Always take care of yourself

Always take care of yourself and dream with yourself

because dreams are inside.

And I always dreamed

and we always dreamed

dreams.

I kiss your hands.

Always.

This.

Alfredo Mires

in: Como acostarse indeciso y despertar a arriesgarse 

(How to go to bed undecided and wake up to take the risk)

We are still: part four

This explains why the reproductions of Alfredo Mires' Ñaupa are not mere "pretty" representations, but a bet for a fairer world:

"And these recreations do not want to limit themselves to the representation of emotions or attitudes, but also to mimic historical characters whose presence cannot be postponed in the history of the continent or the world.

And in the midst of it all, next to the fierceness of the puma or the jaguar, it is impossible not to see the extraordinary tenderness of the Ñaupa and the sense of their presence, their contagious communal joy and the generous spirit with which they still remain.

Let this point serve to express our gratitude to those who have accompanied these endeavours."

Alfredo Mires

in: El Ñaupa

We continue sharing

From the Community Program of the Rural Libraries Network we continue to share our knowledge and experiences regarding therapy, rehabilitation and inclusion.

That is why, in mid-April, our coordinator Silvia Pajares organized a training workshop with the head of the Community Program, Rita Mocker, for the staff of the Special Basic Education Center in San Marcos. For a few hours we taught what we know about popular education, physiology and rehabilitation concepts.

These are always pleasant moments of learning and exchange, and not only do we share knowledge, but we also strengthen ties with other entities that work, like us, for the good of people with disabilities in rural areas.

Thank you, San Marcos.

Narrative for astonishment and joy

When I read "El hombre que curaba", a work by Alfredo Mires Ortiz, it left me with a smile on my lips; since, in the texts that make up the work, there are humorous features that, in every way, make one laugh.

For example, in Pythagoras, he tells what happened to Pythagoras: the mathematical ram, the main attraction of a circus that came to the town of Burundanga, a ram that supposedly knew a lot...

And, I also had a lot of fun with the text Culinarias, a story that focuses on a delicious stew that the protagonist consumes one Sunday and that brings him serious problems with a beautiful young woman, "Flor de María Pantigoso, the beautiful, the unattainable, the inaccessible, the coveted by princes and beggars...". 

Or The Man Who Healed where Mateo Qoripuma who had been forced to leave his homeland, Peru, to Germany, because....

I invite you to read the whole book. You will enjoy every line and open your mind to wonder, joy and your own creativity, which will take you to unknown corners and experiences.

Elizabeth Olano

53 years of the reading community

March is a time to commemorate and celebrate in the Network: on 31st March, 1971 we began our journey with books in the lands of Cajamarca.

For this reason we had invited some friends to tell, remember, talk and reflect. It was a very warm meeting, very familiar, in our community house and, although we were few, we felt the presence of a whole movement.

We began by thanking the earth, our apus and our deceased. Together we watched the documentaries of the Rural Libraries and the Community Program and the beautiful comments of those present enlightened our souls and encouraged us to continue on this community path. Challenges are not lacking, but this way, together and accompanied, the journey becomes shorter and lighter.

Our meeting ended with the reading Credo del comunero lector (Creed of the Community Reader), by Alfredo Mires, of which we share the first verse with you:

We believe in the living God

in the march and the road

in our hills and gifts

in our own songs.

For World Water Day

At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the 22nd March was proposed as World Water Day to "raise awareness of the vital importance of water resources in sustainable development".

In Rural Libraries we have another way of looking at water. From the Andean and Amazonian cosmovision, water, earth and sky are a WHOLE that gives life to all beings, including us. For us, everything that exists is related. Everything lives. This is also what Alfredo Mires tells us in the book El derecho a la esencia: niños, derechos, comunidad y torcidos (The right to the essence: children, rights, community and the 'twisted').

The nature of rights

Some time ago we were talking about the spinning of wool and I asked how the torteros were made (1).

One of our friends said:

- In my area some of us use luntas (2). We put the lunta in the shuqsho (3) and with that the ladies spin. The lunta is the aerial fruit of the potato. We use lunta.

Another companion who was there said to him:

- But in your area some people must be ignorant, then.

- Why? -said the first one. We do use luntas.

- Yes, well, that's why they are ignorant. Or would you like your mother or your sister to be kept dancing, going round and round all day long? You wouldn't like it. That's the way the potato doesn't like it either. How can it be that the little potato is kept turning around, spinning, getting dizzy there?

For us nature is not a thing, potatoes are people too. Everything is a person. In the rural areas, food is alive, like everything else. When we leave the tuzas (5), the corn kernels, we should not leave them just thrown away; they should not run the risk of being run over by the animals because, if so, the maize resents it, the grains resent it. 

Even the elders say that when they weigh the food, the peas, the lentils, they resent it. And they go away. The seed becomes absent, it no longer grows. That is what the elders have taught us since ancient times (6). So, this is a relationship of respect with nature.

If we say that the human being has rights, then, where is the rights of the earth, and the rights of water, not the right of the human being to water, but the rights of water itself! Water has the right not to be polluted. It is not that the human only has the right to a healthy environment; the environment also has the right to a healthy human! The earth has the right to be healthy!

The way of perceiving respect and life in the countryside is different.

1 tortero: counterweight, usually made of stone, placed on the spindle to spin sheep's wool.

2 lunta: aerial fruit of the potato.

3 shuqsho: spindle. Stick for spinning wool and twisting the thread.

4 toíto: all of it.

5 tuza: corn crown. Zuro: corn kernel.

6 antiguas: the ancients, ancestors, also called "gentiles".

All'para paguikun: offering to the earth

This little book is great, it is grandiose. In its scarce 30 pages it manages to synthesize a whole "cosmovivencia", a relational ontology centered in a deep and beautiful ritual that, by the way, we invite all people to incorporate it in their sacred habits because it is "a very ancient ceremony to render our affection to the earth, to the apus or sacred mountains and to our deceased" because "the world is a sanctuary" and we cannot forget what we are, where we are, what we defend and where we return to.

Rural Libraries in Educational Institutions: BRIE

The Rural Libraries in Educational Institution -BRIE- constitute a group of libraries, devised by our always remembered Alfredo Mires Ortiz, who, accompanying the educational communities of schools, colleges and institutes of higher education forged the presence of the books of the Network in the children, young people and families. We praise the work of the teachers, mostly women, who encourage reading and so lovingly carry this legacy with the books on earth.