Brief History of Los Horcones
From Sep 71 to Oct 97
Sep. 1971: Opening of the "Center for Children with Behavioral Deficits."
Some of the people* who later founded Los Horcones, opened a school for developmentally delayed ("mentally retarded") children in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.** The name of the school was "Center for Children with Behavioral Deficits." In this center, behavioral educational technology derived from the science of behavior*** was successfully applied to the education of the children.
* Two of them studied psychology at the Universidad Autónoma de México in Mexico City.
** Without the knowledge that Dr. Sidney W. Bijou and Dr. Ivar Lovaas shared with the founders of this school, it would not have been possible. See Dr. Sidney W. Bijou . See Dr. Ivar Lovaas. Two other people who have had a great influence were Francisco Montes and Ana María Irueste who outside of the University taught the two founders to work with developmentally delayed children. Los Horcones expresses their gratitude to all of them.
***The science of behavior is also known as Behavior Analysis or Behaviorology. See "Behavior Analysis", or "Behaviorology."
April. 1973: The plans to design a community were made.
The psychologists and teachers of the Center for Children with Behavioral Deficits, were concerned about social problems (hunger, war, discrimination, poverty, pollution, injustice, etc.). They were interested in looking for solutions. They wanted to know how the science of behavior -psychology- could contribute in finding solutions for these problems.
From a behavioral perspective, it is clear that current social problems originate in and are maintained by the cultural practices of western society. Most of these practices promote egotistic (individualistic), competitive, aggressive, possessive and discriminatory behaviors.
If we wanted to solve social problems, we needed to analyze how cultural practices were producing and maintaining them. We needed to find out how these practices affected human behavior and find alternative practices. In order to do so we needed to start an experimental culture (a social or cultural laboratory). See Experimental Culture
The science of behavior could contribute with tools (methods) to analyze the existent cultural practices and design new ones. By applying behavioral principles we could design a society with appropriate economic, educational, governmental and family practices.
Appropriate cultural practices promote altruistic, cooperative, sharing, and egalitarian behaviors. All these behaviors promote the survival of humanity.
We started to plan a community that could serve as a social laboratory.* A small scale culture or society based on the principles of cooperation, sharing, pacifism (non-violence) and equality as an alternative to competition, individualism, aggression, possessiveness and stratification.
* By "social laboratory" we just mean a place (in this case a whole community) where people try to make changes and observe the effects of these changes. In Los Horcones we are making changes in cultural practices and observing and recording their effects on our behavior.
Oct. 1973: Los Horcones community formally started.
Los Horcones was founded by a group of 7 people, former teachers and psychologists from the Center for Children with Behavioral Deficits. It was settled on 45 acres in the outskirts of Hermosillo the capital city of Sonora in northern México. The name "Los Horcones" is a regional word in Spanish for "The Pillars".
Communal life began simply and quickly. Final planning was made along the way. Meetings were held to talk about how to organize ourselves and how were we going to elaborate our behavior code. See Behavior Code . This code was designed based on an experimental approach to values, not on a subjective, philosophical or religious approach. See Behaviorethics.
"Not only can we not face the rest of the world while consuming and polluting as we do, we cannot for long face ourselves while acknowledging the violence and chaos in which we live. The choice is clear: either we do nothing and allow a miserable and probably catastrophic future to overtake us, or we use our knowledge about human behavior to create a social environment in which we shall live productive and creative lives and do so without jeopardizing the chances that those who follow us will be able to do the same. Something like Walden Two would not be a bad start."
B. F. Skinner, 1978, p.66.
Reasons why we started Los Horcones
We can say there were three kinds of reasons why we decided to start Los Horcones; one scientific (academic), one personal and one social.
Academic reasons. We were interested in studying how a science of behavior -psychology- could be applied to the design of a new society, to the shaping of a better culture. We believed and we still believe, that if we wanted to succeed in designing an alternative culture, we had to have a scientific approach to human behavior. Without this approach, we would sooner or later return to the same point from which we had departed. Our community would become competitive and eventually join the mainstream culture.
Personal reasons. Each one of us had our own reasons. Some of them were : wanting to have a more meaningful, satisfactory and tranquil life; having more opportunities to be involved with our children; living closer to nature; living a healthier life, having more time to relate to others; having more opportunities to know ourselves better, etc. Of course, the founders shared many of these reasons for living in the community.
We all (the founders) were personally dissatisfied with the current social practices, for example: The traditional nuclear family, the traditional way of teaching, the traditional types of government. Besides, we did not agree with the traditional ways in which people have tried to change society (aggressive measures: armed revolution, terrorism).
We did not want to "adapt" to western culture nor did we want our children to adapt to it. We believed there could be a more humanistic and satisfying way of life. We wanted to offer our children an alternative lifestyle.
Social reasons. -feeling unhappy with what was happening to other people-. Seeing other people discontent with their lives was another strong motivational factor in our search for an alternative culture. We wanted to contribute effective strategies to solve social problems (poverty, hunger, illness, discrimination, etc.) even though these problems were not affecting us directly at that time.
When we started the community, we had only one building (the center for children with behavioral deficits) which had some classrooms, bathrooms and a small apartment. Seven people lived there. Then we started building. First, a communal dinning room and then a children's house where our children would live together reared by the group. We built additional communal facilities as our population grew and children were born.
"Los Horcones was founded a few years later. It ran a school for retarded children and prided itself on its strict adherence to behavioral principles in its own self-management. Members of Los Horcones attended meetings of operant conditioners in the United States and at conferences on behavior modification in Mexico and gave interesting reports."
B. F. Skinner, 1983, p.342.
Here we will insert a picture of the center for children with behavioral deficits.
Our conservative families didn't like us living communally, so they never supported our efforts. However, that did not stop us. In the 1970's, intentional communities or communes were thought of in Mexico as part of a hippy movement that avoided responsibility and promoted the use of drugs and sexual orgies. This sort of hippy behavior was never characteristic of our communal life, and in fact Los Horcones was rejected by many early visitors who came here looking for just those things. Instead of drugs, orgies, irresponsibility, they found a lot of work, people seriously committed with community life and people responsible and interested in others' wellbeing.
During the first year, the members of Los Horcones got organized to live communally. We wrote in more detail the objectives which became our behavior code. See Behavior Code . We also specified how labor distribution would be done, how decisions were going to be made and who would be in charge of the various aspects of the community. Since the very beginning of the community we have kept an experimental approach* towards the practices we implemented (government, economy, labor, family, education, recreation).
*To have an experimental approach to community life means objectively defining our goals, clearly describing procedures or practices, observing and measuring the results of the practices implemented, changing these practices in order to obtain the expected results.
At the same time we were getting organized, we started to build the community's physical setting. We built more houses*, made a well, prepared the land for gardening, built a chicken coop and corrals, raised animals and planted fruit trees. The founders had to learn many new skills.
* We started to build a house for each family, however we soon questioned the need for having various kitchens and we decided to use one of the houses as a communal kitchen and dinning room. In this way the houses ended up as communal buildings. One served to house the children who were taken care of communally. Each member or couple had their own private room (bedroom).
During the first seven years the community slowly grew in population from 7 to 20 members, although there were always about 10 visitors from various parts of the world. We continued building new facilities and improving our working and organizational skills.
November, 1977: We legally established Los Horcones as a non-profit cooperative.
April, 1980: Los Horcones founded the Walden Two International Association.
June, 1980: Los Horcones bought a larger piece of land.
The 26 acres of semi-desert land where the community was settled were not enough to become a self-sufficient community. This prompted us to look for a larger piece of land. Another factor that accelerated the search for a new place, was the fact that our area was declared an industrial zone. Factories and industrial parks were soon established. One of the factories that settled next to our place was the Ford plant. The value of our land rapidly increased which enabled us to sell it, and purchase another 260 acres. The new place was located 50 miles farther up the same road.
Oct. 1981: Los Horcones moved to the new place, where we live now.
In our new location there was nothing built, so it took us about three years to build the necessary facilities. We gradually continued building the rest.
The population in Los Horcones has ranged from 20 to 40 members. In some instances we have grown to 60 including visitors.
Growth has been slower than we expected. However, to us the success of a community is not related to its number of members, but rather to the reinforcers (reasons) that maintain these members living in community. For example: A community can have a lot of members but not all of them will be committed to the ideals of the community. See Problems of Los Horcones.
* Behaviorally speaking, members who are not committed are those who are not reinforced by the community progress.
Of course, people can learn to have different reasons (reinforcers) in the process of living in the community and here is where we need to direct our efforts. See Behavior Area.
A Walden Two community is an educational community. |
Oct. 1992: Beginning of the extension of Los Horcones in the U.S.A. We bought a house in Tucson, Arizona.
Oct. 1993: Beginning of the "Cooperative Town Project."
Oct. 1993: Beginning of a Special Education Center in Hermosillo, Sonora.
Oct. 1995: End of the "Cooperative Town Project."
Oct. 1996: Dissemination Stage (23 years later).
We considered that our view of education, government, family life, economics, etc. could be useful for more people. We set as a priority the publication of various books that we have been working on for 24 years. The contents of these books is based on the data we have obtained from our experiment. We think these books can help people from diverse backgrounds and nationalities learn about behavior analysis applied to cultural design, understand and in the best case, identify with Los Horcones living proposal for social design and change. Courses, publications.
Oct. 1997: Beginning of the pilot program of a masters' degree in Behavior Analysis applied to Cultural Design.
Oct. 1997: Los Horcones buys an agricultural parcel near our present location. This represents another step towards self-sufficiency.
Last up-date :2001
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