The Village Against the World by Dan Hancox

Author:Dan Hancox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

In 1982, when the community employment fund was temporarily withdrawn and several Andalusian towns went on strike, Marinaleda voted in its assembly to continue working, even without pay. In August that year, Sánchez Gordillo addressed a rally of 8,000 farm labourers in Seville, saying that what was needed was real work, not charity: ‘If they still do not understand, from this event, that we want to work the land, well: we will have to act differently.’

One of the most well-known symbolic and practical activities of Marinaleda is the ritual of Domingos Rojos, Red Sundays. Once a month – so the theory goes – the people of the village gather on a Sunday morning outside the Sindicato, usually as early as 8 am, and, depending on individual capabilities, and a popular vote on what needs doing most urgently, the participants proceed to spend the day working voluntarily to improve the village. This could mean gardening in the public park, painting murals, sweeping the streets, or helping bring in the harvest in El Humoso.

Red Sundays were born out of an argument between the pueblo and Prime Minister Felipe González. In a 1983 speech González (an Andalusian himself) dusted off the old canard that Andalusian farm labourers were lazy and accused them of spending their community employment pay on luxuries like cars. Marinaleda held a Saturday night assembly and decided to devote the next day to improving the pueblo. Sánchez Gordillo called up the press and informed them as follows:

‘We want to demonstrate that in order to find laziness and corruption, the prime minister should look not at the Andalusian jornaleros, but somewhere closer to home. We want to show him that when the government rests, the jornaleros are working.’

And so the next day, they set about several hours of street repair, painting and landscaping in the public squares. It was a defiant performance to the outside world, and a humiliation for the prime minister.

Beyond their propaganda role, Talego’s observation on Red Sundays was that they also played a big part in solidifying community sensibility and tightening the bonds of the pueblo – thus boosting participation and faith in the project. This was, Talego suggested, a two-way street: when dishing out paid work at El Humoso, it would be relevant whether you had participated in Red Sundays – just like individuals’ participation in demonstrations, general assemblies and even village festivities would be informally, unofficially noticed.

More than that, though, voluntary work arguably changes the labour relation. Marinaleda exists in a capitalist world, but proving that ‘we can work for reasons other than money’ is, for Sánchez Gordillo, an act of subversion of capitalism in itself. It is one situated in the history of some of the mayor’s idols – heroes of the Cuban revolution like Che, and even some Soviet figures.

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