Rancho Mastatal - A Paradigm Shifter
By 2023 Apprentice, Sebastian Wittwer
The current paradigm
PROGRESS, DEVELOPMENT, FREE TRADE. The western world runs on an inexplorable logic, replacing people with machines, creating local interdependences with global markets and excluding ancient knowledge preserved by native tribes. With an ultimate sense of righteousness, this industrial model is being spread around the globe, reducing the worlds diversity to a monoculture in a literal sense. This monoculture is only possible since freedom based on individualism is pushed as one of the “culture’s” main achievements. This freedom means also freedom from traditional community values which can lead to a loss of all sense of importance. Consumerism doesn’t express freedom, but slavery to purely material values. Everyone living in the same kind of buildings, wearing the same kind of clothes, working for the same reasons is not individuality but rather the homogenization of all people. True individuality depends on community. We have been taught to live in a culture of alienation, separation, and blocked initiatives rather than in practices of commitment. Freedom from responsibility for others is equally a loss of assurance that others are ready to be supportive of. To be able to obtain a rich diversity in culture around the globe and on the search for a renewed sense of community, it seems necessary to develop concepts of self that are very different from that with which we have been indoctrinated. Therefore we have to rethink the way we want to live in the modern world.
The significance of rooted teachers
Emme (Apprentice 2023) leading the daily meeting – the communal way of communication
Rancho Mastatal is living and teaching prime examples of what it actually means to loosen up these seemingly “set in stone” structures by returning to a communal oriented life.
Against sacrificing local production, local economic stability and communal security to transient efficiencies and the quick profits of distant businessmen/women through electronic communication and teaching, Rancho Mastatal provides educators willing to live where they work and to work where they live. A class of educators that cultivate a sense of place and that is therefore able to distinguish between local and universal, particular and general, concrete and abstract. Not only does this push their educational standard over most western universities’, it also helps building a strong local community by including native tribes and their knowledge, by creating local wealth and social security, and by emphasizing real and honest relationships towards everyone around.
Core team member Ali, hands on teaching clay plastering – one of the many skills she owns and can give instant feedback on
The importance of building onto the local economy
Through an orientation of their agriculture towards local needs, local possibilities, and local limits, Rancho Mastatal also supports the health of the land, the people, and their democratic liberties.
By switching their priority from the global to the local economy, they reduce the outflow of capital to distant corporations and capital then circulates within the local economy. Instead of trying to live as self-sufficient as possible, a sense of relying on their community has proven itself as the way to be. Instead of isolation, incorporation of the local community has proven itself as more community friendly, more efficient and a more sustainable way to be. This expresses itself especially through the food they eat (mostly locally grown rice, beans, eggs, veggies like yuca and malanga), which goes against the culture of food from where the majority of the core team comes from.
Typical brunch meal: Gallo Pinto, fried eggs, malanga patties, leftover frittata, fruit, salad, kimchi, salad dressing – mostly locally sourced, in parts even self-grown
By building this local food economy (which is at this point as much local as possible, though not free of regional, national and international products), one might even call it a local foodshed as they add a lot of value to the community. First it overall improves the quality of the food itself. Second they increase consumer influence over production which makes each and every consumer a participatory member in their own food economy and helps to ensure a sustainable dependable supply of food at the same time. Farming practices are immensely improved and last but not least the costs associated with long supply chains (locking at packaging, transportation and advertising) are reduced, reducing the cost of food in general while increasing income to local growers, creating a positive feedback loop within their community.
A constant moral compass
Through their degree of popularity, Rancho Mastatal could totally start emphasizing monetary profits and capitalize of the place a lot more, which would most probably induce a decrease in their ability to stick to the permaculture ethics (people care, earth care, fair share, transition). Against this common western path, this place and its people stay true to their moral compass even though they wouldn’t have to. Instead of going ever bigger and bigger while trying to maximize profits, they are using their resources to give back to their community in any and every way possible.
Courses held in Spanish that only cover the costs during its time or simply sending people over to the local soda to get extra/different food are minor examples of what is described above as measures of their established paradigm against the monocultural life of the west.
To be able to initiate changes that may someday become radically transformative it needs places starting with small, reformist changes. Rancho Mastatal has proven itself over more than 20 years to be one of those places.
Locally produced chocolate by La Iguana Chocolate sold by Juan Luis - Good business during the dry season with all the guests, course attendees and friends visiting the Ranch and therefore one way of bringing more capital into the community as a whole