In 2020, while the world shut down, I drove into the high desert of Chihuahua to keep a promise I had made long before I ever stepped foot in Honduras. That promise was to help Spencer MacCallum — the anthropologist who preserved and expanded the Free City concept — finish a book he could no longer physically write.

A car had run over him during the early months of Covid, crushing his body so severely that his friend had to lift the vehicle off him. Miraculously, he survived. But he was bedridden, unable to sit up at his computer, and isolated in Casas Grandes just as borders were closing around the world.

Mexico, however, remained open. So I went.

I moved into the tiny casita beside his adobe home, expecting only to help with edits. Instead, I walked directly into the final season of his life. His body was broken, but his mind remained sharp. Every day I read him the pages we refined together — integrating his ideas, his grandfather’s insights, and the structure that would become Economics and the Spiritual Life of Free Men.

He approved every word until the moment his voice finally failed.

We finished the manuscript just as he began a rapid decline. While searching for a publisher, I kept him informed even when he could no longer speak. When I finally secured one, I went straight to his bedside. He couldn’t talk, but the look on his face — joy, relief, completion — said everything.

He died the following week.

That experience didn’t just shape my understanding of voluntary governance. It set the trajectory of my work. The Free Cities movement is not just an idea to analyze. It is a lineage to carry forward — one that spans a century, from an engineer to an anthropologist to a young city in Honduras.

This story matters because Free Cities are not a trend or a startup fashion. They are the continuation of a long intellectual thread about consent, service, and the alignment of profit with human flourishing. That thread needs people willing to pick it up and carry it.

I made a promise in the desert.

I am keeping it in Morazán.

https://freecities.substack.com/p/the-last-season-with-spencer

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