Información Actualizada

Esta sección estará continuamente en construcción. Al principio se encuentra la información más reciente.

Marzo-Abril 1999

Nota. Disculpe que la siguiente información no ha sido traducida al español completamente.

-Los Horcones "sabático"

Después de casi 26 años de establecer una Comunidad Walden Dos, los miembros de Los Horcones tomaremos un "sabático"y juntos viajaremos unos meses por Europa. Algunos de los objetivos del viaje son:

1) Iniciar una Comunidad Walden Dos en España.

El año pasado algunos miembros de Los Horcones visitaron Europa y se dieron cuenta de que hay gente interesada en vivir en comunidad. España parece ser un buen luga por la facilidad del lenguaje. Mas suerte tuvimos cunado conocimos a nuestros amigos Vicente y Meli Solana quienes han dedicado algunos ños a iniciar una comunidad. Ellos nos ofrecieron el lugar para unir nuestros esfuerzo con ellos en hacer una CComunidad Walden Dos. Su granja orgánica "El Semillero" está cerca de Madrid en el área de Alcalá de Henares. Iniciaremos una comunidad ahí, y todos esperamos que sea un esfuerzo exitoso.

nsrLast year when some members of Los Horcones visited Europe realized there are people interested in living in a Walden Two community. Spain seemed to be a good place since it will be easier for us to settle because of language. Luckily enough we met our friends Vicente and Meli Solana who have devoted several years to start a community. They offered us their place to join our efforts with theirs in making a walden Two community. Their organic farm "El Semillero" (the seedling place) is near Madrid in the area of Alcalá de Henares. We will start a community there, we all hope it will be a successful effort.

2) Disseminate Behavior Analysis and Behaviorism.

Another objective of this "sabbatical" leave is the dissemination of behavior analysis and radical behaviorism. We plan to do this by giving talks, seminars, conferences or work shops wherever is possible. The presentations will be about: a) Los Horcones as the application of behavior analysis to cultural design. b) Radical behaviorism in everyday life and c) Application of behavior analysis to the education of children with autistic behaviors.

We have already contacted behavior analysts from various countries who could support this project by hosting an event. With the workshops we also hope to cover some of our traveling expenses. Some of our European friends will also provide a place for us to stay.

3) Expose ourselves to a different culture, visit places.

Those of us who have visited some European countries wanted to show them to our children and the rest of the members. We wanted to share with them their beauty and cultural richness. We have learned to make trips educational for all.

4) Leave plenty of space for the "unexpected".

We plan to leave in early September, arrive to Paris and drive through several countries for about one month to end up in Spain. We do have some plans on where to go but we are also leaving space for changes according to new proposals from the members once we are there, opportunities and the course of events. This is going to be an adventurous trip. In order to travel together all the group we are going to make it the least expensive possible. We will be equipped with sleeping bags and a couple of tents ready for places with camping grounds.

Our behavior code for traveling.

Behavior analysis principle provide us with effective tools to plan and realize reinforcing (non-aversive) group trips.An important point is that each one of us agree on what behaviors are appropriate and inappropriate in the trip. Once in agreement with these behaviors, we can reinforce the appropriate and extinguish or correct the inappropriate in anyone of us. For example: we have selected as appropriate the behavior of sharing with the rest reinforcing experiences.and as inappropriate the behavior of complaining about problems instead of solving them.

Our behavior code for traveling include several appropriate behaviors and their inappropriate counterpart. This is an example of the application of behavior analysis in the daily life of Los Horcones.

Draught

Like most parts of the state of Sonora, Los Horcones is going through a severe drought. In fact the Mexican government has recently declared our state as disaster zone.

Since the past 5 years or so, practically we have not got enough rain, at least not enough. Our two wells are extremely low, almost barren. One of the two ponds is dry. This drought has forced us to first, reduce and now stop growing vegetables and second , reduce the number of animals. It has also prevent us from irrigating the grass growing around the buildings. The water we now have is used mainly to irrigate the fruit orchards and for household use. Soon, we will have to bring water from someplace else, specially in July when we run a summer camp for children. At this moment we are trying to find a large capacity water tank to carry it in one of our trucks.

Getting ready for the annual Summer camp held by Los Horcones.

Los Horcones had been offering summer camps for children who live outside the community, for about 20 years. They are two week long and the children who participate live at Los Horcones over that period of time in July. Camps are for children 7-14 years.

Through the summer camps we have a great educational opportunity to use our skills and facilities. Those children who attend are exposed to a cooperative environment where they explore the many activities the community has to offer: farm related activities like gardening, caring for animals, beekeeping, horseback riding, fishing; arts and crafts such as carpentry, leather work, knots, painting, sewing, dance, guitar; sports like karate, basketball, wall climbing, biking, etc. A characteristic feature of our summer camp is that children also learn behavior principles which help them to better understand how they behave as they do, how others influence their behavior and how they influence other's behavior in their everyday interactions. Camp children are taught about social issues like ecology, social problems and values. The Los Horcones summer camp is already well known in the area. It is attended mainly by children from nearby cities as well as from other countries since we offer a bilingual program. This summer, we expect about 70 children, some children from U.S.A. and France are already enrolled. During these camps, all the members of the community participate along with some friends who volunteer. It involves a lot of work and responsibility but as much excitement. Seeing children's faces when they see or do something for their first time, learn many things, improve their social skills and grow independent, is undoubtedly some of our reinforcers.

You can find a complete information about Los Horcones Summer camp at: http://www.loshorcones.org.mx/summer camp.html

Dick Malott and his sister Peggy visited Los Horcones.

Our friend Dick, has been a professor of Western Michigan University for many years. He is one of the most prominent behavior analysts. He has written many articles published in international journals and also books, among them: "Elementary Principles of Behavior" which is a classic. He has a great concern about how to better teach behavior analysis. In fact he is the founder of a chapter within the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA) devoted to teaching behavior analysis.

We enjoyed meeting Peggy (Dick's sister) who is a very nice person. She was painting a watercolor of the desert landscape and enjoying the Mexican culture.

Following we include a short article Dick wrote for this newsletter about his visit.

Members of Los Horcones with Dick Malott (third from left back row) and sister Peggy (holding a camera).

SAVING THE WORLD WITH BEHAVIORAL COMMUNITARIANISM: LOS HORCONES

by: Richard W. Malott

Western Michigan University

RV TRAVELIN' BLUES   Me and my sister, Peggy Jo, Started our for Kokomo. But driving the Brute is mighty quirky, And we ended up in Albuquerque.

RV Blues The Brute went fast And the Brute went slow Oh, my god, We're in Mexico. Hermosillo, that is.

CLUE LESS IN HERMOSILLO

Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, four hours south of the boarder. Population 600,000. And they're all Mexican. And not one of them Mexicans has the decency to speak English.

Six P.M. and dark's coming fast. Strangers in a strange land. An RV park's supposed to be around here somewhere. But so's Los Horcones.

Peggy's concerned. What is Los Horcones?

It's a behavioristic commune a handful of 20-year-old Mexican hippies started 5 or 6 years ago, somewhere out there in the dessert.

Peggy's even more concerned. Do you know them?

Well, sort of; their familiar strangers from out Association for Behavior Analysis conferences. (About 80% of the ABA members are familiar strangers; every year, you say hi, as you're passing in the lobby, and you promise to hear each other's presentations, and you never do.) And, yes, they said they'd love for us to visit; and, no, they don't know exactly when we're coming.

Now Peggy's ready to go back to Tucson, but I'm driving.

And from their WWW site, I've gotten detailed directions on how to get to Los Horcones. But, though the Brute is only 28 feet long, I can't find them.

The Pemex gasoline-station phone directory has the number and address of one of the members. I call and get an answering machine. The gasoline attendant explains that the address is just a few blocks away. Well, that's not right because Los Horcones is out in the middle of the dessert. Los Horcones? Si. The place where they teach the little children? Yes. Oh, si, it's out highway 16. You mean, some illiterate Mexican gas-pump jockey in this huge city has heard of this funky, little hippie commune? No way.

We can't trust him. There's a Green Angel, a Mexican government employee whose job it is to drive a green and white pickup truck around the countryside, rescuing stranded gringos. Really. Los Horcones? si, it's out highway 16 about 45 kilometers (30 miles).

At the taco stand near the start of highway 16. Los Horcones? si, straight ahead.

At the pool hall, in Colorado, 20 kilometers out on 16. Los Horcones? si, straight ahead.

I don't think you'd hit four for four, if you asked the average Kalamazooian on the street where the WMU Psychology Department is.

All guide books stress traveler's #1 rule: Never drive at night on Mexican highways. Potholes, rocks, stray cattle, people on bicycles, and a bandit lurking behind every cactus.

At last, there's the sign: "Los Horcones". Whew! We open the gate, drive a half mile back a dirt road, open another gate, and lights ahead. Civilization. Safety.

THE PEOPLE

We homed in on the light, which was coming from the community dining room where twenty people were enjoying a snack of crackers and cheese that 16-year-old Carolina had brought back from France. They all jumped up and greeted us, with hand shakes, cheek kisses, and hugs. (Los Horcones is so full of warm fuzzies that it's almost hazardous to walk through a group of Horconites, because of al the hugs and shoulder pats. This can be disconcerting if you're from Converse, Indiana, where husband and wife won't even kiss each other on the check unless it's in the privacy of their own bedroom and the lights are off. But having spent my formative years around Don Whaley, I've developed a fondness for warm fuzzies, so I had no problem. My sister could fend for herself.)

It turns out that the handful of 20-year-old hippies are four, middle-age, middle-class adults (two married couples); and Los Horcones has celebrated it's 26th anniversary. (Well, it seemed like it was only 5 or 6 years ago when we first passed each other in an ABA lobby.) Now, I don't know anyone of my generation or younger who has managed to stay married for 26 years, at least not to the same person, and especially no behavior analysts. Furthermore, communes are hell on marriage. So the longevity of the two marriages was impressive. But what really impressed me was that their commune had survived for 26 years; those things go out of business faster than mom and pop video-tape-rentals stores. Twenty-six years makes Los Horcones one of the oldest intentional communities in the Western hemisphere (really).

THE GAPLESS GENERATIONS

Although the four founders are no longer in their 20's, many of the members of Los Horcones are. I asked one of them how long he'd lived in the commune, and he looked at me with a puzzled expression, like didn't I understand? Then he said, "All my life." All my life! Like we've got someone whose been reared all his life in a completely behavior-analytic environment. "There are seven of us; three of Mireya and Juan's children and four of Linda and Ramon's children." A whole first generation reared with behavior analysis. "There's also a second generation; my sister's two children."

Now it's been my observation that behavior analysts aren't any better at rearing their own kids than they are at keeping their spouses happy and keeping themselves happy with their spouses. (It's not that we don't know how to do it, especially the child-rearing part. It's just that preachin' ain't practicin'. It's just that raising our children ain't our job; telling other people how to is our job. And giving them demonstrations, and feedback, and gold stars, and so forth. But when we come home, our job's done. And, besides, we can always implement that household token economy tomorrow. Right now, we're tired, we've got a headache, and the NFL playoffs are on the tube; give us a beer and shut those kids up.)

However rearing the first generation of behavior-analytic children was the job of Los Horcones. The first generation was the great demonstration project. It was a 24 x 7 job.

How many of you are still living at Los Horcones? "We all are." But don't you want to get away? "Not permanently. We travel. But Los Horcones is our home." Travel? "Yes, Mexico, the United States, Europe. For example, last year Carolina wanted to go France, so we sent her over, and she lived with a family there and went to high school for a semester. That was her first experience with a traditional family and traditional classroom education? She liked it, but she prefers Los Horcones."

EDUCATION

Didn't you guys go to school? "No, we think we learn more and better here at Los Horcones."

No high-school diploma? "Oh, yes, we take the exams and get the diplomas."

No university? "We often go up to the University of Tucson and sit in on their classes, but not for credit. We have a house in Tucson."

One wall of the work manager's office is covered with weekly hour by hour schedules for each Los Horcones member. And those schedules include not only work, but also study and writing. For the kids, this includes studying Spanish, English, math, behavior analysis etc. And yes, everyone speaks excellent English, a hell of a lot better than my Spanish.

And when I'm talking to 16-year-old Carolina, she doesn't ask, "What's your sign?" (barf, gag) She asks, "Who's your favorite philosopher?" And I promptly reply, "Ah, ah, . . . , who's yours?" "I've been reading Kirkergaard lately and I like him. I really like to read philosophy, but I don't think I always understand it; so then I ask one of my brothers to explain it." (By the way, Carolina may be the only 16-year-old girl, on either side of the boarder, who will reliably get up for a 5:00 A.M. 10K, sun-rise run every morning, well, almost every morning.)

SEARCHING THE PUDDING FOR THE PROOF

So what about these brothers? These guys who've spent all their lives in the Los Horcones educational system. After dinner, I sit around the dinner table, with them, some of the other young people, and the village elders. I use opening gambit, #23, just getting the lay of the land. "For example, most behavior analysts couldn't even tell you how to extinguish an escape response, you know, Rudolph the rat's lever-pressing that turns off the shock in the Skinner box." And Juan Jr. immediately says, you mean, like you leave the shock on even when Rudolph presses the lever." Bingo. The guys really bright. And having one out of four boys turn out bright is better than average.

A major premise running through Los Horcones is this Skinner-Sidmanian, flower-child nonsense that we should build a world free of aversive control and its radio-active fallout. It's almost a behavior-analytic religious credo. So whenever the village elders aren't looking, I take it as my moral responsibility to corrupt their youth, to point to the dark, aversive-control underbelly that supports their sweetly innocent practice of what they, so often, erroneously call positive reinforcement, for example, to point to the necessity of deadlines, both natural and man-made. To argue that the existence of a deadline sets the stage for paradise lost. To argue that the existence of a deadline means our behavior is under the control of avoidance contingencies, avoidance of the loss of the opportunity to get a smile, or a "Well done," if not avoidance of a sharp tongue that stings more than the overseer's whip. To argue that the these aversive deadlines loom over all of our productive behavior.

And all four of these brave brothers defend the indefensible with courage, well-honed logic, and fluent mastery of the behavioral basics. But all four brave brothers are so intellectually and behavior-analytically skilled, and more impressively, so intellectually honest, that they eventually acknowledge the necessity of aversive control in the smooth flow of life at Los Horcones. It's rare that I see even a Ph.D. college professor who can so objectively evaluate challenges to his or her own credos. But when I do see anyone whose analyses are so controlled by logical integrity, be it student, professor, or Horconite, so logically controlled that they are willing to abandon life-long assumptions, then I'm impressed. So it turns out that Los Horcones scored four out of four, not one out of four as I had originally assessed.

LEFT UNWRITTEN

This is the first chapter in a monograph that, knowing me, will probably only have one chapter, though I have hardly begun to make a dent in the list of important Los Horcones topics I want to cover. But the children of Los Horcones are the pudding of proof. However, I've only written about the children as intellectuals, not as athletes, artists, world travelers, hard-workers, communitarians, entrepreneurs, expert professional behavior modifiers, and sociable, charming young people, the fruit of the past, the seeds of the future.

I haven't written about the 20 beautiful, stucco buildings, painted in earth colors, and covered with artful artifacts of Mexican. Nor the 240-acre ranch with 20-foot cactuses. The wonderful, nutritious meals that have caused me to gain 5 pounds in 8 days (as a gluttonous degenerate, with no satiation mechanism, this is my only problem with Los Horcones). Nor the two ostriches running outside the window of el Bruto as I write this, nor the peacocks, parrots, parakeets, and more traditional farm animals.

I haven't written about the four founding members. About turnover, about problems, about the many positive and financially profitable interactions with the Hermosillo community, about plans to start a Los Horcones Dos in Spain. And most importantly, I haven't written about their world-class, behavior-analytic autism program, one of the oldest such programs in the world, nor about the great wisdom and the great behavioral procedures that have arisen as a result of running this program for 25+ years.

Had the reinforcers of gonnzo journalism not gotten control of my keyboard, I might have made a slightly larger dent in the list of topics. But if you want to be sure to find out more grab me at ABA or WMU and I'll bend your ear interminably. Better yet, catch the Los Horcones acceptance speech as the receive the 1999 ABA Award for the International Dissemination of Behavior Analysis, check out their web page at http://www.LosHorcones.org.mx, and come to Los Horcones to pay them a face to face visit (if they can accommodate 40 grade-school kids and 20 college kids over night, without a mishap, they can certainly take care of you for a week, or a month, or a summer, or a sabbatical).

Hasta la vista, amigos.

Nota.-Si usted está interesado en recibir información actualizada sobre varios aspectos de la comunidad ( incluyendo fotos) por medio de nuestro periódico electrónicoWalhdos,por favor envíenos un mensaje diciendo que le interesa suscribirse a nuestro periódico y una contribución anual de $100 . Su contribución nos ayudará a cubrir los gastos del internet. Puede enviar un cheque o giro postal a:

Linda Armendariz (es importante escribir el cheque a éste nombre para evitar problemas en el banco)

Comunidad Los Horcones

Apdo. Postal # 372

Hermosillo, Sonora, 83000 México

Suscripciones,preguntas o comentarios a:

Actualizado:Jun 24, 1998.

Se aceptan donaciones

Regresar al Indice