Two corn cakes for a loaf of bread. A liter of oats for an avo­ca­do and a bag of beans. An hour with a tra­di­tion­al heal­er for an hour of plumb­ing work. Ten mix­i­uh­cas — the market’s cur­ren­cy of choice — for a jar of pick­led car­rots. Not a sin­gle peso in sight.

“The monedas are meant to circulate, not accumulate,” Flores says.

Ven­dors and buy­ers have gath­ered today in one of the city’s small urban gar­dens for this month’s Feria Mul­ti­trueke, an alter­na­tive econ­o­my and bar­ter­ing mar­ket. Hip­sters push­ing organ­ic quelite seeds mix with elders stand­ing over steam­ing vats of hot choco­late and tamales. Women in aprons dole out tacos while their kids dart between stands. Shirts woven by a Maza­hua indige­nous women’s coop­er­a­tive are dis­played next to copies of the trans­lat­ed Com­plete Works of Rosa Lux­em­burg.

The air is alive with voic­es laugh­ing, bar­ter­ing and mak­ing sales. But these ven­dors aren’t ordi­nary ven­dors, and their buy­ers aren’t just cus­tomers, either. ​“We are all pro­sum­i­dores here,” says Joaquina Flo­res, a mem­ber of the mix­i­uh­ca net­work. Pro­sum­i­dor is a com­bi­na­tion of the Span­ish words for pro­duc­er and con­sumer, high­light­ing the rec­i­p­ro­cal nature of the mar­ket. ​“It’s sol­i­dar­i­ty,” Flo­res says. ​“This is about meet­ing needs, not gen­er­at­ing wealth.”

The mix­i­uh­ca is one of many Mex­i­can mon­edas comu­ni­tarias, com­mu­nal or local cur­ren­cies fos­tered since the 1990s, draw­ing on indige­nous bar­ter­ing prac­tices. ​“Pesos gen­er­ate vio­lence, they fund wars, drug and human traf­fick­ing, GMO crops, inter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, inequal­i­ty,” says one pro­sum­i­dor. ​“Com­mu­ni­ty mon­ey doesn’t.”

In an exchange involv­ing mix­i­uh­cas, the buy­er pays for a prod­uct or ser­vice using the mix­i­uh­ca and/​or barter. As a com­mit­ment to the currency’s val­ue, both buy­er and sell­er sign the back of the mix­i­uh­cas they use (which are about the size of an index card).

In this way, the cur­ren­cy gains cred­i­bil­i­ty as it cir­cu­lates, each sig­na­ture act­ing as a ​“deposit” of con­fi­dence and val­ue. Some mon­edas work like debt, oth­ers as com­pen­sa­tion — it’s a form of cred­it, free of inter­est, based on trust. In addi­tion to the month­ly mar­kets, mix­i­uh­ca users con­sult a reg­istry of pro­sum­i­dores for ser­vices, and can also use the cur­ren­cy at a vari­ety of busi­ness­es that accept them.

Each pro­sum­i­dor is giv­en the same amount of mix­i­uh­cas upon enter­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. Peri­od­ic checks ensure that every­one main­tains about the same amount: If some­one is lack­ing, the com­mu­ni­ty tries to buy from them; if some­one has too many, there is pres­sure for them to spend. Once a year, all pro­sum­i­dores have to turn in their mix­i­uh­cas, which are then redis­trib­uted even­ly. ​“The mon­edas are meant to cir­cu­late, not accu­mu­late,” Flo­res says.

Part of what makes Mex­i­can com­mu­nal cur­ren­cies pos­si­ble is the country’s larg­er eco­nom­ic con­text. The infor­mal econ­o­my makes up over a quar­ter of Mexico’s GDP and employs over half its work­force. DIY ven­dors sell gum in the metro, a snack stand sits on every cor­ner, shoes sprawl out on tarps and tla­coyos siz­zle on side­walk griddles.

The Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment says the infor­mal mar­ket is an obsta­cle to ​“growth” and expand­ed social ser­vices, since infor­mal busi­ness­es pay no tax­es. But after endur­ing cen­turies of colo­nial vio­lence, count­less shocks from the neolib­er­al mar­ket and cor­po­rate-state-spon­sored ter­ror­ism, many Mex­i­cans doubt the infor­mal econ­o­my is the prob­lem. In fact, com­mu­ni­ty self-suf­fi­cien­cy has long seemed the best bet for sur­vival, from pre-col­o­niza­tion bar­ter­ing prac­tices to today’s tan­das (neigh­bor­hood sav­ings systems).

Alter­na­tive cur­ren­cies have faced their share of per­se­cu­tion: The country’s first mon­e­da, the bojá of Hidal­go state, was repressed; in cash-scarce Ver­acruz, the state has tried to crush the alter­na­tive tumin cur­ren­cy since its begin­nings in 2010. (The tumin has pre­vailed, and today counts over 1,400 users.)

At this month’s Feria Mul­ti­trueke, peo­ple are hope­ful. Clau­dia Caballero, a co-founder of the mix­i­uh­ca net­work, is pro­mot­ing a new project: the Eco­mun, an alter­na­tive nation­al cur­ren­cy that will expand the sol­i­dar­i­ty econ­o­my by link­ing all com­mu­ni­ty cur­ren­cies in Mex­i­co into an inte­grat­ed mar­ket. This will enable, say, mezquite users in Gua­na­ju­a­to to sell to mix­i­uh­ca users in Mex­i­co City, and will hope­ful­ly move them to the next step: alter­na­tive, com­mu­ni­ty con­trolled ​“bank­ing” able to pro­vide autonomous financ­ing out­side the prof­it-dri­ven peso system.

Flo­res smiles. ​“It will be nei­ther micro nor macro, cre­ate nei­ther iso­la­tion nor ram­pant growth, but com­pan­ion­ship and togetherness.”