort, shelter, awe, and intimacy. Therefore, in rural inhabitants, it is common to find a preference for open, spacious spaces that, due to their low population density and extended families, provide a certain level of privacy and sense of security.

The feelings of attachment to our homes are also influenced by our personal histories, and “the places where they occurred shape our adult attraction or rejection of certain types of spatial organizations, depending on the influence of those early life experiences” (^{Ellard, 2016, p. 83}). Small agrarian communities place a great deal of value on an interior life linked to the social group of relatives and acquaintances and trust in the territory, where sociality is generated because they live in a place that they believe they are quite familiar with. This situation is reinforced by the rootedness to the place, to the space, to the collectively constructed territory, which, consequently, is cared for because of its symbolic, socializing, and materially basic value for the daily reproduction of the inhabitants.

Reproductive Care Deployed in the Collective Organization

The third of the links that generate rootedness, among others, which is also constructed as a moment of socialization and as a vehicle that enables the production-consumption process for the reproduction of life, is that of the care carried out to satisfy collective needs, since producing and consuming material goods, managing them, administering them, caring for them, and sustaining them imply a process of social organization.

Inside the homes of El Comedero, there is a tendency for women to take on unpaid domestic and care work, while men operate as the economic providers for the family’s maintenance, a model that, in turn, imposes the formation of a nuclear family. Upon delving deeper into this binary division of roles in in-depth interviews, it was possible to understand that the difference in work is not total or all-encompassing.

Women generate their own reproductive strategies within households, which basically include three actions: one of them consists of working outside the home, either in the factory area of the industrial corridor or by cleaning urban neighborhoods in Irapuato; in this case, daughters take care of the home during the day. Another action is related to their own homes, which includes setting up gardens, collecting firewood from the mountain or performing tasks in their homes; these are functional activities for them that allow them not to neglect reproductive care in their homes. The third action involves working in the fields during planting and harvest seasons; together with their family, they perform agricultural tasks, sow, fumigate and provide food to workers.

Women’s participation is doubly active: as mentioned, inside the household they provide reproductive care to their members; in addition, in certain cases, they complement the purely monetary income with money saved in a popular savings box. This was formed from an invitation from the Choice¹⁵ organization, which has brought various in-kind benefits to the community. This box made it possible for women to build a network of economic support. The contributions range from 10 Mexican pesos (MXN) to whatever the participant wishes to contribute. They commented that, usually, savings come from what is left over weekly from daily expenses, which on average does not exceed 50 MXN, but serves to deposit it into the box and withdraw money from there when needed.

Regarding the organization of the savings fund, the women rotate the board of directors monthly and hold a weekly meeting to report on the state of the administration. Every time the composition of the board changes, the key to the box and the account book, which is public because it records all the women who contribute savings, are handed over. During the weekly meetings to review the accounts of the savings group, they also take the opportunity to discuss a public topic or local management issue.

The savings box represents another reproductive strategy that allows for supplementing the insufficient family income. In case of problems in meeting the expense of food or other necessary expenses, the savings box represents an immediate resource for women which is available for them at any time; they can even withdraw all their money and rejoin when they are able to do so. This formation of the women’s group has functioned as a material and social support to satisfy life needs in a continuous and ongoing process of reinvention and constant creation of social relationships (^{Gutiérrez Aguilar et al., 2017}); that is, the organization of women enables collaborative activities and reciprocal obligation in multiple works and energies of family and community reproduction.

It is important to highlight that in addition to carrying out essential tasks for family subsistence within the home, contributing to the monetary income, and performing caretaking work, women also engage in other actions that extend to the community. Generally, they are the ones who organize community activities and often assign tasks in which men will cooperate. As representative figures, women take the lead in their management.

On the other hand, there is an exception in the case of the ejido board, as it is an area dominated by men. Currently, there are only five women who own plots of land and can participate with voice and vote in their assemblies. Therefore, women are the ones who usually call public meetings, for which a bell located in the house of a former trumpeter is rung to make the call, either by ringing the bell or playing his trumpet a few minutes before the meeting. The meetings are usually held at the school, the community hall, or the church, public places located in the center of the town, easily accessible to the population.

In organizational matters, rotation of positions is planned for practically all existing committees in the community: those related to the ejido, water, delegation, and the local women’s group. The work carried out in these committees is considered as a service to the community and is not measured in terms of salary. Therefore, collective work such as cleaning the streets and the river that runs through the community, reforestation, and clearing of pipes, among others, are common. These are actions of collective care for the territory and a commitment to service to take care of their home, which transcends the domestic space.

According to ^{Rolnik (2019)}, it can be interpreted that this sociality has a causal relationship, among others, with the vital and social drive to “create modes of existence” (p. 29). This contributes to building territory and collectively managing the common goods of the inhabitants, since “interactions between people nurture feelings of trust, sincerity, and affection. Similarly, our history of visits to a place, the time we spend there, and the experiences we have can awaken a powerful sense of attachment” (^{Ellard, 2016, p. 93}).

Particularly, the committee for water management is led by a woman along with a group of other women, who accompany her in the activities; they teach us that the ability to convene is mediated by a respectful treatment with their neighbors and that the work they do is common and day-to-day, without economic remuneration, but is carried out because it is necessary for people’s daily reproduction. The president of the committee calls for meetings by ringing the public bell and, once the attendees, mostly women, have gathered, she proceeds to explain the topic that motivated the meeting. While attendees can freely express their opinions on the topic, when opinions veer towards personal matters, the president tries, with respect, to redirect the participation towards the central topic, as there are sometimes disagreements among neighbors on matters unrelated to water.

In the community, it is possible to observe that people have a high sense of collaboration and responsibility, both among themselves and with their living space. In this sense, although women primarily attend the calls, when it comes to assigning tasks for cleaning pipes or for their repair, they commit to having their partners attend the collective work call on the assigned day and time to do it. Participants usually attend the work because they believe it is a commitment to the common good. “The thing is, it’s a commitment or a right that we have to go help because all people are supposed to help in the work because it’s for the community” (anonymous, personal communication, April 4, 2022).

The criteria for distributing collaborative work hours are based on the participation that individuals have had in previous activities; if a family has already attended previous work sessions, another family—usually led by a man but represented by a woman in the meetings—may rotate to cover their place. This is how the list of participants is formed. If any of the household heads (male or female) cannot attend, they are replaced by another family member, and the family is responsible for covering their participation. If this does not happen, their support is requested for the fulfillment of a double work shift in the next activity. Sometimes, newly arrived residents may miss these activities due to their lack of knowledge about the established community activities, but they are invited to participate in order to integrate them into these collaborative actions.