Abel's Challenge

Abel Vasquez is a member of the Community Program and Coordinator of Rural Libraries in areas of Sócota and San Luis de Lucma, in the province of Cutervo.

Here he tells of his wanderings:

For me reading is an encounter with books, but it is also an encounter with the environment, with reality itself.

Reading books can be a bit easier, but reading nature, reading reality is a bit more difficult because it means going to meeting her 〚nature〛.

For this reason the presence of the Rural Libraries is a huge contribution to our lives, both personally and professionally. Because from the Rural Libraries we learn not only from the amount of books to which we have access, but also from the experiences told by the readers themselves, from the experiences recounted by the long-standing coordinators.

And we also learn from those who travel and write the texts that speak like us. Here we must thank our friend Alfredo Mires, who has such advanced work with our communities: this has helped me so much.

The biggest challenge we have, I think, is how to survive amid the bombardment of other communication systems, such as television and cell phones, for example.

Now here is the challenge: in the midst of this we can still encourage the people to read. And so we must seek out some strategies of how to encourage reading and growth, because people now read very little.

This invites us to improve our capacity to find ways to encourage reading. That is the challenge.