MI MANO, TU MANO, SU MANO...

NUESTRAS MANOS?1

Reections for socially responsible librarians

by Edgardo Civallero2
To Tupaq Amaru3
Not even four horses silenced your voice
If we want
we can write a new history.
We can invent the daylight.
We can make the sky to move.
We can build new things with poetry.
If we want, we can chat with our past.
If we want, we can transform this present.
If we want, we can shape our future.
If we want...

Si queremos Illapu (Chilean group)

lexander the Great had a very peculiar habit. When he received

someone who complained about anothers actions and asked for
punishment, he covered one of his ears with a hand and listened. He
explained this practice by saying that the covered ear was the one which
had to listen the other persons version of facts. If the socially responsible
librarian takes Alexanders role, one ear hears his or her own story, the
experience of ones own life, work and visions. In seeking to work in
solidarity with others whose life experience and cultural history are
different... how should the other ear be opened? How could others needs
and desires be understood if our own are all we hear, keeping us from
making a real connection with those with whom we would make common
cause? Closing ones own ear in order to fully hear anothers is not, after
all, an easy task. This text is offered as a guide for self-identied socially
responsible librarians wishing to work in solidarity with colleagues and
peoples in countries outside their own in this specic instance, in Latin
America.
The signs telling all the stories, discoveries, successes and failures of
humankind have been kept in the shelves of libraries from the dawn of
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historic ages. The written memories of men and women, all their most
valuable information, have always been managed by the hands of librarians.
All this knowledge is an immense power: the power for understanding the
past, solving present problems and developing strategies for the future.
Librarians responsibility is as huge as the power they manage and preserve,
as their actions and policies can provide whole societies with chances for
empowerment and progress.
However, many librarians seem to sleep a sweet dream inside a safe, quiet,
passive bubble, without noticing the dramatic reality surrounding them
and the urgency of the necessary and strategic service they should provide.
There is a whole world outside the walls of libraries in need of help,
education, opportunity, information a world full of critical situations
every day. But even the librarians who are aware of this reality seem to
prefer to remain isolated from this harsh universe, safe behind protective
institutional walls.
Latin America is a conictive land, a continent full of beauties as well as
serious deciences. Most of its large population need high-quality education
and updated information resources in order to overcome the challenges
they face. Latin American librarians cannot ignore this fact anymore: they
must become involved in their societys struggles and efforts, supporting
their users search for information and knowledge. Foreign librarians who
want to help Latin American colleagues must learn how to collaborate
in a supportive way, creating bridges with their work, and avoiding
deeply engrained First World attitudes and colonizing mentalities that
for centuries have built divides between north and south, developed and
developing countries, informed and ill-informed peoples.
To understand Latin American reality and, therefore, to understand the
role of librarians within it it is necessary to understand the historical
process that led this continent to its current situation... and what exactly
is this situation. This essay is a little, completely personal and subjective
view, written from a Latin American perspective. It will not deal with usual
LIS issues, as far as they are sufciently presented and widely discussed
in specialized journals and papers everywhere. Instead of this, this essay
gives a social approach to Latin American users reality and needs. Such
understanding is essential, because if this social and cultural context is not
known and understood in the rst place, librarians cannot expect to design
useful services, collections, programs and activities. Without this context
all the academic LIS literature and aid programs become completely
useless.
People used to reading conventional Euro-North American points-of-view
might nd the contents of this text radical or unattering. But sometimes
it is wise to listen others opinion before building ones own. This essay is
aimed at providing thought for reection, and to help uncover the other
ear.
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Part 1. A foggy history

My feathered brothers saw them arriving from the sea.
They were the bearded Gods announced by prophecies ().
But Gods dont eat, and they dont enjoy stolen goods,
and when we realized this, everything was already nished.
We kept the curse of giving to foreigners
our faith, our culture, our bread and our money.
Maldicin de Malinche. Mexican song.4
Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano entitled one of his more famous books
The Open Veins of Latin America. Only those who have seen Latin
American social reality up close are able to understand that Galeano did
not use a metaphor. The peoples of this huge continent hide, behind their
natural happiness, passion and enthusiasm, hundreds of open wounds that
never heal.
Before the arrival of Europeans to the western hemisphere, aboriginal
societies some of which were developing rich and highly sophisticated
cultures did not precisely live in peace and harmony. Pink legends
spread by Latin American writers, historians and some social movements
depict a romanticized life for indigenous peoples which is far from the
hard, complex reality lived by those societies, a reality shared at various
points in time by every human group in every corner of the planet. They
killed and were killed for power, they conquered and were dominated,
they invaded and were exploited. An opposing school of thought circulates
the black legends which place responsibility for all suffering in Latin
America on the Spanish conquest.
European invasion did, indeed, bring to what became the Americas a
social, economic and political scheme that lasted through centuries and
that immersed the whole continent in shadows: colonialism.
Rooted in military coercion, in cultural denial, in the violent elimination
of whole populations, in the systematic destruction of pre-existent socioenvironmental, economic, productive and political structures, the conquest
and colonization of America subjected millions of people to an almost
slavist regime, creating, at the same time, a powerful elite which controlled
the destinies of peoples and territories according to the colonizers own
material interests.
To generalize is a mistake, of course, and to believe either the pink
or the black legends as an absolute reality is erroneous. Hundreds of
autochthonous cultures survive into present times, and, in several aspects,
local and foreign systems blended in an amazing way, originating new
regional identities, which expressed the best as well as the worst features
of their predecessors.5 Over time, tens-of-thousands of people struggled
for justice and for the welfare of their societies, and a lot of them sacriced
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their lives in honor of their ideals of freedom, equality and political and
cultural autonomy.6
Setting aside myth and legend, the basis of what became a characteristic
social structure in Latin America was established: European (or europeized)
elites of educated and conservative landowners, traders, bureaucrats and
politicians loomed over this immense continent of indigenous, black,
mulatto and mestizo peasantry who worked the lands that, in old times,
belonged to some of their ancestors.
Part 2. Independence?
Listen, mortals, the sacred cry:
Freedom, freedom, freedom
Argentinean national anthem
The Andean miners, the Central American peasants, the gauchos in
Argentinean pampas and the slaves in the plantations shared a common
past and a common destiny: to extract benets from land and industries,
benets that went directly to ll the chests of the upper classes. The absence
of education, organization and basic instruction among the lower classes
was remarkable, and thwarted their attempts to create a better future, and
seek alternative paths, but they never stopped trying. In fact, during the rst
three centuries of Hispanic occupation, popular rebellions were extremely
violent, and their results were sadly dramatic.
The rst books printed in America were catechisms, published in the
languages of indigenous groups, used in the evangelization of local
peoples, as well as grammars and dictionaries of indigenous languages,
mainly used for translating those catechisms. The sword dominated, the
cross tamed, and the Book taught how to put other checks on peoples
who were not considered human beings by Spanish laws until the middle
of the sixteenth century.7 Several decades vanished before Latin American
publishers produced a non-religious book.8 At the same time, texts arrived
from Europe started spreading ideas in vogue on the continent. Scarce
and precious goods, they were the tools that began the diffusion during
late eighteenth century of revolutionary ideas among the educated layers
of Latin American societies, eventually igniting a political re that swept
the whole continent during the rst half of the nineteenth century and
which ended in the birth of the current independent nations.9
Even though education, printing, and books spread, and with them were
disseminated literacy, culture, development and recovery of regional
traditions, the ever-oppressed masses of people remained in their place. After
national independences,10 they might have been liberated from a number
of yokes, for sure, but the newly formed societies quickly forgetting
their egalitarian and libertarian ideals and creating new foreign-like elites
of power kept them bound to the same basic situation of oppression.
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Peasants and workers were scorned when compared with the rened
European culture: traditional and popular traits became mere curiosities;
peasant realities were rough and inferior; labor demands became rebellions
of wretched poor people; and the lower classes demands were treated as
simple banditry hardly deserving notice.
Dozens of popular movements have arisen in Latin America since the latenineteenth century and continue today, especially when political power
always faithful to European and North American interests is taken
into military hands. Peasants, have-nots, intellectuals, artists, idealists and
priests, all have joined around great personalities many of whom became
famous leaders, who slowly implemented changes. Great popular heroes
arose: Zapata, Sandino, Torres, Preste, Guevara, Castro and thousands
of anonymous ghters who fell in combat or disappeared in the turbulent
periods of dictatorship and dirty war.11 There also arose those who fought
with songs, words and ideas: writers, musicians, poets, artists all
reecting the soul of the people, of a wounded people who never learnt
to surrender. Throughout all this upheaval, education spread via books,
schools and libraries, and they did not just spread culture, but again new
ideas, cutting chains and handcuffs, uncovering eyes and ears, eliminating
gags and liberating minds from their most recent bonds.
Today, new winds blow in Latin America, and even if foreign imperialistic
powers still step with their boots on the continents neck, and dominant
classes try to keep alive their traditional forms of power, domination and
oppression, popular and progressive movements of an obvious left-wing
tendency are taking the reins of national destinies and slowly changing
the social panorama and the course of events. Latin American social
trends, their progressive political turn in socialist directions, the payment
of external debts and the creation of regional alliances demonstrate a clear
will to create strong, really independent political and social identities,
based on the popular reality of the continent.
Part 3. About problems and solutions
The [Spanish] dreams of swindle and sackery,
their love of gold, their desire of power
are the cancer who made their heirs ill,
are the history of a land condemned to suffer.
Carabelas. Ricardo Arjona
Latin America the protagonist of this history is a vigorous land with
important creative and intellectual capacity, industries and immense
human and natural resources. But, socially speaking, it remains a strongly
rural and peasant continent, even if most of its population is stacked
around huge urban settlements, many living under precarious conditions,
experiencing the same poverty and marginality they tried to escape when
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they left their rural homelands. Latin American social reality is too complex
to be described in a few lines, but, basically, cities teem with marginal
populations barely surviving at alarming levels of poverty, and rural spaces
are territories sparsely populated.
The problems of city and countryside are similar: cities are places of
job shortages, social exclusion, lack of education and family planning,
delinquency, addiction, identity loss and violence; rural areas suffer
from sanitary problems, illiteracy, loss of local culture, poverty and
malnutrition, labor exploitation, violation of rights and discrimination of
minorities. The absence of literacy, education, labor formation, and legal
and sanitary information programs are problems in both city and country,
and are perhaps one of the main challenges for national governments. A
new source of inequity in the form of information and communication
technologies (ICT) is now widely spreading. In cities the digital divide
is strongly felt in the face of a knowledge and information society that
never stops its frantic race and that never waits for those left behind.
Can the book and the library contribute to solving problems arising from the
timeless struggle for basic human needs and equally timeless yearning to
fulll human creative potential? But, of course! The question is how?
Obviously, books and education alone cannot solve present hunger, but they
are indispensable instruments if a nation expects to solve the future hunger
of its people. In principle, they can also recover local identities that are
vanishing, they can preserve the memory of destroyed minority cultures,
and can record oral traditions that are being lost daily. They can provide
two basic instruments for every community or people that wishes to thrive:
reading and writing. They can inform about how to solve basic problems
concerning health, nutrition and environment, or how to defend rights and
assume responsibilities. They can support basic and higher education, and
provide instruments for the creation of small industries and work skills.
They can offer opportunities for development that most people have not
experienced in ve centuries of history. They can especially continue
cutting chains and liberating minds. They are not a miraculous cure for all
human problems, but they are an essential element in the cure if they are
correctly used, if their use is guided by the spirit of social responsibility.12
The social responsibilities of librarians are precisely based on this correct
use. The explosive development of library and information sciences, of
books and of ICTs on an international level has demonstrated that human
beings can manage their knowledge in a tremendously efcient way,
obtaining great benets. But, for several reasons, many of these benets
have not been reaped in the developing countries.
Why? Probably, because of the absence of correct use.
First, the distribution of resources and goods in Latin America is terribly
unequal. Second, it is common to import, from advanced or developed
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countries, tools and work models that never t the needs and features of
the nal users. And it is, of course, just as common that these strange
imports are refused by the recipients. And third, the very idea of social
responsibility within librarianship is not fully developed yet, even if there
are, everywhere, examples of social responsibility that are almost heroic.
As evidence of the underdeveloped state of social responsibility as a central
component of librarianship, LIS education with rare exceptions deals
very poorly with popular and social aspects of libraries within society.
This is not only a shortcoming just in Latin America, but here there is
some urgency for every region to address social needs and, therefore, its
absence within librarianship is more striking. LIS education does not even
show an awareness of what we in Latin America call trench libraries
rural, popular, community libraries that are cared for by professionals
who feel (and sometimes actually are) isolated, and who bravely struggle
to complete or continue their education, and to provide, with almost
nonexistent resources, services that address the imperative needs of their
communities.
Part 4. Where brilliance is brightest, the shadows are deepest
In my country, yearly, 5000 children take ight
like little angels, with their wings over the good airs...
They have the good luck and the quietness of ignoring everything..
Maybe God stole these souls for keeping them as good beings.

Mensajes del alma Len Gieco

Latin America is a world full of light and brilliance. But, in keeping with a
very simple physical law, everything in this world having a bright side also
has a shadow. And shadows, in this continent, can be terrible, and make up
the daily world of librarians in the trenches. Babies and children die in
the cold of Susques (Jujuy, in northwest Argentina), a little village where
35% of children die before reaching 5 years of life. This is not an isolated
problem happening just in this little Andean village. It also happens in
other spots in Latin America. It happens in the whole continent.
Susques is one of the thousand places in Latin America where children
have to travel from six to eight hours, riding a mule or walking, to reach
the nearest school and attend classes. In order to provide an effective and
realistic educational service in areas such as this, schools usually become
places where children live, sleep and eat a great part of the year. But, due to
the lack of resources, most of schools are forced to close their doors during
the hard winters. Some of them cannot afford the gas, oil or rewood for
their stoves. The luckiest ones can take care of all the children almost
the entire year. But they are a minority. Even when such hardships are
overcome, a high number of children from 8 to 12 years old have to forget
classes and start working to help their families survive. Children gather
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crops in the elds or take care of ocks when in other parts of the world
others of their same age are studying.
In Misiones, in Tucuman, children still die of starvation, as well as in a
good number of other important Argentinean provinces, and in places,
large and small, all throughout the continent. Here and there, newspapers
reect this reality, but sensationalistic waves in print are easily forgotten or
avoided, as people prefer not to know (or to forget) this unpleasant news.
Children suffer hunger as well as old people. An old Qom woman from
Chaco (in northeast Argentina) declared during an interview several years
ago, when asked what she ate: I cant eat. And, showing her mouth,
empty of teeth, she ended her sentence. Even if I had teeth, I wouldnt be
able to eat anything. National government stole our lands, so I cant grow
and harvest my food.
Children also die because of diseases like dengue fever or cholera. In 2002,
Anala, a three-year-old Qom girl, with lovely dark eyes and long black hair
a pretty, really pretty little girl died in this authors arms, from simple
diarrhea. Can it be imagined? She slowly lost all the water in her small
body, and she died, literally dehydrated. Can this picture be imagined?
The little childs life just vanishing between my hands, and I could not
stop the process, a process which started when the parents didnt get the
necessary information about what diarrhea is. Can it be just imagined? The
little, beautiful girl closing her eyes forever, and one standing there, totally
useless, just caressing her face and wondering what was happening there,
thinking that it was a bloody nightmare and not a part of reality. Can it be
imagined, a life going away between ones own arms? No, its difcult,
perhaps impossible, to imagine. People who speak of poverty and disease
in Latin America (or wherever) should have this kind of experience. They
would surely stop speaking and they would start acting.
After watching little Anala die in ones arms, the only thing a person can
feel is hatred, rage and an innite anger against this world... a world that
didnt stop to tell Analas parents that dehydration can be treated with
water, salt and sugar, things that the family had in their kitchen. The author
arrived too late, and Anala went away in his arms, smiling softly before
ying to a sky where the star-women of her peoples tales look down every
night, crying in front of these terrible facts.
Campesinos are killed in Latin America, here and there, and their lands
are stolen by rich people, and nobody says a word, because those who
speak might nish their days with a bullet in the head, sleeping somewhere
under two feet of Latin American soil. The author of this essay has been
openly menaced by political activists for teaching indians to read (so they
can read their rights, the unfair contracts, the newspapers, etc.). His life
(is this clearly understood? life, my life!) has been openly menaced with a
gun, just for providing information and basic education. In Latin America
(and in a lot of spots all around this world) people die for land, for money,
for politics, for power. And nobody stops it. Nobody. Sometimes, things
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are changed. But the reforms last just a couple of months, and then the
whole thing is forgotten, newspapers and journalists stop speaking about
it (excepting independent websites like Indymedia), and again and again
things start going wrong... Campesinos go on dying, and landowners
go on getting richer and richer... In my province of Argentina, in northern
Cordoba, which is one of the biggest and most developed of the country,
this problem of theft and death is terribly common, and a good number
of people are struggling to avoid both. But people live constantly under
menace. Some of them just vanish from this world, and nobody knows
what happened to them.
In Patagonia, in southern Argentina, rich foreigners like Mr. Bennetton
possess thousands of square miles of aboriginal lands. They extract oil from
the sacred lands of Mapuche and Tewelche peoples, poisoning their waters,
burning their air and their sky, killing their animals and plants. Indigenous
activists who bravely ght against these violations in totally democratic
and legal ways are jailed or silently murdered and forgotten. In Formosa
province (in northeast Argentina), a wide area of rainforest belonging to native
communities (Wich, Nivakl and Yofwaja) has been bought by an Australian
company (for $3.50 per square mile) to cut precious trees and sell the wood to
rich Asians. In Chile, North American companies are extracting water from
the mountains and drying up native communities. In Colombia, in Peru, in
Ecuador, in Guatemala, in Mexico, in Panama, in Brazil, foreign companies
are devastating local environments and economies, campesinos are still
massacred, indigenous populations are persecuted... Perhaps everybody
knows all these facts. They should. However, it seems that nobody moves a
single nger to stop these abuses against basic human rights.

Children are used almost as slaves, even in Argentina. Women are used as
sexual slaves, men are used as work slaves. The hands of a man, a woman
or a child after gathering the cotton used for our T-shirts is an image that
cannot be described or forgotten. I worked with the pickers of cotton for a
year, in Chaco, in northeast Argentina. Cotton has thorns, and these thorns
cut the hands if the white bers are not taken very carefully. But when the
boss pays 0.80 Argentinean pesos (around $0.30) for every kilo of cotton
(and a real mountain of cotton is needed to make a kilo), people dont
mind about being careful: they need to hurry if they want to pick enough
kilos, to make enough money to pay for food to eat that night. Young
boys and women are preferred as workers in cotton elds, because their
hands are little and they can take the cotton easily, without cutting their
hands so badly. I have seen their hands covered by new and old scars, and
my own have been cut by the cotton thorns as well. The pain felt, and the
humiliation of being paid with such a little wage for such strenuous work,
is nearly indescribable. It feels like slavery. Theres not another word for it.
But workers know that they cannot do anything else, at least if they want
their families and themselves to have some dinner.
This humiliation and exploitation is experienced by people harvesting
cotton, but workers cutting sugar cane, harvesting yerba mate, collecting
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apples and grapes, all experience it, as do people sewing cheap clothes in
illegal factories, women selling their bodies in illegal bars... This happens
everywhere.
All I describe is a part of the reality of this great continent, a part lived
and witnessed by many, if not most, Latin Americans, myself included.
This is our reality, a reality that is seen by foreigners in the safety of movie
theaters, on living room televisions, or if experienced directly is known to
be only temporary. A foreigner, after all, can get on an airplane and return
to the safety and comfort of home if the realities of Latin America become
too difcult.
Maybe things cannot be fully understood if they are not lived or experienced
in a direct, personal way. Its very difcult to understand a point-of-view
or a problem if its not felt inside ones bones, if the pain, the rage, the
shame and the humiliation are not lived, if they seem to be so far, far away.
As an Argentinean song says, ningn dolor se siente mientras le toque al
vecino (pain is not felt if it hits our neighbor).
Maybe these words seem like a cruel form of presenting problems and
reality. But if human beings continue using euphemisms, metaphors and
indirect ways of speaking about urgent and painful problems, we will never
realize that they are actually urgent, that there are people suffering, that a
solution is needed. The rst step in knowing about a problem is identifying
it, knowing it, facing it in a direct way, naming it with all the letters of the
word: murder, slavery, misery, poverty, starvation, hunger... These images
of pain must work as an alarm clock inside the mind of the sleeping ones.
These images must help the sleeping to awake, to notice the situation, to
realize that a great deal of help is needed, that positions must be taken in a
proper but fast manner. If human beings go on looking in the opposite
direction when they see bad things instead of facing them, they will never
exorcize their ghosts, they will never ght against their fears, they will
never be able to overcome challenges. And theyll never be able to help.
Social responsibility needs to be based on realistic information, because
realistic solutions must be provided, realistic policies must be designed
and implemented. Theres no other useful way. Tears will be cried and rage
will be howled. But, from these broken mirrors of an articial reality, from
these labyrinths of information and words, a useful, practical work can be
organized. Not words. Just action.
Part 5. Enter the foreigner Welcome comrade, or
arrogant do-gooder?
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true
revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.
Ernesto Che Guevara
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A large number of foreign organizations and individuals develop

professional activities in Latin America. Generally speaking, the presence
of these groups in the countries of the continent can be considered as a
useful benet for both sides, considering the magnitude of the tasks
developed, the importance of the skills taught, the valuable information
transmitted, the know-how implemented in practical actions, and the
excellent outcomes obtained in a daily basis, at a regional level.
The international presence in Latin America includes Spanish governmental
organizations collaborating in the recovery of material cultural heritage,
French and Canadian professors providing educational instruments,
USA and German engineers facilitating information literacy and tools
for telecommunications, Australian and Asian technicians implementing
plans for sustainable management of natural resources, and a long list of
individuals and institutions investigating ways to apply their knowledge
in the improvement of life conditions for the huge Latin American human
mosaic.14
The dark side of the foreign presence is represented by the actions of
multinational companies and others, which exploit (or even loot) the
natural and human resources of the region in a totally irresponsible way
usually protected by national governments, which dont care very much
about environmental and social impacts as long as they get a share of the
prots.
A special situation more linked to the human arena than to the economic
one are the religious missions arriving from Europe and North America,
a phenomenon which has greatly increased in recent decades. Even if their
work cannot always be criticized (Franciscan and Anabaptist missions in
northern Argentina are doing a very good work in indigenous communities),
some of these religious volunteers have become instruments of blind
cultural change and massive conversion, collecting lambs for increasing
their ocks.
Between the two ends of this range the excellent works and the deplorable
actions are foreign professionals, students and workers who visit Latin
America to have contact with a different reality: to have an experience
in a developing country. They are usually motivated by a sincere wish
to help and collaborate. As individuals, or organized in groups or NGOs,
these professionals (among them, a good number of librarians) try to link
themselves to the host societies, to become a part of regional structures, to
recognize problems and to use their knowledge and resources to pursue, at
least, partial solutions. Sometimes the results of such activities are positive
and useful, and even successful, but in a high number of cases, their
interventions are self-defeating: the expected or desired outcomes are not
obtained, and the actions produce discomfort and even rage among the
nal recipients of their aid. Discomfort and rage arising from foreigners
unexamined, sometimes unconscious, sense of superiority, from their
mindlessness of the need to close one ear in order to listen.
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What follows is a short ensemble of general suggestions provided to orient

professionals who hope to work in Latin American societies, in a manner
respectful of the cultures within which the foreigner is a guest. These
suggestions are based on observations within large organizations, as well
as in the experiences and opinions of local people who have witnessed the
negative behavior of many foreign visitors. These suggestions are intended
to facilitate the contact with societies in the continent, in order to improve
relationships and to help in the implementation of programs rooted in a true
spirit of solidarity, social responsibility, and an open-minded framework.
1. Avoid comparisons. Social, economic and political differences between
Latin America and other regions of the world are evident, and might be
extreme in several aspects. It is highly recommended that the foreign visitor
accept, from the very beginning, that the continent is a new world, with new
rules and customs with which to become familiar, and features that should
be known, accepted and respected. Many visitors think nothing of making
and openly expressing comparisons between their own countries and the
place they are visiting: In my country we dont have this poverty... The
city where I live is cleaner and more modern than yours. In my library
we have high-speed Internet connection... How can you live without it?
Such comparisons usually put the local population in a negative light, and
are not only unhelpful, meaningless actually even if they are true but
they generate distances, divides and walls that undermine building the
solidarity necessary for cooperative projects. Such comparisons do not
bring about substantial change or advancement.
As comparative information of this sort is completely useless, its expression
should be avoided. Comparisons can be made and expressed in other,
respectful ways: How do you develop this service in the library, working
with low-speed Internet? In my country we work with X and Y... Maybe
with some of these tools and techniques used in my country we could
improve your work, if you consider it possible... This is a good example
of positive comparisons, where help is offered and valuable information
is provided, and a respectful non-condescending relationship between
professional colleagues is developed.
2. Accept the local culture. Latin American customs and regional cultural
traits are the fruit of centuries of evolution, adaptation, development and
community life. Its necessary to recognize and to know this culture, to
adapt and become a part of it, to explore it and to enjoy it. Even if a lot
of features look funny or ridiculous to visitors, they should be respected
like natural and proper facts. By understanding culture, problems can be
understood as well, from a broad and open-minded perspective. And, if
people visiting Latin America want to help they must make efforts to
become deeply familiar with the culture. Questions like Why do you eat
this? Why do you do that? You call this noise music? Why do
people have 5 children when they are 23? Dont you think that your
behavior is silly? are completely useless: they show a close-minded person
asking for answers that cannot be provided, because its very difcult to
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explain every aspect of ones own culture (and the visitor will not accept
the answer anyway). Facts that seem incredible or curious can be remarked
upon in a friendly manner, and theyll surely be explained and shared.
An important point is the knowledge of the local language (Spanish or
Portuguese, and even Guarani, Quechua, Aymara and other regional and
widely extended idioms). Maybe English or French (or even German)
seem international languages to their speakers. But this is an arrogant
point-of-view: after a couple of days walking the streets of the biggest
cities of Latin America, a visitor will understand that this rule doesnt
work in the continent. In difcult or isolated areas, just local dialects of
Spanish are spoken, or native languages. So, a good advice is to have a
good command on these idioms. Dont expect to have translators: visitors
daily life cannot depend on the help of a translating person. This can be of
help in working areas, but not in normal, common activities. Knowledge
of the language is indispensable in establishing relationships with people,
and in understanding the local culture, as such knowledge demonstrates
clearly the extent to which the intentions of visitors are to truly help.
A knowledge of and participation in the hosts culture allows a visitor
to create and reinforce links with the local population, enriching ones
perspectives, broadening and deepening ones life-style, and providing
valuable information about regional conditions, points-of-view, needs and
beliefs. Qualitative research techniques like participant observation, life
stories or action-research strongly encourage researchers to become
deeply linked with communities and people.
3. Visitors are not saviors. Even if some professionals working in Latin
America are providing essential education and information, useful for the
solution of urgent problems, they shouldnt act like saviors or heroes.
This, unfortunately, is a very common attitude in some foreigner visitors.
Often a person who, in their own community in their own country, couldnt
make any changes believes, merely because they are a developed person
in an undeveloped country, that they have greater inuence and more
important ideas than they actually do. Even if sometimes they might think
the contrary (either consciously or subconsciously), Latin American is not
a continent of savage, underdeveloped people: its just a land that lacks
widespread access to many technological and infrastructural advances or
has been neglected because of historic processes, corrupt governments,
mismanagement, or social problems. The old image of third world
countries should be erased from visitors minds, at least if they expect to
work in true solidarity and friendship with local collaborators.
4. Avoid hypocrisy. The same people who condemn Latin American sexual
behaviors as disordered habits are the ones who enjoy orgies with local
wo/men (Cuban, Brazilian, Colombian or Argentinean examples are
well-known). The same people who condemn drugs are the rst looking
for spirits and exotic herbs. The same people who speak against racism
and discrimination are the ones who dont want to travel in cheap buses
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because of the smell of the people. The same people who speak about
the value of culture are the same who leave a country without knowing
the name of its best writer, singer or artist. The same visitor who speak
about their perfect societies high wages, ordered structures, perfect lives,
technology, resources, high education, high-quality and high-level things
in a highly-developed country are the same who confess that they would
love to stay forever in Latin America (and sometimes do it). Its better to
keep an intelligent silence in order to avoid disgusting situations.
Most visitors who travel to Latin America hoping to engage in projects
that become expressions of their social responsibility nd thousands of
opportunities for working and helping. They learn to give the best of their
knowledge in a manner of human solidarity and respect, obtaining, in return,
a huge amount of information and experience from local professionals,
collaborators and the general population. As a result of this process, both
sides win. But a good number of foreign travelers seem to believe that,
because they come from wealthy and powerful nations, they are superiors.
This arrogant attitude is openly rejected by Latin Americans, and creates a
sad stereotype of the new conqueror.
Latin Americans are a friendly, warm, passionate people, who always
open the doors of their homes to strangers with a smile. Those who have
understood this fact have fallen in love with this marvelous land (as a
matter of fact, a lot of them remain in Latin American countries, getting
married and creating families there). Maybe the best way of understanding
a people is to fall in love with them. Even if it sounds funny, utopian or
romantic, from a love-perspective, a deeper understanding of persons and
situations can be gained, and a greater, more sincere, willingly helpful and
collaborative relationship can sometimes grow from love.
And, anyway...whats solidarity, but love?
Part 6. Social responsibility
One percent [of the country] want to change all this,
nine percent have the power.
Of the rest, the fty percent just eat,
and the rest just die without even knowing why.
Los Salieris de Charly Len Gieco
The actualization of social responsibility by librarians (in Latin America
as well as in the rest of the world) neither starts nor nishes with the
expression of magnicent opinions, in writing long papers (like this one),
or in attending international meetings and conferences on rights and duties
in the Knowledge Society. These activities are a good start and might
help, in the long run, to clarify ideas or arouse desires, but they are really
not more than an innite collection of words, sounding and sounding,
while across the planet, pain goes on.
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Social responsibility does not mean the investment of great amounts of

money and technology in countries that do not have much of either. This
sort of goodwill normally serves to clean the conscience (and the closets)
of the powerful, a convenient dispensation for feelings of guilt. Goodwill
and charity, in reality, often change the situations of recipients only slightly,
or not at all, or even negatively. It is like building a luxury skyscraper for
homeless people... on a swamp. The building is beautiful and expensive,
indeed, and the ones who funded it want to be photographed stretching
their hands in front of it, but... everybody knows the structures fate when
the pompous speeches, applauses, toasts and welcomes of inauguration are
nished.
From the point of view of any country but especially of Latin
American nations the assumption of social responsibilities implies selfdetermination, the taking of decisions into a nations own hands, without
waiting for foreign gurus who tell us what to do and how to act. For,
usually, these brilliant minds in spite of their good intentions know only
their own ideas of our reality, and base their plans and projects in some
theoretical knowledge learned in comfortable classrooms in comfortable
universities, far, far away from problems. And such theoretical knowledge
does not get along very well with reality.
Social responsibility starts by recognizing that our work starts at home.
Each professional has an ethical duty within society, wherever he or she
works, wherever they want to help. Foreign help, theories, long articles
and good ideas are useful for collaboration, but the real point of departure
must be the acknowledgement of one fundamental obligation of every
professional: namely to recognize and feel that each one of us must work
in our own community, our own region, country, and culture and with our
own people. And we must feel that change each little, tiny change is
possible, and that this possibility is in our hands.
From this point of departure, it is necessary to get immersed in the problems
of the people with whom and for whom we work, to know these people,
their needs, and their expectations and desires for the future. What are
their reasons and their possibilities, and which is the best way for them...
according to their own understanding? This work is not about becoming
heroes with great answers and salvations the missionary approach will be
refused or will fail. This is about forgetting catechisms and statistics, it is
about learning the human side of the story. This is about using methods like
participant observation, action-research, thick description and life stories,
and forgetting the number-crunching. This is about blending oneself with
the problem, feeling it on ones own skin, inside ones own bones. And
then, it is about giving solutions from a grassroots development perspective:
what do these people need? what do they want to do? what future do they
want to build? how can I help them to achieve it? What expertise do I have
that they can use in whatever fashion they think best?
And the solutions? They will never change the entire reality. They will
change little parts, pieces, fragments... And that will already be a miracle.
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It is useful to accept this idea from the beginning: great solutions do not
exist, they do not work... A historic reality cannot be modied in a few
months. Maybe not even in years. The problem is placed in the very origin
of the history of these peoples, in their foundations. And, unfortunately, it
is impossible to change foundations quickly without destroying the entire
building.
Solutions must be patient and constructive. The task of the professional
is to provide the community with the tools they need; it is about teaching
them how to use these tools (and here is the correct use) according to their
values, necessities, background and ideas; and it is about accompanying
the users of the tools provided on their path toward development, so the
given instruments will be able to work properly and reap benets. Then, it
is just about helping in a soft, friendly way. It can be a work of years, but
this is the only way of making it work, of changing something, of making
the real difference. Thousands of little experiences all over Latin America
conrm this idea.
And foreign help should also assume other forms: to support specic
projects, especially those of grassroots development; to send work groups
interested in getting involved in a personal way, in the eld with real
proposals; or to provide academic, technological or ideological solidarity to
help with popular initiatives. Funding is not always useful: money imitates
happiness very well... but it does not make it. In the long run, funds vanish
and the problem survives. Money is not a satisfactory solution. Donations
either: they look like charity (sometimes thats what they are) when they
are not realized in a denite way, to an specic situation. Even if sometimes
funding can work, external help must be respectful, realistic and a sign of
solidarity... or not exist.
Part 7. A kind of conclusion
Do not stay motionless in the border of the road.
Do not freeze gladness, do not love without passion.
Do not save yourself now; never save yourself.
Do not ll yourself with quietness.
Do not reserve a quiet corner of the world for you.
Do not close your eyes, heavy as judgments.
Entre estatuas Mario Benedetti
Every word said about the social responsibility of librarians (or any other
professional) are beautiful, but if they are not based in a sound knowledge
on situation at hand, and linked with practice, they are totally meaningless
and, therefore, useless beyond their emotive or spiritual intention.
Progressive and leftwing ideas have good objectives, but they are better
fullled with facts instead of words, and especially, with a true open mind,
which can go further than simple talk, and get involved in the real action.
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There is a lot to do, and it is not so difcult. Just lets do it. The proposal is
hard and complicated: well probably be involved in painful and unpleasant
social situations; well witness sadness and problems; maybe well travel
miles and miles with no other help but our own free will; we will have to
change our beliefs, ideas and mental, ethical and social structures; and
well have to learn again, completely, our profession, all the theories,
methods and tools learnt in classes.
All this, for a change that perhaps will never arrive, for a result that maybe
well never live to see. But well be improving our lives, our knowledge...
Well be growing as professionals and human beings... Well be learning
new things all the time... Well be becoming new persons, good teachers,
wise researchers... Well witness how our hands become really useful.
Well discover that our words can become hammers for smashing walls and
for lling divides... Well discover that our acts can clean waters dirtied by
history...Well understand that the real weapons in this battle are ideas
and knowledge, and that they can shake our reality harder than bombs...
And well learn that the intelligent people are not those who keep a lot of
information in their brain, but those who use this information in order to
achieve the welfare of their society.
And, at least, well be supporting a people who has been struggling for
a long time, who never forgets, who needs hands for raising again and
for recognizing itself free and independent for once in its history of
all the hands that have oppressed it for centuries. A people who dreamt
and spilled its blood for this ever-delayed freedom. A people that still
remembers these heroes who moved it with their ideals and their acts. A
hectic and passionated people, who desires progress but who seldom nds
the way or the doors opened. A people with projects that, like every human
group, also fails and falls... A people who is a prisoner of its own history
and its own reality, owner of a rich culture, of an ancestral heritage and
of a lot of resources, those resources which have fed and are feeding the
development of other countries.
It is worth the pain to try it. It is just necessary to give the rst step and to
stretch out the hand: a whole, huge continent needs it and waits for it.
ENDNOTES
1. My hand, your hand, his / her hand... our hands?
2. A CV of Edgardo Civallero can be found in www.thelogofalibrarian.blogspot.com.
3. Tupaq Amaru. Born Jos Gabriel Condorcanqui in 1740. He led one of the strongest
and most famous insurrections of Andean indigenous peoples (1780-1) against the Spanish
colonial power settled in the city of Cuzco (current Peru). He used the name of the last Inca
emperor (Tupaq Amaru, meaning royal serpent). He was nally captured by Spaniards in
1783, and, after witnessing the torture and execution of his whole family in the Plaza de
Armas (Central Square) of Cuzco, he was tortured himself by the traditional Spanish way

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of tying the arms and legs to four horses to be torn apart. He resisted it, and was decapitated,
and his head and limbs were sent to the four corners of the old Inca Empire, as a warning
for future rebels. His name was used in the 70s by the famous Uruguayan rebel movement
Tupamaros.
4. The complete translated text of the song is the following:
My feathered brothers saw them arriving from the sea.
They were the bearded Gods announced by prophecies.
The voice of the monarch was heard, saying that Gods had arrived,
and we opened all our doors, with fear to ignored things.
They came riding beasts, like demons of the Evil.
They came with re in their hands, and covered by shields of metal.
Just the courage of a few ones opposed resistance,
And we, we saw the blood being spilled, we felt shame [of our Gods].
But Gods dont eat, and they dont enjoy stolen goods,
and when we realized this [that they werent Gods], everything was already nished.
And, with this mistake, we gave the greatness of our past.
And, with this mistake, we were kept as slaves for 300 years.
We kept the curse of giving to foreigners
our faith, our culture, our bread and our money.
And we still go on, changing our gold for their glass beads
and all our treasures for their mirrors with bright.
Today, in XXth century, we go on receiving blonde people,
opening our doors and calling them friends.
But when an indian arrives, tired of walking the mountains,
we humiliate him, and we treat him like a stranger in his own homeland.
You hypocrite, showing your humble face to the foreigner...
Why do you become arrogant with your own brothers?
Malinches curse, disease of the present times...
When you will leave my land? When you will free my people?
5. This is recognized in the Peruvian notion of compenetrado, the mutual penetration of
indigenous Andean religious ritual and belief with those of Catholicism.
6. Good examples are the Quechua rebellion of Tupaq Amaru, quoted before; the Aymara
rebellion of Toms Apasa (called Tupaq Khatari, the royal rebel, in Quechua), in 1780,
who almost seized the old city of La Paz, in Bolivia, and followed the same destiny of Tupaq
Amaru; the rebellion of Guarani peoples in Paraguay, against the slavist Portuguese and
Spanish forces, after 1787 (when Jesuits were expelled from America); the great Calchaqu
rebellion, which harassed for years (1561-3, 1630-1637, 1655-1667) the Spanish cities of
northwestern Argentina and had a terrible bloody end; or the long rebellion of the Araucanians
in Chile, who were never totally defeated.
7. The Disputa de Valladolid (Valladolid Debate, 1450-1) was a famous public discussion
between Bartolom de las Casas and Juan Gins de Seplveda (and their followers). Las
Casas, a famous defender of American native peoples, claimed that indigenous inhabitants
were human beings with human souls and human rights; Seplveda -following a religious
belief based in Aristotles ideas claimed that they were savages without soul that could be
used as animals and made slaves, and that war (and slavery) against them was fair. Nobody
won the discussion, but the outcome of this interesting Debate were the Leyes Nuevas
(New Laws), Spanish laws which gave the American aboriginal nations the same rights
of Spanish citizens, avoiding, by this way, suffering and excesses from conquerors and
colonists. Even if they werent respected (colonists felt them unfair), the Debate gave birth
to the analysis and creation of the Derecho de Gentes (Peoples Rights, an old term for
Human Rights) and was the basis of later struggles for human rights.
8. The rst American press started working in Mexico, probably in 1532; the oldest book
conserved from this print is a catechism in Nahuatl language (1539) as well as grammars of
several Mexican languages. In 1541 it printed the rst non-religious pamphlet, a description
of the earthquake of Guatemala, which happened the same year. In South America, the press

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started working in Lima (Per) in 1584, with a catechism in Quechua and Aymara languages,
as well as dictionaries and vocabularies (Artes) of these Andean idioms. In 1705 started
working the rst Jesuit press, in the middle of the rain forests, in Paraguay, printing catechisms
in Guarani, as well as grammars of all the local languages. Even if some works were produced
about non-religious subjects, the presses were controlled by religious authorities. The rst
religiously-independent books started appearing after the independence of the colonial
territories, in 1810-1820.
9. The books written by French and English philosophers and thinkers, after the French
Revolution, with their ideas about freedom and liberalism, were the basis for revolutionary
independence movements in Latin America. In some Spanish territories, these books were
forbidden, and, anyway, obtaining them was a very difcult process.
10. Argentina was independent in 1810; Paraguay, in 1811; Per and Mexico, in 1821;
Bolivia, in 1825; Uruguay, in 1828; Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela in 1830. Hait was
the rst independent nation in the region (1804), and Cuba, the last one (1898).
11. Mexican revolution in 1910 (Zapata, Morelos, Carranza); Pancho Villas movement in
Mexico in 1914; Guatemalan revolution in 1944-54; Nicaraguan problems during 1981-87;
Cuba revolution, 1959-60; Problems in El Salvador, Panam and Venezuela; Guerrilla in
Colombia; Peruvian guerrillas in 1980 (Sendero Luminoso); Dictatorship of Pinochet in
Chile, 1973-88; Argentinean dictatorship, 1976-83; Uruguayan dictatorship, 1973-1985;
Dictatorship of Stroessner in Paraguay, 1954-89.
12. Some great examples are the Colombian (http://www.senderos.gov.co/) and Mexican
systems of Public Libraries, the Chilean DIBAM (http://www.dibam.cl/) (whose program
of mobile libraries is one of the best in the whole continent), the rural libraries in Per and
Bolivia, and the indigenous libraries in Brazil... as well as all the university libraries and the
highly-specialized research-centers.
13. http://argentina.indymedia.org/features/pueblos/
14. For example, the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation (http://www.aeci.es/
02exterior/americaS.asp).
15. The end of Benedettis poem says:
But if you can avoid it, and you do it...
Then, dont stay by my side.
Authors Note: Written with thanks to my editor and friend, Elaine Harger.

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