New Article/ Nuevo Ensayo

Hace algunos meses, escribí un artículo para el Harvard Divinity Bulletin, donde usé las ideas del filósofo francés Emmanuel Levinas para pensar la manera que adolescentes que eran niños soldado en la guerra cvil Colombiana denuncian a la violencia y nos llaman a la consciencia.  Aida Ramos, una traductora epañola que trabaja con nosotros como voluntaria, acaba de traducir el texto en español, y está disponsible aquí.

Several months ago, I published an essay in the Harvard Divinity Review, using the ideas of the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to think through the way that children who had once been soldiers in the Colombian Civil War denounce violence and injustice and call others to conscience. I have just published the essay on the Shine a Light website, under the title The Prophet at War.

On Luxury and Necessity, Part II

Several days ago, I wrote about how the emphasis on fashion among Aymara and Quechua women in Bolivia had the unexpected effect of contributing to indigenous consciousness and forming part of the revolutions that brought real democracy to Bolivia in 2003 and 2005.  It is interesting to see how the same analysis of luxury and necessity can play out among programs serving marginalized children.

While I was in Bolivia, I sat in on an evaluation of Compa (the NGO where I was working) by the Kellogg Foundation.  Several of the young artists trained at Compa began their stories in the same way: their parents had not wanted them to attend music or theater classes.  Their families were poor and needed to think pragmatic: to make money right now (working) or at least to study something practical that would make them a good salary soon.  Every one of the young people interviewed said that they had to overcome these arguments in order to take arts classes.

Compa promotes transformative social change, and doesn't want its work evaluated just in terms of how individual kids who learned arts there are doing.  None the less, it is telling, I think, that something like 75% of young people between 19-25 who attend or attended Compa are now taking college courses.  That's against a baseline of something less than 10% in El Alto, and less that 5% in Bolivia (I'm not quoting exact stats here, just ball park figures).  So once again here, we have a result where the "luxury" of studying the arts has a more positive, practical effect than the "pragmatic" solution of work or vocational studies.

In contrast, then, we should look at programs that focus on the vocational, training carpenters and mechanics and information professionals; the Salesian Fathers, who run respected and imitated NGOs all over Latin America, can serve as a great point of reference.  It is fascinating to look at kids who have gone through many of the Ciudades del Niño or Casas Don Bosco around the continent.  They are well behaved, quiet, and good workers.  Most seem quite ready to work hard and provide for their families.  Yet the spark we see in street kids, the rough charisma, the angry hope... it isn't there.  These kids are very different from their peers who have done arts programs like Compa (or Pé no Chão in Brazil or Taller de Vida or Colegio del Cuerpo in Colombia).

I'm reminded of two references here.  One is Freud's Reality Principle, the necessity of knowing what is possible and what is not.  According to many American interpretations of Freud, the point of psychoanalysis is to bring people in line with the reality principle, so that they no longer live in their fantasies.  The other reference comes from the first chapters of Don Quijote, the scene where the barber and the priest plan to burn Don Quijote's books because they have torn him out of the limitations of reality that should contain him.  The American Freaudians, the priest, and the barber share with the parents of many kids in El Alto a very simple, and very logical idea: you have to be pragmatic, you have to know what is really possible instead of going off and tilting at windmills.  In the same way, both left and right wing critics of the cholitas insisted that spending money on fashion was a mistake when there were so many other political or family necessities.

In fact, though, it appears that the most "practical" decision, in terms of the concrete political, personal, and educational results, is exactly the opposite: to invest in what seems like luxury: in the arts, in fashion, in a rusty spear and shield.  Not all luxuries have these results, of course -- cocaine and video games might do as well for poor kids and families in Bolivia -- but it seems that a large part of wisdom is figuring out which luxuries will, indeed, make a difference.

On Luxury and Necessity

I have just gotten back from La Paz, Bolivia, where I have been working on a telenovela (Latin American soap opera) made by a group of indigenous kids from the shantytowns above the city.  One of the most striking and picturesque elements of Bolivia, memorable to most tourists, are the cholitas or mulheres de pollera, women dressed in what one would be tempted to call "traditional indigenous clothing," but which is really an autochthonous, hybrid fashion with both European and Inca roots.

Though many tourists see the cholitas as picturesque, these women also inspire hidden laughter ("bowler hats?") and more open criticisms.  Dressing in pollera fashion is expensive, after all, and many observers have commented that in a country as poor as Bolivia, as mothers of extremely poor families, these women would do much better if they dedicated their scarce money to educating and feeding themselves and their families.  Amidst starvation and the biting cold of El Alto, the shantytown where most cholitas live, fashion seems an unpardonable luxury.

Let me step back a moment, though, before I continue.  The first time I visited Bolivia was in 1991, not terribly long ago in terms of major social changes.  At that time, I was struck by the frightening sadness of the indigenous people, their downcast eyes and stooped postures, the fact that indian women would step off the sidewalk into the muck of the street when a white person wanted to pass.  Cholita fashion existed, but mostly in the form of old bowler hats and ragged long dresses, nothing like the rich silks and satins in the photo here.

In the 1990s, cholita fashion went wild, with new fabrics and cuts, new hats, and even cholita pro-wrestling (another story entirely).  There was an unexpected result of this excess, however: proud of their clothes and their appearance, cholitas no longer dropped their eyes, no longer stooped their shoulders, and no longer ceded their place on the sidewalk.  Their fashion had transformed their bodies.  And within a few short years, this pride had political consequences: cholitas were at the forefront of the two peaceful revolutions that took down the corrupt and clientelistic governments of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2003 and Carlos Mesa in 2005.

I don't want to make any grand conclusion from this idea ("luxury is a necessity of revolution" or any such thing), but I do think the story challenges many of our basic assumptions about social change.  It often comes about by strange, torturous routes, and not by the straight line we thought would get us there.