The community of Rural Libraries received with great joy the award "Coronel Manuel José Becerra Silva, Hero of the Carcamo", which includes a parchment and a medal of honour, from the Cajamarca Identity and Culture Association. We are very grateful for this award and for this recognition of the work we do in our communities, rescuing and recognising what is ours.
The Chisco Cultural Association from the Laredo District of Trujillo writes to us and is very excited to receive the publications from the Network of Rural Libraries, they tell us:
"More books for the community library 'Stories from the Forest'!
We are grateful to Alfredo Mires Ortiz of the Rural Library Network of Cajamarca, who has shared with us 15 books from the Biblioteca Campesina collection.
We are sure that this material will be treasured by the inhabitants of the village of 'Santo Domingo', in the district of Laredo (Trujillo, Peru).
"And before the "rural reader" learns to befriend books, the promoter must have learned to read the streets and the squares, the villages and the fields, the crops, the fires, the needs and the longings. (El libro entre los hijos de Atahualpa, Alfredo Mires)".
We are grateful for this initiative to share and spread reading, bringing the oral traditions of Cajamarca to every home.
The House of Peruvian Literature is a cultural institution, promoter of reading and Peruvian literature. For some years now, it has awarded the Casa de la Literatura Peruana Prize to various personalities in recognition of their literary career; These personalities include Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Germán Belli, Estuardo Núñez, Antonio Gálvez Ronceros, Edgardo Rivera Martínez, Oswaldo Reynoso, José Miguel Oviedo, Carmen Ollé, Leoncio Bueno, Luis Urteaga Cabrera, Óscar Colchado Lucio, Cronwell Jara Jiménez and Rossella Di Paul.
The 2021 Prize will be awarded to our brother Alfredo Mires Ortiz, "in recognition of his innovative vision of books, reading and literature in dialogue with the needs of the community, work associated with the Network of Rural Libraries of Cajamarca", as the organizing institution of this recognition mentions in one of its notes.
We, as the Network of Rural Libraries, were informed of this decision a couple of months ago and we were greatly surprised when the team responsible for the House of Literature based this decision on abundant information about our Network; and it is not data that can be found in our blog or in some documents that account for our work and Alfredo's work in research and literary production, but about many details that can only be perceived when reading our Network, when reading Alfredo. This encouraged us to accept this recognition.
Since then, we have seen all the care and effort that the team responsible for this award has put into the preparation and dissemination process.
We know that there are still a few days to go before the official ceremony, but we already feel the 2021 Casa de la Literatura Peruana Award as a very important part of our history, not only because of the recognition as such, but also, and above all, because of the interest, the dedication and appreciation that we observe in every detail.
Thank you, dear friends of the House of Peruvian Literature!
For this reason, one of the challenges of the Network is to donate books for these purposes, in coordination with those responsible for the different spaces. So it was that, a few months ago, the Network donated a set of our story fascicles to the Oncology Procedure Room at the Cajamarcan hospital.
Those who go through there are in very challenging times, and that is why it means so much to see patients reading our books, made with the prodigious humility of the Cajamarcan countryside.
And it has been more than beautiful to witness one of the nurses in charge of the area, book in hand, reading our stories aloud, for everyone. And she read very well, with intonation and emphasis, as if to help patients get better!
We do believe that reading can also heal us and keep us fighting for life.
Loaded with stories and charms, the Cuda prepares to make her appearance.
We are already waiting for her to learn new stories, to continue telling and singing and talking about what our grandparents knew how to inherit for us.
Some time ago, in one of the many workshops with young people, children, teachers and students that our brother Alfredo Mires carries out, he expressed the following:
“— Did any of you know that it was going to rain today? Was there a sign?
- It was cloudy.
- What other sign was there?
— The clouds were grey.
— What other signs were there? Is there a mountain that warns? Who knows that, what mountain warns? Which of the mountains: the Huasmín or the Qayaqpuma?
— The Huasmin.
— What does the Huasmín do to warn that it is going to rain?
— Lower the cloud.
— Here we have a reader, an extraordinary reader! Because the first step to becoming ignorant is not knowing how to read nature. A reader who knows that when the cloud lowers and settles on the mountain - he puts on a hat, we say - it is going to rain. He is reading nature.
You can't be a good book reader if you don't read nature.
If we go outside and see rubbish and we don't realize that we are living among rubbish, and we don't do anything about this problem, it means that we are not reading nature.
If we see a sad, pale, sorrowful friend, and we don't notice, it means that we are not reading, reading him; he is sick, something has happened to him.
That is reading.
Reading is the perception of reality: that is the first step to being a reader. If someone praises themself for reading books, but does not know how to read nature, they are not a good reader.
Reading begins with reading reality. This has to be well understood."
The House of Peruvian Literature, as part of its Dialogue Spaces – Literary Coffee Afternoons, invited the reading of “The book among the children of Atahualpa – The experience of the Network of Rural Libraries of Cajamarca”, by our brother Alfredo Mires Ortiz.
The event took place on 27th January.
