Well accompanied

In the Rural Libraries Network, as our dear brother Alfredo Mires said, we avoid bureaucracy as much as possible; thus, the processes we follow are minimal, simple and understandable. A clear example is the procedures for opening new libraries when communities request them: a simple request and the signatures of those who want the library in their community; adults, young people, children and the elderly.

It is therefore difficult to understand why state and private institutions are riddled with cumbersome, incomprehensible procedures and documents. It is hard for them to understand and accept the simplicity with which a volunteer works, even more so if he or she is a community member.

Fortunately, in our wanderings, we always find people and organisations that accompany us and help us to clarify many of these procedures, which are legally indispensable.

Since a few months ago, and starting a new administrative period in Rural Libraries, we have been accompanied by the accounting firm Consulcont, in the persons of Rodolfo Urteaga and Monica Narvaez. We would like to thank them for their perseverance, for the pleasant moments we have shared and for the encouragement they give us with their guidance, which helps to strengthen the administrative aspects of our Network.

In times of drought

These are hot times in the city of Medellín, Colombia with temperatures between 29° and 33° degrees Celsius most of the day; with no hopeful sign of a little rain to give some respite to the bountiful amount of little trees and plants that live in this city. 

It was only a few days ago that, while walking through the university, I came across a water fountain that I had never noticed before. When I looked at it more closely I could see that someone had written on it the following sentence: "water will be gold in times of drought".

I couldn't help but be moved and shed a tear, remembering my beloved Cajamarca. Remembering our constant struggle for water, for life, for our people and for justice. 

Almost twelve years have passed since the beginning of the series of mass demonstrations against the "Conga" project, which - as it is still "suspended" to this day - intends to destroy 238 hectares of wetlands and lagoons.  These lagoons and wetlands not only provide water to thousands of families who live from agriculture and livestock farming in the Cajamarca páramo (wetland ecosystem) and, at the same time, feed the entire city of Cajamarca, but are also invaluable for the sustainability of the ecosystem of the area. 

Almost twelve years have passed since, in those protests, I saw my ten-year-old self facing, for the first time in my life, walking through the Plaza de Armas of my birthplace, defending my ideas and those of my people, surrounded by armed police and military, ready to shoot anyone they considered a threat to the "progress and development" of the country.

Today I feel, once again, the streets of my people full of hats and flags, of cries for justice and freedom, of the clamour of the land itself, defending its life through our voices.

And it is no coincidence to hear so many saying "it's too hot", "the weather is not like it used to be", "years ago this weather was rainy weather". It is no coincidence, it is the loud and clear roar of the forests cut down and burned, of the fish left without rivers, of the mountains left without water, of the air that enters our lungs grey and polluted.

But today I also feel hope that it is not true that "only after the last tree is cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will we realise that gold is inedible." 

I wish it were sooner, I wish it were today....

Mara Mires Mocker

Alfredo and the Ñaupa

Alfredo Mires traveled the Apu Qayapuma for several decades, to the point where he knew by heart the location of each painting and the paths to reach them. He walked, went deep into the Apu and spent many nights to investigate in depth the relationship of each drawing with the environment, with the change of light and temperature. He spent entire days there, where our grandparents lived, to observe what happened during the time of rain and drought, because all that influences, he told us, nothing looks the same, everything changes according to the circumstances.

He investigated each space of the "Puma convenor", with the limitations of the Peruvian who dares on his own and whose budget, many times, is only his own spirit. And like this he went also to other places.

When he went to the communities, he would ask the community members who had made the paintings, the sanctuaries, the petroglyphs, the ceramics. The people answered him, he says, that Ñaupa had done all that. For that reason, he also tells that he decided to baptize with the name "Ñaupa", the recurrent character that he found in the callanas, those pieces of ceramics that are found in any sacred place of the Andes, and also in other representations of the Cajamarcan rock art. Based on these investigations, Alfredo completed and recreated El Ñaupa graphically, giving it a social, cultural and political meaning (El Ñaupa T1, p.8).

The Rural Libraries Network has published the books El Ñaupa (volumes 1 and 2), where Alfredo, with creativity and respect for the original drawings, shows us many other characters turned into ñaupítas, with provocative phrases, expressions of solidarity, encouraging reading, among others.

We will always be grateful to Alfredo for bequeathing us such a great cultural wealth.

The dreaming of Ñaupa

I don't dream the empty dreams

of lost paradises:

I dream what the dead

dreamed to be alive.

Alfredo Mires

Together and in good spirits

We were already looking forward to the beginning of February - not because of Carnival, but because the first training meeting of the Community Program was on the horizon. We imagined a special meeting, something more "for the soul", to reposition ourselves, to look inward and to start this new year with courage.

As the people responsible for the Program, it is also our task and our commitment to take care of the caregivers, that is to say, the rural coordinators who accompany the children with projectable capacities and their families in their homes and communities.

In this sense, the visit of Diana Arroyave and Jaime Roldán, from Medellín, Colombia, who are traveling through South America in their travelling house, came as a great surprise. In their project they offer pedagogical experiences in movement, sharing and learning about books, reading, writing and the development of the self through biodance.

Diana and Jaime accompanied us for a whole day - a day that was made short by how entertaining and fun it was to learn new possibilities of reading and writing. We are already looking forward to bringing all the news to the children in the Community Program and thus improving our Reading for Others skills.

At the end of the day, Diana and Jaime took us into the magical world of our inner selves - dancing, smiling and sharing through music, movement and silence.

Thank you, Diana and Jaime, for being and for being with us.

Rita Mocker

Alfredo's footprints

On 23rd February we had a virtual meeting with the teachers of our Rural Libraries in Educational Institutions. Not many people had connected, but the group was select and the conversation flowed.

In our reading circle -by those coincidences that are not coincidences- we read El libro y la madrugada - The book and the dawn (from: Esa luz de más adentro - That light from further inside), the introduction written by Alfredo Mires for Los seres del más acá- The beings from over here, in 1988. I will always be surprised by this "absent presence" of Alfredo in our lives and on our path.

Almost at the end of the meeting we asked teachers for help: to write for our social networks. We know that they, from their schools, have a lot to tell and to share.

Then, teacher Clemencia Paredes sent me a photo via WhatsApp, where they were celebrating the end of the 2023 school year with a joijona, a custom she learned in Rural Libraries. And she sent me this greeting: "Thank you, Rita, for showing us Alfredo's footsteps, to follow the route he traced in life."

A beautiful message to remember the birthday of a wonderful person.

Rita Mocker

We are still: second part

It seems that the Ñaupa has a lot to do with the mythical Andean feline. So Alfredo Mires tells us:

The myths of origin in the Andean world emphasizes the presence of the mythical feline as the "beginning of the lineage". The symbolic role of the jaguar and the puma is fundamental, also associated with lightning and the personification of "natural phenomena" (...).

In any case, looking at images of pumas or jaguars, it is not difficult to think that the character of the iconography in question coincides with the mythical feline. Although they will always be assumptions, the coincidence of eyes, "smile" and ears can give rise to the character represented.

It is obvious that, even being the puma, the character is -in general-, humanized, which would ratify the filiation and unity between nature, human community, time and deities in the religious-cultural base of the Andes.

If we follow the curvature of one of the callanas (earthenware), we could deduce the number of images that the original plate would have contained: there would be 24 characters that, with their pairs, would become 48, the 'perfect' number of the yach'aq (wise men, teachers or 'sorcerers'). When finding so many callanas in the ritual spaces, the question is whether the plates and bowls would not have contained offerings to placate the felines (a practice that is still observed today in the countryside to avoid aggression from the species).

Alfredo Mires in: El Ñaupa