It takes a whole village to save the bread. In Uzeste, in Gironde, where 480 souls live, 304 cooperators have come together to bring the bakery back to life. Not all are from Uzest, the surrounding towns are represented, but all have a specific date in mind: August 3, 2021. That day opened on the central square, opposite the Notre-Dame collegiate church, the “Cooperative Bakery”, as specified on its wooden sign, founded and maintained by its customers.
A shop window embellished with multicolored flowers, in front of which tables and chairs invite you to linger, a painter artist salesman whose works are exhibited on the raspberry walls of the shop, a retired cashier who says she is happy with the commitment… The tiny bakery at ‘Uzeste is like no other, despite the usual offer of baguettes, special breads and pastries.
To grasp what it represents for the people of Uzest requires sitting down at the foot of the window with a lawyer, two masons, a bookseller, a pastry chef, a vineyard sales manager and a former CGT trade unionist. Cooperators of all ages telling in bulk, enthusiastic, between two references to Lenin and the “Commons”, this story of bread that goes far beyond bread, we are asked to understand.
Loaves delivered to the wheelbarrow
This is the story of repeated bankruptcies, for the only bakery in the town, until in December 2019 a citizen collective emerged with the ambition to tackle the central issue of the municipal elections: French toast. They have in common to frequent the L’Estaminet performance hall and the jazz festival launched in 1977 by a local guy, the musician Bernard Lubat. The group has just imagined a cooperative society of collective interest (SCIC) bakery that the pandemic cloisters them.
The bakery resists. The former village doctor opens the wood oven in his house to Marion Duquesne, the baker approached to be hired by the SCIC. In full confinement, while travel is limited and the bakery not yet officially open, Romain Baxerres, bookseller by profession, delivers the loaves in a wheelbarrow, under bags of earth: “There were two of us delivering at home, with a north-south organization. We hid in the ditch when the police car passed…” In June 2020, the town hall escapes the citizen list. What does it matter! The momentum remains.
“The bakery is an imperative, it is the animation of the village, of the territory” – Eric Douence, mayor of Uzeste
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