Walking in Chota

After the intense rainy season we have had, some roads have been left to walk with much precaution.

We visited the western area of the province of Chota, coordinating the possibilities of opening new libraries and accompanying teachers who had invited us to initiate the rescue of oral traditions in their communities.

It goes slowly but surely.

And the accompaniment of this exhilarating landscape encourages us to continue the journey.

Jeny is back

Jeny Paredes participated in Phase I of the Enciclopedia Campesina Project, back in the '90s. Her assistance in the processing of campesino testimonies and oral tradition was a very important contribution to the project.

Today, 20 years after that first experience, Jeny rejoins for Phase II and she does it with enthusiasm and efficiency, like starting from scratch, learning and unlearning.

We celebrate her reincorporation on this path that does not cease and which teaches so much.

Ignorance

In response to a rich man who thought to say that "The poor do not read because they are ignorant", here is a text from our brother Alfredo Mires published two years ago in the book "Esa luz de más adentro" (That light from deep inside):

The Communal Root of Health

He is not ignorant he who does not know the multiplication chart or the lyrics of the national anthem. It is not ignorance not travelling to other countries or not knowing how to eat with a knife and fork. Less ignorance still is not knowing the name of the singer of the moment or the last political event of the country.

We in the countryside call ignorance the lack of generosity, the lack of gratitude and gratuity. Ignorant are the abusive and the hurtful, the mean and the opportunistic, the creeper, the coward, the traitor and the trickster. Ignorant is he who is disrespectful, who does not know how to live in community, who does not share and does not dream.

Whoever denies and offends the life of the other is more than ignorant: he is wretched. Bitter must be the life of one who does not know how to appreciate the value of the rest. That is why God appears in the form of a beggar, the poorest of the poor, to test the inner worth of his people.

Whoever prides himself on the clothes he wears, on what he earns by exploiting or being exploited, on the titles or foolish reasons that confer banal powers on the brute, are only walking tombs, sad headstones, truncated flowers, forced tears. Ignorant.

To see potatoes, corn, peas, or ocas as mere products, as simple "natural resources," is a shame. Because it is not an object that which lives and that which is the generous fruit of the earth and of the creative efforts of our grandparents.

That is what our elders teach us, that is what the stories of all the communities in the Andes tell us: that food is sacred, that they are a blessing, that every plant, every stone, every beat has its power and fortune.

These tales of ours, fruitful school of the deepest knowledge, tell us that the health of the people depends on this grace, on the mutual affection among all living beings, on the endearing affection, on the highest respect, on the primordial kinship among all of us who have been creating together.

When the cornfields and potato plants sing in the wind, when the ocas rest in the sun to sweeten us later, when the whole earth is a permanent promise, we know that it is worth living, and that this feeling alone is wisdom. This is the health that does not reside in hospitals nor pharmacies. This is the foundation that escapes ignorance.

46 years

- Does he know how to read? Asked the visitor, following the chief in the direction of the sea.

- He did not know when he came. Don Hilario has taught him.

- Don Hilario?

- That is, Don Hilario and his son. Don Hilario says: "Work will one day defeat capital with education."

José María Arguedas, "The fox above and the fox below"

Today, 31^st of March our Rural Libraries Network turns 46 years. Thank you for joining us.

Child and Mother (Niño y Madre)

"The fury of water strikes Peru," "Nature continues to scourge us," "Fury of nature continues to punish", "The strikes of nature do not have an end," "Nature without mercy," "The suffering of the Peruvians will continue because nature continues with its brutal blow that affects those who have the least"...

This is how the headlines read and how the speakers proclaim about what is happening in the country. 

For a change, a government representative has even stated that "The disasters are a divine punishment for gender ideology."

It is terrible what is happening in the country. But blaming nature by attributing a perverse intentionality goes beyond ridicule: it is to evade human responsibility, and that of some humans in particular.

Because here also aspects come into play ranging from corruption to depredation, through improvisation, deforestation and the rubbish-filling of minds and environments.

Something is wrong if no one says anything about the increase in global warming as a result of air pollution from the emission of greenhouse gases; Nothing is being said about the removal of thousands of tons of rock and earth by extractivism and the consequent obstruction of the slopes. And none of the propagandists of progress says anything about the decompression of soils and the clamorous absence of environmental policies.

Neither does anyone relate this El Niño presence to the nuclear experiments that have been taking place in the ocean since 1945, from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, to the Montebello Islands in Australia. . And more.

Just a couple of days ago Pope Francis sent a message to the UN Conference negotiating a binding legal instrument on the prohibition of nuclear weapons; The Pope questions the "waste of resources" that "could instead be used for significant priorities such as the promotion of peace and integral development."

There is a graffiti that says: "The floods do not occur because the rivers grow, but because the country sinks."

To say that we are all guilty is like saying that no one is responsible. Or, even worse, it is to render the powerful offender unimpeachable.

Blaming nature for this mess is like telling everyone (and especially the children) that it is her whom it is necessary to subdue, reduce and dominate.

The casualties demand our solidarity and for her we fight, knowing that we have been in emergency for a long time.

Encounter of New Librarians

On 17th March past, the Permanent Coordination Council of our Network met in Cajamarca.

The Council is made up of representative community members from the ten large zones in which our libraries are extended and has as its main function to accompany the journeys of all the sectors and to find solutions to the problems that appear in our organization and what to do.

The Council members themselves remained until the 19th to train and train together with the new librarians who have been incorporated - by decision of their communities - into the Network.

Community Librarians of Cajabamba, Celendín, Bambamarca, Cujillo and two representatives of the Proyecto Amigo de Huamachuco (La Libertad Region), shared this community learning.

It's always a new start and that keeps us going!

Notebook

We usually provide a notebook, a small book or loose sheets - in the meetings of the Network - for those participants who sometimes do not bring anything in which to take note.

To facilitate this contribution and to encourage everyone to write, we have designed and printed a notebook which is light but at the same time sufficient, and which even allows us to note on the cover to which meeting it corresponds.