Jacobin
Back in 2003, a friend and I acquired jobs at an avocado packing facility in a village in Andalusia not far from where two of my father’s relatives were executed by Franco. For three and a half euros an hour, we stood by a conveyor belt and alternately clipped avocado stems, arranged the fruit in boxes, and arranged the boxes on wooden pallets.
Each activity was accompanied by unironic reminders from the factory bosses to work como una máquina, although they eventually realized that such rhetoric was less effective in increasing our output than the provision of boxed wine and cognac in plastic cups.
Our spare time was spent consuming the same refreshments in other venues where elderly villagers reminisced about periods of mass regional starvation and counted the number of days remaining until the Christmas lottery. Andalusia appeared permanently and inevitably repressed by the state, the aristocracy, the euro, and a host of related demons. Beyond palliative cognac and lottery ticket purchases, there seemed little that could be done.
Not once did we hear of nearby Marinaleda, star of a new study by Dan Hancox called
The Village Against the World. A self-proclaimed “utopia towards peace,” the central Andalusian village currently boasts 2,700 inhabitants and some delusions of grandeur. Hancox notes, “In most parts of the capitalist world, ‘another world is possible’ is just an idealistic rallying cry. In Marinaleda, it’s an observable fact.”
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