In May, the School of Mediators of BibloRed Bogotá, in Colombia, invited our brother Alfredo Mires to their series of talks "Yo, Maestro".
The conversation began with the reading of a poem that Alfredo himself chose: 'Questions from a worker who reads' by Bertolt Brecht. Alfredo said: "I chose this text because it reveals what the Peruvian philosopher Gustavo Gutiérrez calls 'the historical strength of the poor', that extraordinary power of the most humble, of those whom the world considers foolish."
Throughout his entire exhibition he praised the presence of his brothers, sisters and peasant families who make up the great ayllu of the Library Network. Here are some essential phrases:
- Books are tools, not coffins of dead truths or cathedrals of living lies
- The book must emerge from these searches, from this insurgency of the proper word, from this demolition of the imposed silences; from the deconstruction of this colonizing prison within us; of this self-loathing enthroned over the memory of our peoples.
- The book has to be resignified, in its signifiers and concepts, in its uses and in its ways. The book must be a mirror in which we see ourselves revealed as we are.
- The word read comes from légere, which means, in principle, "gather firewood." The librarian may be, in effect, the one who never tires of gathering firewood to light the fire of the learners.
- A library that does not work with orality, cannot pride itself on being a library. I always say that it is a shame that complete collections of Greek thought can be found in libraries, but not a printed page of our own ideas.
- This virus comes to demonstrate to us - so clever us humans - that idolized capital, that highbrow progress, that godly success and irrepressible consumer gluttony, were the fastest way to the extinction of the human species.
- Now it turns out that old books were the ones which had to teach us the most; And that the old men free from complicit theories were the ones who knew the most!
- Today, just as pharmacology seeks a vaccine against the virus, it is up to libraries to reinvent themselves in the search for knowledge that immunizes us against stupidity and disdain for life itself.
- The synonym of educator should be apprentice: to be a good teacher you must have an immense openness to learn and unlearn. And that implies an invaluable dose of humility, coherence and consequence. No one is capable of teaching if they do not have enough modesty to learn.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qts7XFihdQc&t=3168s
Presentation links provided by the organizers of the discussion:
Eduardo Galeano's text about Alfredo Mires: https://n9.cl/g27p
"The infinite journeys of a librarian", interview by Daniel Canosa: https://n9.cl/iarnq
"Opening conference at the VI National Congress of Public Libraries": https://n9.cl/r3wk
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