The blessing of rain and reading

A few days ago, our colleague Humberto Huamán Lara sent us a recording. Humberto is Coordinator of the Network of Rural Libraries in the El Enterador area, El Tambo district, in Bambamarca, and he also cares for several children of the Community Program.

In this way, Humberto combines library activities with the care and support of children with projectable abilities. He does this through the attention of Rural Libraries in Educational Institutions (BRIE), the promotion of reading or our Reading for Others program.

From his community, in the midst of a torrential rain, he shares:

“We are here today, 6th July, with the blessing of the rain for our crops and pastures, for our agriculture. We are here with the fourth and sixth grade students of the Luichocolpa Primary school, students from the “San Juan Bautista” School of El Enterador, and some authorities to make up our reading circle. Reading is important because it is the food of the brain.

We read the books in the Biblioteca Campesina series to learn how to relive our Cajamarcan tradition. Thanks to the books of Cajamarca we can do that and thus also practice reading at home.  

Today we are reading the story The rabbit and the Fox, from the book The Lazy One and other stories.”

From here we thank Humberto, the students and community members, for this strong and beautiful initiative.

Treasuring roots

Thank you for having sent me "The heritage of ñaupa", this profound treatise, on the meaning of heritage, of what it is to be alive, with the life of the cultural identity rooted in each one. I have read it now, carefully, twice: it brings me to the case of the minimization and objectification of what is only 'seen' by tourists who come to buy souvenirs, but in reality they do not want to know the roots and reality of being Peruvian. Really good people, but on vacation, looking for the new, the beautiful, the fascinating ... And then they go home.

I can tell you that those of us who had the privilege of sharing life with the Peruvian people, really miss Peru. When I returned to my country, for a long time I had constant dreams of Peru, and they were painful dreams.

During the time that we were blessed to be with the people there, whom we love, we found another culture, and a better culture. Although the poverty we saw –induced by the greedy– really broke our hearts, at the same time we experienced a lot of joy thanks to the people. At the same time, we were learning all the time from this ancient, modern, better culture: an ancient way that Peruvians have to treasure the family, the roots of the culture.

Thank you for this insightful and inspiring essay on ñaupa. As he says, and it is seen: "I am elevating respect, I am elevating gratitude, I am magnifying the bond with the earth and its roots."

With a hug,

Wendy Cotter,

from Canada.

Arturo reading

Our dear friends Pier Paolo Giarolo (who also produced and directed the film "Books and Clouds") and his family recently wrote to us. We share a little of this beautiful gift:

"Everything is fine here; I send a photo of Arturo memorizing the books of the Peasant Libraries.

I also send a photo of our screen with which we make summer film projections, every night, in a different place.

Say hello to everyone in the network.

And a big hug.

Lucia, Arturo and Pier Paolo ”

Oral tradition and Rural Libraries

On Thursday, 25th June, the students of the course 'Oral and Ethnic Literatures' with their professor Elías Rengifo de la Cruz, from the Higher Universtiy of San Marcos, invited our brother Alfredo to talk about the Rural Libraries Network of Cajamarca and literature of oral culture.

Alfredo explained how the rescue and publication of the oral tradition began without having a predetermined model. On the contrary,  the Peasant Encyclopedia Project  of the Network was developed  as a result of observation, humility, absolute respect and having  the peasant populations  as main actors, producers and executors of their own knowledge.

This way of proceeding did not come from external models that are largely invasive and that from the outside recommend what to do or how to do it, reproducing a model according to which it considers that rural people have little capacity to have or respond to their own existence. Here it is not a question of "being the voice of those who have no voice"; it is a question of letting be and letting it be said, because the origin of the whole project is the community, from and for the community and, above all, with the community.

He also highlighted that the richness of our traditions is in its diversity, its dynamism and its universality. "The story is a living and life-giving germ."  We do not rescue the tradition to freeze it, but to heat it; to enhance it through the book, which becomes a warehouse. Rescue is not enough, then: books have to be fertile seeds. The word has been kept fresh, without losing the liveliness of the speech when  converting it into written text. In this way the story speaks without losing the strength of the orality that made it possible."

In “Yo maestro”, from Bogotá

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

Born of you

Agriculture plays a vital role in the food security of a household because it allows us to have our own food availability and also for producers to generate their own income. This even facilitates their stability and access to sufficient and nutritious food, so that our energy needs to lead an active and healthy life are met.

Perhaps it is time to pay more attention to our farm. No matter how urban our life may become: we will always consider agriculture, this main component of our subsistence. Let us take advantage of the wonders that nature gives us, but let us not exploit. We should always be grateful for the goodness of the earth.

At the fifth webinar

On June 18, the Institute of Higher Pedagogical Education extended the invitation to Alfredo Mires Ortiz to talk, in a virtual meeting, about liberating reading and writing. The questions asked revolved around what the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed in educational processes; what should the school do to promote liberating reading and what are the balances in relation to the educational system and the lessons that a peasant institution like the Cajamarca Rural Libraries Network can offer. The responses were forceful:

"In this time of the pandemic, what is evident, what has been evidenced, is an almost global inability of the population to read reality (...) If we elevate that to the educational processes of the country, we can see that the only thing that has been done is to adapt the formal learning of the school (with the same contents) to the available technology. Virtual communication has become the method for learning. No one thought to reinvent themselves. The question is, are we willing to reinvent ourselves?

“We have to accept that the moral reserve of our countries is in those who never went to school. Those who do not have degrees, who were not in that unfair competition system, those who were not showing that they knew so much."

“Rural Libraries has evidenced the profound social, human, moral and historical baggage of the populations that did not have the trauma of competition at school because they have the ability to read reality. Those populations are genuine without being infatuated. Rural Libraries has proven and demonstrated that dignity and respect are not about money, power, or an academic degree; we must respect them”.

“If we do not admit that there is a problem (with today's education) it is almost impossible to remedy it. Are we able to admit it? Are we ready to change?”

“Education got it wrong or never took the path led by those who go through school to read texts and contexts; much less prepare to perceive the heartbeat of Nature, deepen the capacity to nourish; see and feel the regenerating magic of Nature”.