Photo: Naomi Safran-Hon

Alone With Five Others: Dispatches from a Changing World

2006 Ethics Center Student Fellows The International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life Brandeis University Alone With Five Others: Dispatches from a Changing World 2006 Ethics Center Student Fellows The International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life Brandeis University

Table of Contents

Introduction 3 Daniel Terris

School of Playback Theatre, New Paltz, New York, and Contact Inc., Brisbane, Australia 4 Perform for a Change William Chalmus ‘07

Red de Comunicadores Boca de Polen, Chiapas, Mexico 12 Autonomy, Representation and Lekil Kuxlejal in Highland Chiapas Daniel Duffy ‘07

Kokkalis Foundation, Athens and Olympia, Greece 30 The Politics of History Education in the Balkans: The Young Generation as Transmitter of Reconciliation Kosmas Kaprinis ‘07

Access to Information Programme Foundation, Sofia, Bulgaria 38 The End of Transition? Information and Democracy on the Brink of Bulgaria’s Accession to the European Union Josh Rosenthal ‘07

Art Therapy Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa 50 The Art Therapy Centre: A Portrait Naomi Safran-Hon ‘08

West African Research Center, Dakar, Senegal 62 Finding What’s “Right”: Understanding Women’s Rights in Senegal through Multiple Identities Dana Sawitz ‘08 Introduction

hen Josh Rosenthal proposed the title “Alone With Five Others” for this volume, it Daniel Terris resonated immediately with the other Ethics Center Student Fellows. The phrase Director, International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life W somehow captured a feeling familiar to all of them – a sense of isolation, being far away from friends and family, moderated by a sense of mutual support and common purpose among the six members of the group. Letters, journal entries, snippets of interviews and ideas – dozens of emails traveling thousands of miles transformed six individual experiences into a small but vital global community.

As much as their common experience and their previous experience in working varied widely. Naomi Safran-Hon and Will meant to the Fellows, I believe that the title for social change. As part of the application Chalmus are deeply committed artists, most resonated for another reason as well: it process, students identify and line up field comfortable in forms of creative expression. speaks to something about the contemporary placements for a summer experience supported Kosmas Kaprinis and Josh Rosenthal human condition. As these intrepid Brandeis by the Center. brought to their work finely-honed political undergraduates got to know men and women sensibilities. Daniel Duffy and Dana Sawitz, on four continents, they discovered and wrote The fellowship consists of three parts. First, steeped in the study of anthropology, are about the ways in which so many people students choose a course in their spring term attuned to the nuances of human society and are simultaneously intensely connected and that will prepare them intellectually for the the delicate position of outsiders. This variety intensely isolated. Josh Rosenthal encountered work that they will be doing in the summer of perspectives and skills fueled a set of democracy activists in Bulgaria who were field project; they also participate in a series animated discussions about such issues as the finding common cause with others around of meetings and retreats designed to prepare ownership of words and images, the costs of Europe and around the world, but who still them for the challenges of living in unfamiliar democracy and the complexities of the study struggled with the depersonalizing nature of and sometimes difficult environments. In the of history. their country’s past. Dana Sawitz met women in summer, students work for eight to ten weeks Senegal who were part of an active, successful in a non-governmental organization (NGO), The narratives in this volume oscillate between human rights community, yet who were often where they have the opportunity to learn “in big ideas and detailed descriptions of small cut off from other women in their home country. the field” about how practitioners address moments in the lives of the students and of Will Chalmus learned about the ways that the issues of coexistence, development, democracy, the people whom they came to know over art of performance can create a powerful spirit education and other approaches to social the course of the summer. They represent of harmony, but he also discovered that this change. Finally, in the fall term, students return simultaneous commitments to the tools of “love bubble” cannot protect the individual to campus and enroll in a writing workshop scholarship, learning through experience and a performer from darkness and solitude. where they have the opportunity to integrate passion for social justice. their academic and practical learning. The narratives in this volume are the work of Special thanks, as always, to Marci McPhee, six Brandeis University undergraduates, the Students produced these writings during associate director of the Center, who organizes 2006 Ethics Center Student Fellows. Over this fall course, which I led, sharing their the fellowship process and provides vital the past nine years, more than 50 Brandeis work with one another and exploring in our support for the students before, during and students have served as fellows of the weekly meetings issues and problems of after their field experience. It is Marci, as International Center for Ethics, Justice and common concern. The students were far-flung much as anyone, who constructs the frame Public Life. They are chosen during the fall of geographically, with placements in Greece, that allows a select group of Brandeis their sophomore or junior years in a competitive South Africa, Australia, Bulgaria, Mexico undergraduates to experience the special process based on their academic achievement and Senegal. Their areas of interest also intensity of being “alone with others.”

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life |  Perform for a Change

William Chalmus ‘07

ow can performance art be used as a means of educating societies about culture, communities and conflict in a way that leads to long-lasting positive change within H the communities in question? This has been a serious inquiry for me as a theater practitioner, hip-hop artist and playwright raised in some of the most under-resourced and compromised communities in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. I recently, as one of six Brandeis Ethics Center Student Fellows, had the chance to search for an answer to the question of how performance could be used to create a more positive community.

In the piece that follows I will explore the to Lederach, the moral imagination is “the able to generate a more pleasant future for positive and negative issues that arise when capacity to imagine something rooted in the all members of society motivated by their you combine the theories raised in John challenges of the real world yet capable of transcendent revelations. Lederach points Lederach’s book The Moral Imagination with giving birth to that which does not yet exist.”1 out four mandates for the moral imagination: my practical experiences during the summer Morality provides a checks and balances the centrality of relationships, the practice of of 2006 at the International School of Playback system with imagination, where the morals paradoxical curiosity, providing space for the in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the youth art keep the imagination locked in reality while the creative act and willingness to risk. program Contact Inc. in Brisbane, Australia. imagination leaves room for the individual to For five weeks, I worked as an intern at the realize that his or her reality is not locked into a The concept of the “Moral Imagination” plays School of Playback, helping organize the office single pattern. The term “imagination” is used heavily in reference to my summer internship and integrating the international students to in order to “emphasize the necessity of the experiences. Both organizations where I their new surroundings. I also participated as creative act.”2 Fulfilling the need for a creative worked as a summer intern have performance a student in three of the Playback courses. I act is more important than simply doing the as an end product, whether in live or recorded then traveled to Brisbane where I interned at creative act itself. The creative act stimulates media. By making the art a performance for Contact Inc. for three-and-a-half weeks in the the imagination to envision everyday life in an audience, members of society who witness month of August. My duties at Contact Inc. a new way. This new perception of everyday the act are drawn into the creative act often were to lead and help with the community life provides logic-driven opportunities for a without knowing the “moral” themes they are workshops for various projects in addition to reasoned exploration of which daily habits are expected to connect with. This latter statement witnessing the processes used by Contact Inc. beneficial and which are harmful. Lederach will become more translucent as we move employees in order to achieve their mission further develops his definition of the moral deeper into what the organizations aim for statement goals. The organizations will be imagination by comparing multiple authors’ and the ways in which they attempt to achieve discussed in further detail later. meaning of the same subject. He states that their aims. the moral imagination “develops a capacity to perceive things beyond and at a deeper level Performance is a form that requires the Moral Imagination than what initially meets the eye.”3 Lederach audience to transcend, or, in theater terms, The first thing to clarify is who John Lederach believes that the moral imagination comes “suspend their disbelief” in order to empathize is, and what is the “moral imagination.” with a quality of transcendence – the ability with the production and connect to its John Lederach is a distinguished professor to surpass the ordinary range of perception. themes. Most performance productions deal of international peacebuilding. According With this ability to transcend, people are with more than the aesthetic enjoyment that

 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 they are portraying: i.e. a love song is about Contact Inc. performance community may be diverse in more than the melody, a Shakespeare play Contact Inc. started in 1989 as a youth theater age, race, ethnicity or even experience, but is about more than peeking into the lives of company that encouraged primarily Aboriginal it is connected strangers, a choreographed dance is usually Australian and Torres Strait Islander youths by the goals of “Performance is a form praised when a story is clearly expressed via toward success in the theater. A year later the the production. the visual movements, etc. The aesthetics The performing organization adopted the Third Place Policy, that requires the audience are useful in shaping a future that transcends which strives to create “a safe space where arts create a but it is only a small part of those processes. cultures can safely and meaningfully meet.” community among So the question of how to use the aesthetics This idea of connecting cultures led Contact the participants to transcend, or, in of performance in order to lead society to a Inc. to shift its mission to one concerning regardless of positive transformation presents itself. Here are community development and the youth arts. the specific theater terms, “suspend two potential answers. Contact Inc. has currently developed into a communities that leader in regards to helping disadvantaged the participants are their disbelief” in order youths find meaningful, cross-cultural coming from. This Playback Theatre connections while stimulating the arts in the new community, Thirty-one years ago, Jonathan Fox planted participants and their communities. There is consisting of the to empathize with the a seed in the theater realm called Playback always a vast amount of work to be done at members of the Theatre. The purpose at the time was for the Contact office, which offers a variety of production, creates production and connect to members of a community to act out the real programs for youth, consisting of different the platform stories of others of that same community with community-building processes and artistic needed in order its themes.” a goal to build dialogue and empathy, which outcomes. The artistic outcomes range from to invoke social in turn will create an improved and better- music videos, DVD documentaries, live change, first among connected community. The stories are to be theatrical performances, songs recorded on CD, the production told by the audience members on the spot, and graffiti images. participants during the pre-performance with the actors having no foreknowledge of the phase, and then is passed on to the audience story before they are required to enact what What makes a community? There are witnessing the production. The production the “teller” voluntarily shares with everyone. many specifics that aid labeling individual process stimulates the participants to work Since 1975, the Playback seed has blossomed communities. The nature of a performance together and deal with the drama that into a form of theater practiced in over 50 production blurs the lines that segregate surrounds community teamwork. The outcome countries. Jonathan now runs the School of communities and allow the space for social of this teamwork, the production, serves as a Playback in Poughkeepsie, New York, that change. The School of Playback serves as a clear indication to the audience of the creative trains international students who desire to center, combining Playbackers from all over ways in which we as a community can all use Playback forms in their communities. The the world as one community. The programs come together and find a transcendent reality. school is working on executing plans to expand at Contact Inc. identify ethnic communities There is good that arises with the bad in this to a position in the political world related to separately for some projects and fuse the process, which shows that careful calibration of reconciliation and positive connections with the communities together for others. Collectively the aesthetics of the performing art is needed other, while simultaneously offering a variety of a production’s staff, cast and crew make up in order for peacebuilding and community workshops in a globally diverse way. a separate community within society. This development to be successful.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life |  The Centrality of Relationships great humbleness. The picnic table outside of but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the John Lederach believes that an intense web the Playback students’ summer lodging often post-Playback setting is not a good space for of relationships that is inclusive of enemies provided space for international potluck dinners developing the intense web of relationships as well as loved ones is a requisite part of and meaningful political, personal and social Lederach is referring to. It is important to peace building. He argues that the centrality of status conversation. The intense relationships remember that Playback was intended for relationships must have elements of “humility that formed in numerous settings over the members of a community to perform for and self-recognition”4 in order to be effective. summer created empathy and a desire to members of that same community; therefore Since successful reconciliation is based upon learn the stories of others. These relationships my experience is as a visitor and not entirely continuing platforms consisting of opposing were the seeds of an ongoing platform of genuine to the Playback form. I may have parties in conflict, the initial establishment conversation and empathy. But realistically, encountered this teenage girl again if we of the relationship is of great importance. If how many of these relationships last? lived in the same community, yet since all the initial development of the relationship is my Playback production experience is as a skewed, then the conflict is prone to show itself It is very difficult to maintain the 80 visiting audience member, I am not able to again over time. “Taking personal responsibility international relationships stemming from the say whether the relationships made have the and acknowledging relational mutuality”5 is Playback workshop setting. I have contacted potential of becoming deeply rooted and long equally important. Each person has a part about 20 of my Playback peers since my arrival lasting. I can say, however, that the workshop to play in the continuance and resolution of back in the United States at the end of August. space set the platform for deep, interpersonal conflict, no matter which side the individual These e-mails and phone calls help continue connections with greater ease than the one- in the conflict identifies with. Once people are the relationship that developed over the time performance. I will discuss the appropriate open to this idea and each other they can take summer, yet the continuance of the relationship parameters of a safe space in a section that the necessary steps to find a solution for their lacks the depth of the relationship upon its follows shortly. conflict. birth. Attempting to stay in touch with my new Australian contacts does not allow me the Contact Inc. also links a variety of ethnicities in At the School of Playback, centrality of time to engage in dialogue with the remaining their projects. I left Brisbane at the beginning relationships is a fact of everyday life. This members of my Playback classes as of now, of the production process called The Hope past summer there were over 80 student although my heart desires it. This lapse in the Tour. This production included members of participants registered to the School of connection is less vital in the workshop setting over 15 ethnicities and dealt with combining Playback, representing 17 countries. Self- than in a one-time production of a Playback. In their hopes for a hip-hop theater performance. recognition naturally followed the frequent the workshop setting of the school the students This project helps diversify the intense web conversations about differences in cultures. It are expected to build positive relationships of relationships. As an intern at Contact Inc. I was important for in addition to learning the core materials; was able to benefit from the past networking we live together, eat together and work on of the organization with other youth arts “Although I was unsure me to hear how my international bettering our Playback skills collectively. In a organization in the sector. The day after my peers considered one-time production, the length of time that arrival at Brisbane International Airport I if the minority groups of Americans as a the production’s participants (including the found myself in a Youth Arts Queensland result of the media audience) have is significantly shorter. (YAQ) meeting. YAQ links all of the youth arts Brisbane would have the they witness at organizations in Queensland, ensuring they are home, and how Playback productions have slightly different collectively making the greatest positive imprint same access to these their perspectives set of determinates for success. One of the on the state’s youth. Being a witness to these changed over the things to look for at the end of a successful organizations and their mission statements course of time they Playback production is a lingering audience that allowed me to show the student participants resources as I did, it was spent studying in takes the time to meet and greet each other of the workshops I led the resources available Poughkeepsie, New before returning to their “normal” lives. I can to them with hopes that they would continue imperative for me to, at York. Listening clearly remember chatting after a Playback making use of these resources after I left. to people voice show with a young girl who shared a story I borrowed a laptop with audio recording the very least, show them their perceptions of a rough childhood. I personally identified software for a week, a performance opportunity of me, or rather with her story of struggling to be functional for my workshop participants in a cultural talent in a dysfunctional family and sought her out. showcase, and workshop space from various where these resources lie.” how I was being represented, took Since that conversation I have not seen her, organizations. It’s safe to say that without the

 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 help from various Australian organizations, and live with a high degree of ambiguity.”8 The about their lives “To them their salvation including Visible Ink, Speak Out, B.E.M.A.C., ambiguity serves as a tool to turn uncertainty before they arrived Harmony Place and Transit Lounge, much of the and doubt to a positive pessimistic reality in Australia for impact I made in Australia would not have been check, and not as a memory lapse of the issues their music, and lies in the money that possible. that led to the ambiguous state. a few seemed to respond well to could be generated by the I was overly conscious of the accessibility I had Since most experiences are relative to the that method of as an African-American male in Brisbane. In person and the position they are in at the working. I wanted “gangsta” rap mainstream America I do not have access to many of the time, it is important not to pass personal them to feel that resources I received for free in Australia. My judgment on another based on one person’s their narrative scene; with the money ethnicity, mission and hip-hop credentials made belief system. Instead, one must empathize was neither good me a hot commodity in Brisbane, and people’s with and understand another’s belief system in nor bad, but valid natural response was to offer help if they could. order to be equipped with the tools necessary enough to be earned from the music they Although I was unsure if the minority groups of to find a peaceful system for compromise. shared and heard. Brisbane would have the same access to these This is an important issue with regard to the Once their usual would be able to provide a resources as I did, it was imperative for me African refugees I worked with in Australia. belief of what to, at the very least, show them where these I ran a series of workshops with a teenage makes good music happy life for themselves resources lie. This is important to mention; group of African rappers. In one of the is challenged, the different people receive resources with varying workshops, questions arose in regards to music can be an difficulties. This gap is what I am attempting making mainstream music versus personal agent to evoke and their families, to bridge through performance, yet the nature music. The workshop participants generally an audience’s of auditioning for performances is often agreed that they preferred to make mainstream paradoxical something unimaginable to critically selective in terms of what is good art music for financial reasons. This was a huge curiosity as well. or bad. The notions of good and bad must be blow to my workshop aims. I went to Australia them back in Africa. “ set aside, with the focus being placed upon to teach the youth how positive hip-hop lyrics Playback also the collaborative usage of the most influential could be as entertaining as mainstream rap uses notions sources available. without filling, surrounding and exemplifying of paradoxical curiosity in performance. As their community with negativity. I did, however, a Playback actor you cannot let your bias The Practice of Paradoxical Curiosity understand where they were coming from. influence the teller’s truth mentioned in their The superficial nature of dualistic polarities, These kids witnessed and survived ordeals stories, as it will hinder the ability to empathize such as good vs. bad, hinders the moral that jeopardized their lives in Sierra Leone, in the audience, and production members. imagination. The view of representing a side Liberia, Sudan and other African countries. I encountered this problem in a class titled in a conflict, or a section of society, slows the To them their salvation lies in the money that “Playback Experience.” I was asked to play process of finding a solution for the conflict or could be generated by the “gangsta” rap the role of a father who had passed away as a a better society as a whole. Lederach breaks mainstream scene; with the money earned result of a heart attack. The teller’s story ended paradoxical curiosity down to the Greek and from the music they would be able to provide with the new widow finding a gift that the Latin roots: para doxa, “contrary to common a happy life for themselves and their families, husband intended to give her in the husband’s belief,” and cura, “literally meaning to something unimaginable to them back in Africa. clothing six months later. In my portrayal of the care…as in spiritual and physical healing,”6 The problem is they are not necessarily being father, I grabbed my heart, screamed, and lay In this neutral state free of societal norms, the honest in the lyrics that they create. This is a on the boxes placed in the back of the acting individual frees his or her emotional capacity problem because hip-hop culture is spread all space. I was covered with a black cloth by for empathy with the other. This curiosity across the world. If a false, violent imagery another actor and remained that way for the invites complex stories, refuses dualistic is distributed to the media, then the viewers rest of the enactment of the story. While under categories of truth, and inquires about what believe it as true and make judgments based the black cloth my thoughts wandered to my holds “contradictory social energies” together.7 on the messages in the music. By opening up grandfather who died in a similar way. From There needs to be an understanding that the room within oneself in order to hear a story that point on I was immobilized by images of situation is larger than what initially meets the objectively, empathy is obtainable – even in my grandfather and mourning. I was no longer eye, and that the only way the issue can be cases when the story is unknowingly false. I present in the story with the other Playback resolved is if all parties “suspend judgment… suggested to them that they use the stories actors, which was immediately apparent to me

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life |  once I finally pulled the cloth from my head space for the creative act is so important. Love Bubble and saw the faces of the teller and audience. The space should create the belief that “the Chorus: The acting team was accurately criticized creative act and response are permanently This is a love bubble for portraying the story too morbidly; the within reach and, most importantly are always Meaning double the trouble essence of the story was the mother’s and accessible, even in settings where violence And I’m skeptic ‘cause my life is so hectic father’s connection in spite of his death, not dominates.”10 The creative act empowers It could feel good to leave the hood his death itself. Since my acting didn’t allow people to challenge their beliefs about what And get the love I should have got… the teller to see the true situation they were is real and tangible against their beliefs about Or maybe not // What you mean? in, the cathartic release that tends to happen what seems impossible. The space suggests never did. We repeated the story, with slight that a resolution to the issues at hand is This is a love bubble Meaning double the trouble changes, until the teller was happy with her outside the scope of the troubled reality that And I’m skeptic ‘cause my life is so hectic story told and witnessed. In this situation, created the issue, and it gives the individual a It should feel good, leaving the mud my paradoxical curiosity required me to safe space to ponder his or her transcendent And getting the love I never got… “numb” my personal perspective in order to future reality. The reality pondered is personal Or maybe not // What you mean? do justice to the teller’s story. I portrayed as well as the reality of society. “People who what my grandfather’s heart attack meant display a deep quality of moral imagination Verse 1: to me instead of what the father’s heart in…settings of violence demonstrate a I mean the school of playback to me is like a attack meant to the teller. By including my capacity to live in a personal and social dream personal emotional baggage to the teller’s space that gives birth to the unexpected.”11 An average of 4 actors acting out a scene story I unfairly tainted the way in which the The audience of a performance has a group Instruments with a musician to make them sing teller perceived his or her own story; I saw reaction particular to the audience of that A conductor connecting and protecting all the heart attack as entirely awful and the production and personal reactions particular to things essence of the teller’s story, while the teller the individual witnessing it. As a result, each International peers here for similar things found beauty in the events that followed night has an unexpected outcome. How for five weeks my lips to cheeks beamed the heart attack. Once we re-did the story Although I’ve never been part of a playback appropriately, everyone in the room better A large portion of the success of Playback team empathized with the teller, which is the goal. comes from its theatrical spectacle. The But my past life and this life is kind of hard to As an actor I needed my paradoxical curiosity spectacle begins with the ritualistic set-up bridge to steer me away from what I consider the of the minimal Playback set. The placement This bubble of love I’m in is such a switch accurate emotional response for the ordeal of chairs, musical instruments, and colored And so rich. How can these opportunities mix? that happened. It is the job of the performers cloths all play a part in defining the space as This love bubble is such a big privilege and production staff to create the environment safe for the stories and holding the audience But too much of any privilege is bullshit so, that is accepting to all individual perspectives to the safe space standard. The cathartic Were my reality go? Is it far or near? of every story; if this does not happen and the feeling of seeing yourself in a situation Here or there? Is it close or on another coast? perspectives allowed in the physical space outside of the situation is established by the Is what I feel real? Or the fact that are limited, then the transcendence will also creative act of Playback. Yet the teller will Lovingness is one way playback heals and gives be limited, which is detrimental to peaceful not tell his or her story if the physical space back? Is it safe to say that we come from all across resolution planning. does not allow a search for emotional and the map educational space. At the end of my second To Vassar to study at a place where the bubble Playback class, “The Knowing Listener,” I stays safe and intact? Provide Space for the Creative Act made a brief statement that demonstrated this Isn’t that a trap if in fact our study bubble is phenomenon of the unheard stories because “The Moral Imagination,” according to sealed? of a lack of comfort. I was asked to put this Lederach, “finds its clearest expression in the I’m head over heels with these questions, and 9 idea into the song that follows. It is a critique appearance of the creative act.” The creative no answers of the tight connections made at the School of act sparks something new that is transcendent Despite really good lessons, which I consider a Playback and questions whether it is a good while deriving from something grounded in blessing. reality. Most often people are not able to or bad thing. I’ll stop stressing and share what I know transcend reality, which is why providing When it comes to Playback, there’s much I don’t know

 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Chorus The love bubble theory developed during the held together strongly in the workshops. This last day of the “Knowing Listener.” I left class allows the participants to be more diverse, Verse 2: with a few other students on my lunch break which leads to more transcendent visions. I got a pair over here. Yeah, I got a pair and went to a little eatery called Baby Cakes, Having to collaborate on a project with members And I’ma share this pair real simple slightly off campus. I had to pee really badly, of another culture will open the imagination to Playback is so gentle / hip-hop hooray yet Baby Cakes had no public restroom. I didn’t the benefits of foreign concepts with the use of Playback is too gentle / take it away want to leave the company of my classmates; paradoxical curiosity. But sometimes finding the Criticism and praise at the way I was enjoying the time we were spending space comes with its difficulties. Some stories never find their way together and knew from the experience of While others shock and amaze my previous class our time together wouldn’t Just outside of Brisbane City one can find Once they’re put on display last. After we ate I felt like my bladder would Milpera State High School. This school is In the essential way explode. I went to neighboring stores and for migrant, refugee and immigrant students Cleverly capturing everything the tellers say restaurants and ran into the same problem: between the ages of 12 and 18 who wish to But the love bubble can’t be all wrong “no public bathrooms.” Panicked, I chose the have enough proficiency in the English language Only when we overplay the good and don’t abandoned alley method. I walked deeper and to become successful in other high schools show the wrong deeper down this alley until I met a wall…a and in the community in which they live. I left As if participants are weak and not strong wall on which the words “Die Nigger” were Contact Inc. at And the story shown is too sweet. But who are we spray-painted. I decided this was the perfect the beginning of To make the judgment call to paint over the wall “I walked deeper and When the graffiti we see will make you pause place to pee. Seeing the wall snapped me out their collaboration And drop your jaw and not in awe. of the “love bubble” that I had been in since with Milpera deeper down this alley A better plan is to work harder beforehand I stared my Playback classes. It reminded me State students that everyone in the world didn’t have the same on a Third Place And start to expand, and understand until I met a wall…a wall Who’s reaching out for our helping hand, agenda of coexistence. It is really fortunate for hip-hop theater And who doesn’t give a damn. And why is it a love bubble to develop in the workshops, yet project called The during that heightened theatrical state, that if the bubble is too lovey-dovey then there is Hope Tour. Half of on which the words ‘Die we’re known to make no space left for the most tragic and complex the participants of They too don’t feel the foreground of something stories. I remember a number of stories that I the project were Nigger’ were spray-painted. great? wished to tell but did not feel the essence of from Milpera State They may feel the fear of telling too much the story could be dealt with in an accurate and the other half But in our workshop setting we don’t feel like way, not out of others’ spite but out of their were students I decided this was the such, cause need to maintain the bubble of love; I didn’t coming from want my story to be the one to end the love. On various schools perfect place to pee. “ Chorus the flipside, there were many stories that I did or from their tell because of the loving way they would be post-school lives. Verse 3: interpreted and enacted by the members of the One of the concerns mentioned when taking The bubble builds up trust within us love bubble. There is an in-between point that the Milpera children out of school to rehearse Trust brings honesty between you and me is the creative space Lederach would strive for. hip-hop theater dealt with what their culture Working through honesty honestly breaks the considers academic space. In many cultures bubble At Contact Inc. the workshops require the the performing arts are not valued as a means Being less bubbly means less connection participants to do activities expressing of education in the same way that a math or troubles themselves in artistic ways that they normally science class is. I have no knowledge of any And once we’re all aware of our love and our would not. Creating a space where the the Milpera students unable to participate in pain participants feel safe to share and explore the project, but I also didn’t stick around for the It’s clear we’re all connected but none of us are themselves though engaging in the creative act duration of the process. I wish to emphasize the same is just as important. Contact Inc. understood the amount of risk it takes to go against what is In this love bubble. the importance when it developed the Third normally academically acceptable in a particular But I’m going back to my block when the Place Policy. Since the policy defines the space community. The decision has to be made though classes stop as a safe environment where cultures can use of paradoxical curiosity in a headspace that To wait and watch for the bubble to POP! meaningfully meet, the safe space structure is transcends what is acceptable and what is not.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life |  The Willingness to Risk perceiving things. A successful production is Conclusion Lederach’s final discipline deals with the one in which the nature of the risks taken in So what does all this mean? It means that ability to risk – “to step into the unknown the production keeps the audience members performance can be used as a tool to educate without any guarantee of success or even guessing about their normal way of perceiving. and build communities, but the process has safety.”12 Out of this ability comes a method This shift in perception can also be influenced to include the centrality of relationships, the for crafting a better life. “The journey toward by the aesthetics of the performing arts. practice of paradoxical curiosity, space for the change…requires more than a strategy of good Improvisation as a form is usually a comedic creative act and the willingness to risk. An easy ideas or techniques. Fundamentally it requires source of entertainment. The in-depth, serious mistake is to believe that the performances a willingness to risk and great vulnerability.”13 nature of Playback improvisation already are the hardest part of the work. In my opinion, The vulnerability is the key that opens the door shifts people’s ordinary perception of what the the hardest part of the work is connecting the of reconciliation. improvisational form should consist of. The content of the values learned in the rehearsals new perception in the safe space should shock to the actual performance. The workshops Performing is a risk in itself. To stand in front the audience into a state of vulnerability useful and rehearsals have to take place in such a of an audience and be judged is a risk actors for the moral imagination. Demonstrating the way that the themes the performance wishes and musicians take all the time. Playback story in a way that simultaneously nurtures to explore are always readily available in the performances and risk go hand in hand; the vulnerabilities of the teller, audience, and process. This means that much of the hard improvisation is a huge risk. The storyteller actors is a difficult balance to achieve and work resides in the planning of the rehearsal is putting his story at risk in plain view of the takes careful calibration. needs before they begin. By doing this detailed audience. The risk work beforehand, the perception the audience In Australia, the workshops leading up to “The workshops and is easier for the is being directed toward is shown through teller to take once the creation of the production are a risk. their witnessing it happen, as opposed to the safe space is The activities are full of self-exploration and being instructed as to what they should be rehearsals have to take established, yet it vocalization to the group of the realizations perceiving in a lecturing style. The process of is still a substantial made in those explorations. It is a risk for production creates social change among the place in such a way that the risk. The audience these teenagers to express their self-learning participants, and the audience is a witness to takes a risk by to one another at a point when popularity is the final outcome of that social change, giving themes the performance hearing, seeing, in high demand with a supply that is never audience members a new transcendent idea and empathizing sufficient. In many of the workshops I ran of how social change can happen and what with a story that with the local rap groups, breaking down the positive results can come from it. As a result, wishes to explore are they may or may “gangsta” image to get to the real person was the participants will receive the tools necessary not be ready to risky work; no one wanted to appear un-cool in to continue their activism and positive always readily available in witness. The the eyes of their peers. A few breakthroughs relationships with the other when confronted actors take a did happen, which most often had a domino by conflict, or community development issues the process.” risk every time effect on the other participants of the in the future. they embody the workshop. It’s a risk to break the threshold and stories. An actor show your true self. For the last workshop I can be personally did I organized a barbecue and invited all the or emotionally tied up into a scene, which members of three rap groups for an evening of raises the question “Is it good for them to coming together. One of the groups didn’t show act in the story?” (Fox). It also is not good for up. As a result of them not taking the risk in a particular actor to continuously play the being present, the peaceful connection, which same archetype. The actor is burdened and could have potentially led to a better-linked the audience is caught in an expected way of hip-hop community among the Brisbane youth, never happened.

10 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Bibliography Notes

Adams, Donald K., Asian Development Bank., Gladwell, Malcolm. 2000. The tipping point : 1. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 9 and Comparative Education Research Centre. how little things can make a big difference. 2000. Education and national development : 1st ed. Boston ; London: Little, Brown. 2. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 27 priorities, policies, and planning, Education in developing Asia ; v. 1. Manila, Philippines Goffman, Erving. 1973. The presentation of 3. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 26 Hong Kong: Asian Development Bank ; self in everyday life. Woodstock, N.Y.: Comparative Education Research Centre, The Overlook Press. 4. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 35 University of Hong Kong. Lederach, John Paul. 2005. The moral 5. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 35 Adams, Don & Goldbard, Arlene, 2002, imagination : the art and soul of building Community, Culture and Globalization,. New peace. New York: Oxford University Press. 6. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 36 York: The Rockefeller Foundation Creativity & Culture Division McEvoy-Levy, Siobhán, Joan B. Kroc Institute 7. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 36 for International Peace Studies., RIREC Boal, Augusto. 2006. The aesthetics of the Project on Post-Accord Peace Building., and 8. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 36 oppressed. London ; New York: Routledge. Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict. 2006.Troublemakers or 9. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 38 Bogart, Anne, and Tina Landau. 2005. peacemakers? : youth and post-accord peace The viewpoints book : a practical guide to building. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of 10. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, viewpoints and composition. 1st ed. New Notre Dame Press. Pg. 38 York St. Paul, MN: Theatre Communications Group; Exclusively distributed to the Rilke, Rainer Maria, and Franz Xaver Kappus. 11. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, book trade by Consortium Book Sales and 1954. Letters to a young poet. Rev. ed. New Pg. 38 Distribution. York,: Norton. 12. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Chekhov, Michael, Michael Chekhov, and Mel Salas, Jo, 1996, Improvising Real Life: Personal Pg. 39 Gordon. 1991. On the technique of acting. 1st Story in Playback Theatre., Tusitala ed. New York, NY: HarperPerennial. Publishing, New Paltz, NY 12561 13. Lederach, John, The Moral Imagination, Pg. 169 Dukore, Bernard Frank. 1971. Drama and Schirch, Lisa. 2005. Ritual and symbol in revolution. New York,: Holt. peacebuilding. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Fisher, Simon. 2000. Working with conflict : skills and strategies for action. New York: Swados, Elizabeth. 2006. At play: teaching Zed Books : Distributed in the USA teenagers theater. 1st ed. New York: Faber exclusively by St. Martin’s Press. and Faber.

Fox, Jonathan,1986, Acts of Service: Ueshiba, Morihei, 1992, Art of Peace, Spontaneity, Commitment, and Tradition in Shambhala Publications, Boston, MA 02115 the Nonscripted Theater. Tusitala Publishing, New Paltz, NY

Fox, Jonathan & Dauber, Heinrich, 1999, Gathering Voices :essays on Playback Theater. Tusitala Publishing, New Paltz, NY

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 11 Autonomy, Representation and Lekil Kuxlejal in Highland Chiapas

Daniel Duffy ‘07

hen I stayed in the indigenous communities in the highland region of Chiapas, Mexico, I would always be the first in the particular group I was working with to go to bed. Then in W the morning, the same group would wake me up, smiling and making breakfast. I should have felt disoriented, I guess, but everything and everyone was as familiar as I had left them when I fell asleep, only the sun was up. It was never clear to me when a day ended

and when a day began in the tiny indigenous communities. Chiapas must follow the same cycles of night and day as the rest of the world. But if day is also something

between periods of sleep, then that makes and warming the chilly air. It illuminated fields own laws of proportion. Small plots of corn, things trickier, because in my stays in the where men and boys were already working beans, coffee, peaches and peanuts, and tiny communities I never saw anyone in the act of with machetes, it came through the cracks of indigenous communities of little brown cabins sleep. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say wooden houses, making lines of light on dirt cling to mountainsides above clouds. Taxis and that they did not sleep, because I have heard floors where children played and women fried beds of trucks so full of people that some cling that without sleep one goes crazy. And I don’t tortillas. Groups of men were already digging to the outside share the same narrow roads want anyone to think that the indigenous of out trenches alongside dirt roads and speaking with stray dogs, children and small indigenous Chiapas are ghosts. There are too many people a locally specific dialect of Tseltal. They wore men and women carrying enormous sacks of who think that already. Still, one’s original sheepskin cloaks and milk-white robes. The wood and corn on their backs by belts secured impressions of Chiapas are that space and robes are cut off just above the knees, like onto their foreheads. I find myself looking time are something inherently different there. short kilts. Others wore less traditional collared down when I speak with many of them. One Somehow a night of sleep for them fits in shirts. Women walked past the men without comments in Spanish to another about how tall between the late night festivals and the early speaking to them. They led children by the I am. Yes, I bump my head on the door frames, morning routine of campesino life. hands and wore brilliant satin purple blouses I say. with heavily embroidered yokes. Narrow coral- One morning while staying in Guaquitepec, I colored stripes laced their skirts just below Besides proportion, this part of the world hoped to catch everyone in the community in the place where tightly knit belts held them in defies physics and scientific explanation as bed and witness place. Other women wore an entirely different well. My first exposure to this phenomenon “The physicality of this their awakening. traditional black sheepskin skirt. They all clung left me secretly making last minute deals with I woke up at 4:00 to shawls which fell over their shoulders. God as I drove through the northern highlands in the morning, region with fellow volunteer Pablo one region, squeezed in a tiny but most of the To the few people I spoke with there the air evening. I felt embarrassed being so cheap community was was nice and cool, but it made me shiver. They about faith, but I could have sworn there were space between mountains already preparing laughed at the gringo. Parts of Chiapas are some other forces at play there, and I was for the light. The more highly elevated than many of the United afraid for myself. The forces seemed to erupt and sky, follows its own sun began to States’ white-capped mountains. Its hills as we passed an overturned truck in our car. penetrate through have little headroom under low clouds. The A man lay beside it, bloody in nothing but laws of proportion.” the mountains, physicality of this region, squeezed in a tiny his underwear. Medics had him strapped to dispersing clouds space between mountains and sky, follows its a gurney, and they were holding his neck to

12 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 protect his spine. Pablo mumbled something. history. I doubt those others would admit that edge of a field where horses and cows graze. I kept nervously wondering what out here in they think this way, or are even aware of it. Communities are developing films about their the mountains had ripped the man’s clothes My experiences with them tell me I need to lives and struggles in local languages as well off like that. While I tried to figure this out in start from scratch, from the basics, to show and Boca de Polen has a tiny but growing video my head, a rift in the hills opened up again, that the indigenous communities are made up program. and a car flung someone off a cliff. We of people with needs, desires and meaningful drove past where the car had come to a stop lives. I gave a workshop with Boca de Polen to against a guardrail. A group helplessly looked students in Guaquitepec, a larger community over the edge, a man comforted a child and in the Ocosingo Municipality of Chiapas, another screamed into a telephone. As the fog desde San Cristóbal a Guaquitepec where Tseltal is the primary language. The thickened, I hoped that the woods wouldn’t In Chiapas I worked with Red de community’s secondary school, Bachillerato open up and suck us into it as well. My Comunicadores ‘Boca de Polen’ (The ‘Pollen Técnico Bivalente Bartolomé de Las Casas, is palms were sweating and left a streak on the Mouth’ Communicators Network), a group autonomous. It is made up of four buildings, window when I touched the glass. based in the small city of San Cristóbal de Las which form a rectangle around a courtyard Casas that provides resources for indigenous full of ten-foot leafy agronomy projects and a In a pinch-me-I-think-I’m-dreaming sort of way, communities that are developing their own muddy irrigation system that makes its way to I later asked my friends in the communities if forms of independent media. I helped the the lower corner of the school, spilling out over my superstitions were correct about Chiapas. organization to translate films and documents, exposed rocks. During the day the buildings are Their responses would suggest that I had seek out funding and develop educational not lit by electricity, but by an arrangement of merely scratched the surface. However despite materials on the topic of migration. With the windows and open shutters. In one room the the tangibility and often times violent nature of materials I gave workshops in communities light coming in makes skewed triangles and what one might call magic in Chiapas, it didn’t where Boca de Polen sought to maintain close quadrilaterals, framing desks and chairs in a seem to confuse other people as much as it did relationships with community radio stations, constellation of light and weathered, cracking, me. I thought the myths I heard from people to video producers and a school. empty furniture on the dusty cement floors. The be bizarre, weird and folksy. But slowly I began walls are nearly barren but for chalkboards and to see that I was the crazy one, and everyone Many of the indigenous people that Boca a length of construction paper, scribbled with else was sane. de Polen works alongside are in resistance, class notes, hanging sadly by a last remaining in a struggle for the autonomy of their own tack. When I arrived there late one morning, There is humanity in all of the madness there. systems of governance, economy, culture and echoes of a film in Spanish came in through the It is important to stress that the indigenous self-representation. Boca de Polen means to window along with a warm breeze that caused people of Chiapas themselves are human. develop this last area by providing technology the shutters to shift restlessly and slam against They are always growing, changing loving and and training. They have helped to set up radio each other. struggling. They are active individuals in their stations in the indigenous languages of Tzotzil culture and society. Every time I blinked my and Tseltal. The Las Abejas station, Radio I walked into the cafeteria where the students eyes in the communities I reopened them to a Chanul Pom, is a computer and some audio were watching a movie on a giant screen at the completely different world. This might seem equipment stacked on a small wooden table, all end of the room. I had picked up the film in the obvious to some, but to others it is surprising in a small cabin. Outside the cabin a mangled city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas where I was that the indigenous of southern Mexico are wire serves as transmitter. Radio T’sumbal based in Chiapas. I walked toward the TV and not actually timeless statues, relics of Mayan broadcasts from a small cement house at the sat down, facing the students. There were over

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 13 50 of them, straddling window sills, standing Contrast the colder, more impersonal The students ate together after the film against walls with their arms crossed, sitting institutions of our school systems to the and I ate with them. After we finished our on benches, sprawling on the floor and peering profoundly personal and warm system there, meal of beans and tortillas, I stayed as the in through the windows. Every face was and it is clearer why the students seem mostly students trickled outside to talk with some of fixed on the screen, which was barking rapid genial, why they wrap their arms around each the teachers and counselors, most of whom Spanish. All at once the faces smiled, made other, and discipline and organize themselves. were barely older than myself. I asked them confused faces The Bachillerato school in Guaquitepec why they chose to work there over more “Miguel whispered back or chuckled. Then is voluntary and works independently of high-paying and high-status jobs in the city. they all laughed. government funding – it is autonomous. The The question seemed to give them a little bit to me that everyone in the Then all at once only sign of government presence in the of anxiety. Work in the cities was a marker their jaws dropped, school are the diplomas that are handed out of high-status in the more capitalistic and they grimaced to graduates every year. The documents make class-oriented paradigms there. Where they community was friendly or covered their it easier for students to get into college. But felt this pressure, they seemed to have faith eyes. I turned to this doesn’t mean that the school wants the that staying in the community was something and pretty much got along Miguel Cruz, a students to leave the communities. Every year noble. Some of the counselors there said young man in the the students take a test, which asks them they stayed because they never wanted to together. I found it hard community with what they want out of life. Do they want leave after graduating, despite the low pay. whom I worked and to drive a taxi in the city, or be a farmer or Because the school refuses funding from the pointed out that doctor in their community? Do they want to government, it always needs to seek funding to believe exactly that, everyone seemed make money for themselves, or provide for from donors and barely gets by. But in this to be friendly with their family and friends? Do they want to place where the line between community and but then again I also grew each other there. live with the Spanish-speaking mestizos, or educational institution is blurred, the warmth Although I would the Tseltales? Students who say they would of the school and its struggle for autonomy up in an environment of later find this to prefer a more urban life are encouraged to draw them into it. be the norm, it leave for another school. Those who finish are exclusive groups and had struck me encouraged to go to college and come back, if lekil kuxlejal that the two boys it is possible. Before the end of 1993, Mexican President sitting across the Carlos Salinas de Gortari made an appearance merciless gossip.” table had been By taking control of the school’s curriculum on Mexican television. Sitting perfectly upright trading affection. ten years ago, the community vowed to next to a Mexican flag and speaking slowly, This surprised me for a place uncomfortable strengthen itself, rather than continue a path he announced that Mexico was finally going with homosexuality. They were both of disintegration. Students are taught material to be given the opportunity to rise up in the straddling a bench, one in front of the other. that is useful to maintaining the economic world. Mexico was about to enter into the The one in front was leaning back, the one and political vibrancy of the community. North American Free Trade Agreement, also behind holding him around the waist and Rather than study only basic chemistry or known as NAFTA, with the United States saying something softly into his ear. In the biology, which have little application in the and Canada to free up trade in the region. communities men and boys sometimes put communities but are part of paternalistic According to Salinas, the new free market their arms around each other and comfortably government curriculums, the students learn doctrine would help to stimulate trade with the rest their heads in each other’s laps. Girls are sustainable agriculture. Members of the other countries by eliminating trade barriers, friendly too. They joke with each other and community, which meets to make decisions helping the Mexican economy to grow. Mexico giggle, but rarely talk with boys. The only about the school routinely, are elected to would finally become, according to Salinas, a clear divide I could see in the students is that design the curriculum and are liable to “First World country,” leaving its humiliating of gender, and there was almost nothing of the community’s demands. The community “underdeveloped” status behind. The words cliques. Miguel whispered back to me that empowers itself by forming the education of “First World” indicated a league of nations everyone in the community was friendly and its young people. On one hand they strengthen characterized by economic independence and pretty much got along together. I found it hard the knowledge base in creative and productive power. They resonated well in the ears of to believe exactly that, but then again I also ways. On the other they cut their ties with the people accustomed to playing little brother to grew up in an environment of exclusive groups outside forces that have long determined the one of the world’s most wealthy and powerful and merciless gossip. dissolution of communities. countries.

14 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 But the convincing language that sold NAFTA its progress, moving it to a more superior level the movement, although justified by existing broke apart on harsh realities. On January 1, of development. But the project failed, in part conditions of poverty, was flawed. She said, 1994, the day NAFTA was instituted, images because of its dedication to a symbolic idea of “Even though people are starving, they refuse of bandana and balaclava-clad indigenous what a development project should look like help from the government!” When I talked rebels called the Zapatista Army for National rather than flexibility to the existing economic with conservative Mexicans, they expressed Liberation appeared on the news. Images were situation. The settlements were organized into frustration with the movement. I was told that broadcast of the rebels kicking in doors and perfect grids to appear modern, despite the the indigenous were confused, like children. sneaking around city alleys with crude rifles, impracticality of such a scheme. Likewise the Because they simply did not know what was sticks and WWII-era machine guns. The guerilla capital of Brasil, Brasília, was designed with good for them, they did not deserve self- army captured three towns and San Cristóbal bland, flat colors and enormous boxy buildings determination. de Las Casas in Chiapas, claiming that the trade with no flair or character, to convey a seemingly In their ideas of “The aesthetic of liberalization written into NAFTA would lead to rational, and thus advanced exterior. The city development, I increasing economic problems for indigenous is shaped like an airplane when seen from the heard resonance modernism gives away communities. As some of the poorest people sky, giving literal presence to the development of W.W. Rostow’s in Mexico, they claimed the right to the basic scheme of “takeoff.” standard model for necessities that had historically been withheld human progress the ideal that developers from them. Mexicans “were shocked.” Much The aesthetic of modernism gives away the that follows a of the West had been capital-happy following ideal that developers have in mind; that of linear process of have in mind; that of the Soviet Union’s collapse and had begun advanced technology and industrialism. The industrialization to believe that market discipline would solve initiative to achieve this ideal, at however toward a free advanced technology and problems of “underdevelopment.” But the superficial a level, can supersede all other consumer society. rebellion, timed perfectly to coincide with needs and agendas. It can come to the By not falling in the institutionalization of the terms in the forefront and trample all other priorities line, it was thought industrialism. The initiative agreement, revealed the sobering underbelly of underfoot. Politicians risk their careers and that the indigenous economic globalization. As Mexico’s outcasts, lives for it. Populations are threatened in its rebels of Chiapas to achieve this ideal, at riff-raff, marginalized and forgotten peoples name. Embedded in the language of NAFTA retarded this came pouring out of the jungle and the forest, was this jewel that needed to be obtained. process. To some however superficial a level, they crashed in on its day of renewal, its day of The promise of this ideal, the temptation, lay they were only a rebirth, its entrance into the high society of the in the free market rhetoric of economists, burden, slowing can supersede all other “developed” world. U.S. leaders, developers and a technocratic the nation down president. Mexican officials quashed dissident from arriving at Within a few days the Mexican military and marginalized voices to finally reach the its idyllic end of needs and agendas. It can chased the rebels back into the mountains, and first day in 1994. Salinas, a less popular history, which was NAFTA remained. The message of the rebels candidate, rigged his 1988 election to push somehow always come to the forefront and fell on stubborn ears. Mexico’s government forward economic reforms that threatened receding over the is like many others in the “underdeveloped” the livelihoods of small producers. NAFTA horizon. trample all other priorities world, in that the elites in charge have a representatives agreed to remove tariffs that history of fixation and even fanaticism for protected southern Mexican corn producers It seems that modern development schemes in hopes from flooded markets and displacement. The to a lot of the underfoot. Politicians risk that they will elevate their status. In these indigenous in Chiapas found these decisions indigenous in projects there is sometimes enough logic were made beyond their reach, but the effects Chiapas, this their careers and lives and flexibility to succeed at meeting the real were intimate. attitude is needs of people. And sometimes not. For overbearing. They for it. Populations are example, between 1973 and 1976, Tanzanian There is frustration with the indigenous feel caught in an officials forced country-dwellers, most of autonomists and rebels in Chiapas among economic and threatened in its name.” whom were pastoralists and subsistence many strata of Mexican society, not only political dragnet, farmers, into agricultural settlements. They politicians and policymakers. While speaking which they have believed that by moving the country toward with my Spanish teacher in my first week little control over. José Alfredo Jiménez Pérez, agricultural production they would accelerate there, she explained to me why she thought a friend I worked with, said,

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 15

The kind of globalization that we fight in Spanish. In the same way that a snail shell this model of community. The outside shell is against is the kind that wants to impose. spirals inward, power is ostensibly supposed solid, protecting the interior. The idea is that an For example, Coca-Cola. The clearest and to flow inward from the individual communities outsider has to work his or her way to the heart most well known example is Coca-Cola into the autonomous government centers. The of the community, just like a snail’s shell spirals . . . Yeah, we’re against capitalism and Zapatistas are part of a larger movement. Also into the center. neo-liberalism in general. Because all involved is the Las Abejas (The Bees) Civil of it is politics. The economy, all of it. It Society. Begun in 1992 as a pacifist Christian What is it that many people are facing, turned comes in one package. That’s its objective organization, Las Abejas have organized their inward away from outsiders? In an interview – although they don’t say it like this. It all own autonomous infrastructural base as well. with Miguel Cruz I tried to find out. In the sound comes disguised. Like, “Drink Coca-Cola. Both Las Abejas and the Zapatistas have strong room at Boca de Polen, he sat across from me, It’s so good. You need it!” But really when independent judicial committees that oversee sitting upright and seeming more fidgety than you buy a Coke, you don’t know what dilemmas within the region. Although many of usual. Normally I wouldn’t be putting him on you are drinking. And the money that you their members are extremely poor, they refuse the spot like I was then. He began to speak pay – you don’t know it goes to a foreign government aid that is oftentimes awarded to when Vladimir, a tall and lanky coleto (person county. A lot of people don’t know where other indigenous communities. These groups from San Cristóbal de Las Casas) threw the the money goes. as well as various cooperatives, communities door open and greeted us both, grinning. We and schools are struggling for the ability to humored him for a minute, chatting, and then The economic changes facing indigenous exist independently of the encroaching modern I held up the tape recorder so that he could communities in Chiapas come in through the capitalist economy and state. They want to see we were doing an interview. He jumped, back door like this. According to José Alfredo, choose their own progress, or pluralistic forms apologized and closed the door behind him. before people know it they are endorsing of progress that will give them economic Miguel started, mainstream capitalist markets through their stability and increased control in their lives. participation in them. This onslaught of change So, the question is “What is lekil seeks to rearrange life in the communities. They follow a different ideal, what has been kuxlejal?” It is a word we say in Tseltal, called a “world in which all worlds fit.” Many and that has a lot of meanings, no? It “For the outsider, this Since the 1994 times I heard people claim to seek little more can mean, “for a good life,” or “a good uprising, the than a dignified life, or as they say in Tseltal, life,” or “living better.” You are content inward focus among many Zapatistas have lekil kuxlejal. This life doesn’t render other and happy. It represents a series of put down their forms of living impossible; rather it turns in values that encapsulate everything. Lekil weapons. Civilian toward itself, looking inward. Many of the kuxlejal expresses absolutely this: a life in the communities puts elements of Mayans I spoke with talked about the virtue of of harmony and dignity. We say that in the movement being oriented inward, toward the heart of the the communities this is what we strive up a blank impenetrable have stepped community, rather than outwardly into other for. They replace it a lot with “autonomy up, developing communities. This is not to say that nobody of lekil kuxlejal.” Because this is what exterior. Coming to schools, community is concerned with the outside world. But for they want. This is equality within the centers, clinics the outsider, this inward focus among many in community. There is a good deal of indigenous communities and agricultural the communities puts up a blank impenetrable respect. This is what lekil kuxlejal stands and apicultural exterior. Coming to indigenous communities for. Because if you have respect for the cooperatives that for the first time, I found myself looking over a people that live within the community, for the first time, I found strive for an ideal of lot of shoulders, trying to follow exactly what everyone will respect you. If you show independence and was going on. When I would ask questions affection, you show confidence, you myself looking over a lot self-management. about people’s communities, their answers show some of the values that the people Since 2003, life were short, polite and blunt. They left these share and help to coexist in this context, of shoulders, trying to has been organized conversations out to dry but I struggled to then in this way you demonstrate that around a network revive them. A few times I felt like the only one you have lekil kuxlejal – a good life. A of political centers excluded from some huge elaborate secret. The good respect. It’s a life more, as we say, follow exactly what was called caracoles, symbol of the caracol, popular in many more dignified. Well done, then. Well lived. meaning “snails” aspects of Mesoamerican Maya life than just going on.” the Zapatista political centers, also represents

16 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 I heard this rhetoric quite a bit—that la otra auditorium in Mexico City, we slept against a community needed a degree of self- Influence does not flow in only one direction the metal frames of tattered seats, sang determination. Autonomy was not a marginal from outside communities onto the Mayan songs and stomped down the floor hatch that political cause, but instead essential to the communities of Chiapas. In the summer of occasionally popped open a crack until we collective dignity and fulfillment ofchiapaneco 2005, the Zapatistas decided they would finally pulled up to the auditorium in Mexico indigenous communities. In the faces of broaden their scope to all of Mexico. City. They were there for a meeting to plan neo-liberals who want to impose outside While presidential candidates would be a march on Mexico’s election day as part development initiatives, they demanded control campaigning for the 2006 elections, the of the Other Campaign, advocating popular, of their own communities. To them it did not indigenous group would send its major participative democracy while everyone’s demand any explanation of what they would do spokesman, Subcomandante Marcos, on a mind would be on electoral politics. In this with their control because outsiders had no stock campaign to every state in Chiapas. Instead election the left-leaning candidate would lose or role in the communities in the first place. of encouraging people to vote, he would by a tiny margin, pointing to evidence of fraud advocate for participation in local organizing against him and calling for a recount. The That day Miguel and I had recently returned efforts, “another form of politics.” Marcos is election committee’s refusal would catalyze a from Guaquitepec, having given our workshop not indigenous by blood, but joined militant several-month-long standoff, with protesters on migration. In an interim break I had sat indigenous groups in Chiapas in the early 80’s overtaking the city’s central plaza and over down where several kids were talking. I spoke after leaving a teaching job at the National one million people protesting in the streets. with them for a little bit to get to know them Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). personally. I asked about their community, the He has since worked alongside the Zapatistas I sat down in the Chiapas section toward school and autonomy. Why is it important that through the uprising, rumored assassination the back of the auditorium. People on the the school is independent? Even after becoming attempts and the movement for autonomy. floor in front were each speaking on behalf accustomed to short and sweet answers, I of their own demographic, talking about their anticipated more than what they told me. They Smoking a pipe through a hole in his ski struggles and suggesting ways in which the explained to me simply that autonomy was best mask, Marcos sat in the back of a stage in an march should represent their interests. Those for the school because it could respond directly auditorium on UNAM’s campus in Mexico City. sitting at the table on stage made proposals to the community’s needs. Being in control of Wearing fatigues and enormous black boots he to the assembly. I couldn’t always understand the school, they were proud of it and it dignified blew clouds of smoke that lingered around his what they were saying through the echo in and validated their identities. head. He stared through them pensively toward the speaker, but it elicited furious responses the floor. In front of him a table of activists with out of some people. One man across the When I sat there speaking with the few of them microphones flipped through piles of documents auditorium was possessed and screamed at I was not satisfied with their answer. I thought and notes. In front of them on the floor a the table, waving a trembling fist. The anger maybe something had been lost in translation line of farmers, sex workers, queer activists, took over his entire body, and he lunged his because of my inability to completely articulate anarchists, students, punks, communists, weight into every word from his seat, falling what I was thinking in Spanish. Accustomed middle-class activists and unionists waited for over the people in the row in front of him. to the theorizing of activists where I live, I a microphone that was currently in the hands of Those at the table shifted uncomfortably. had expected long conceptual and abstract a man raising his fist and yelling. In front of him Marcos puffed his pipe. answers to my questions. How does someone a barely attentive audience of a few hundred come to understand a society’s needs, let alone people talked amongst themselves and walked Moving closer to the floor I could hear the things that should be done to fulfill them around. Occasionally someone would yell back that the issue on the table had changed to without a lot of theorizing and arguing about it? at the speaker, disrespectfully but necessarily whether decisions should be made by votes The need for autonomy to them was somehow interrupting his rant. or consensus. I chuckled to myself at this self-evident in a puzzle I hadn’t really assembled realization. It seemed that the voting vs. entirely. For me it lay in an intellectual blind I walked in with dozens of activists, consensus argument is pretty common among spot. Either they didn’t want to talk about it at volunteers, academics and indigenous men the left, regardless of place. length, or they thought it simply didn’t need any and women from San Cristóbal, crossing the explanation. Although people within my context middle of the auditorium slowly, disoriented As I was standing against a handrail, a familiar generally come to this from a different angle, it and stiff. We had left for Mexico City 23 face passed me. It was Marino Astrada Aguilar, is common knowledge within the communities hours before, packing into three decrepit a man I had met at an indigenous film festival that autonomy is part of a fulfilling good life. buses. Until we finally pulled up to the in Oaxaca. His eyes lit up when he saw me,

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 17 and he pulled over to where I was standing. the vastly diverse group in their own specific I sat down beside a woman who looked to be He was an indigenous filmmaker from the direction. a middle-class soccer mom, and together we Palenque area in Chiapas. He talked about listened to a sex worker talk about how all his work. I asked him what he thought of the After a while the meeting seemed to be going of our struggles were bound up together. In ensuing voting vs. consensus debate. This nowhere. As the meeting grew increasingly what other context would a gringo student, clearly set in motion something in his mind stale and the people around me began to a Mexican soccer mom and a sex worker be that had built up and had needed to be let grumble, I thought about Mikhail Bakunin, listening to each other talk about their own out. He smiled and who said that someone seeking revolutionary struggles? How else would we learn what all “I sat down beside a thought to himself, change, “does not find another man’s (sic) the rhetoric about collective liberation really wondering how freedom a boundary, but a confirmation and meant if we were not first forced through an woman who looked to be a to start. Then he vast extension of his own own.” Working to excruciating process of watching each other’s said that in some understand others and come up with creative egotistical behavior hit brick wall after brick of the Mayan ways to reconcile difference would allow for wall? I could only be sure that we had to be middle-class soccer mom, communities in dynamic, individual expression within the put at the helm, in control of everything. But I Chiapas, decisions whole. But I think there is an inevitable drama couldn’t think of another way to continue from and together we listened were made by in our interactions with other people that there, and I doubt Marcos could either. He just consensus. The comes out of our anxious need to impress, patiently smoked his pipe. to a sex worker talk about mutual agreement manipulate, control, dominate. The potential of everyone was for unity that is collectively empowering lies how all of our struggles generally a priority. in people’s ability to overcome this, rather la grabación However in other than exploit it. Rather than trying to realize Speaking in terms of the mass media in communities, one’s own rigid, dogmatic vision by convincing Mexico, mestizos and whites generally control were bound up together. In decisions tended other people, there is the potential for a vision representations of indigenous people from to be made with that is shared. In the auditorium, the power outside of their communities. The outsiders’ what other context would a votes. A majority that supposedly comes with numbers kept control has given them the upper hand in was enough for crumbling as individuals tried to harness it defining the Native American in Mexico. After gringo student, a Mexican a decision to but could do little but let it slip through their its 1910 revolution, Mexico underwent a be made, even fingers. I thought that undoubtedly the Maya period of heavy industrialization and increasing soccer mom and a sex if it excluded of Chiapas faced some of the same problems nationalism. In this transition to a more modern some opinions. that I was seeing in the auditorium, but were economy, iconography of indigenous people However even onto something in following a mindset of played an important part in the creation of worker be listening to each when using votes consensus. nationalist identities. Most Mexicans were to make decisions, a racial mix of white and Indian, mestizo. other talk about their own communities Marcos continued to blow smoke throughout The two identities needed to be reconciled. were sometimes the scene that began to look like a nightmare. Mexicans sought to explain what it meant to struggles?” still thinking He stared ahead through the hole in his ski have indigenous blood inside of them and live about catering mask. His eyes looked older than in most on native land. The indigenous identity was to the needs of photos. From a distance it seemed that age generally embraced, although the actual people everyone. As he put it, people needed to have marks mere appearing above his brow. Also he were left by the wayside. a consensus mentality, regardless of whether it had clearly put on weight. What was he doing was possible or not. there? I wondered. What was anyone doing There is an inherent contradiction in this, there? The Zapatistas had decided to use their where the person is ignored, but what they Trying to come to consensus that day with moral legitimacy to bring various isolated represent is embraced. I was told in Chiapas hundreds of people probably would have been groups from the left together. Unfortunately, that until the 1994 uprising, walking down San impossible. Although many people seemed putting vastly dissimilar people in a room Cristóbal’s narrow sidewalks was humiliating reasonable, a few in front were pushing their doesn’t guarantee that anything constructive for indigenous people. They were expected own agendas, only to get booed from the will come of it. But I also knew that I to step into the street to allow whites and microphone or invite responses from other shouldn’t assume that the Zapatistas had such mestizos pass them. Also it was only recently fiery egoists conceited enough to try leading demanding or simplistic expectations. that the word indio (Indian) had stopped being

18 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 used with derogatory connotations. Images of positions of power. The representations are not On the damp earth he died indigenous people became symbolic of Mexican situated in a manner that helps to understand On the damp earth he died nationalism while many indigenous people indigenous people on their own terms. For her [the earth] they killed him remained poor and discriminated against. Traditions and worldviews are not looked at When he wanted to defend the land within their own contexts, and much of the That was his heredity Films from the industrializing period tried to time they are not represented as dynamic, distill the identity of the Indian, to pin it down complicated humans with individual needs. To the damp earth he returned and categorize it. In the 1931 film “¡Que viva Rather outsiders have sought to explain the To the damp earth he returned Mexico!” indigenous people are shown wearing indigenous people in the terms of the outsider. And it rains, rains next to nothing, posing alongside ruins. The They are fit within the outsider’s worldview It’s the sky that cries filmmaker blurs the line between statues in order to reinforce it. This generally means Today the earth is more fertile and actual people by making the latter mimic redefining indigenous people within a dominant Because of the Indian Manuel’s struggle the former. Their nakedness evokes a certain logic of legitimacy and power. [My translation]10 sense of commonality with the bare stones around them. Their lifeless expressions are It should not be completely surprising that a In this abridged version of Ochoa’s version as cold. A boy poses alongside a statue of a society concerned with the advent of industrial she romanticizes the idealized struggle of man. The figure lies comfortably on its side, capitalism sees those who are supposedly indigenous people, manifested in one man. The propping itself up onto its elbow. The boy is “lagging behind” this form of progress as either Indian’s relationship to the earth is intimate, reclined in the same way, gazing out into the immature people or ancient relics. In the film which is emphasized by the exclusion of any same direction with a serious expression. just mentioned, they were not depicted as other protagonists in the song. The idealized Instead of dynamic individuals, the indigenous people, but instead as archaeological remains quintessential Native American male struggles are presented as relics and the sense that or idealized children. With films like these against the invisible imposing outside forces, there are people behind their expressions is the humanness of the Indian is written out of “they,” that mean to dislodge his natural left out. In the film they took on the quality of the national consciousness, and an essential relationship to the earth. When Manuel dies, spirits in other ways as well, like through their identity takes its place. In Mexican society justice reveals itself in the tears of the sky, romanticization. A later segment portrays a the actual people are marginalized, but the which further life and a struggle between the group living in an utopian Garden of Eden. We ideal they stand for remains. Even when it natural realm (the indigenous and their land) only see the protagonists in an environment takes seemingly benign forms the inequality of and the unnatural modern European realm. full of love, abundant resources and free time. representation can be harmful. Children in colorful dress perform elaborate There is the sense here that there is natural dances and lovers lie together in hammocks. But what happens when outsiders mean to value in the traditions of indigenous peoples Their society is free of blemishes, which is represent indigenous people for the purpose that need to be protected. It seems that there partially to say free of evidence of Western of doing good things or representing them in a is a tendency of representations made by conquest.  Many Mexicans idealize natives positive light? Leftists from outside indigenous outsiders with good intentions to focus on loss before conquest, before they were forced to communities have certainly idealized the Indian in traditional indigenous culture. And many change course at the hands of imperialists. as well. In the song “Tierra Humeda,” Amparo indigenous filmmakers are concerned with this Ochoa sings, as well. They portray culture as threatened These images are deceptively beautiful; they by processes of economic globalization seem perfectly benevolent. Likewise the In the damp earth he was born and Mayan assimilation to modern Mexico. filmmakers’ intentions may have been benign, In the damp earth he was born However trying to grasp, recapture and even as they carried racist undertones. But The Indian Manuel protect culture becomes problematic. It is regardless of intentions or the aesthetic In the light of the morning an uncontested truth that Native American value of the images, they were not taken by With the skin of mud cultures have been changing since contact indigenous people themselves but by other And obsidian eyes with colonizers. But is culture lost? Our initial people who meant to convey something reaction is that yes, it becomes lost within by taking control of the representations. On the damp earth he grew past generations. Indigenous languages Historically, when in the hands of colonial and On the damp earth he grew disappear almost daily, customs and traditions post-colonial outsiders, representations have In a sea of colors, coffee, and beans, are forgotten. Their full glory of expression been presented in such a way that serves their Silence, incense and pain and meaning are cut off from the present day.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 19

This understanding of loss is linked with an Salvation Army t-shirts. From this standpoint their traditions, dress, lifestyles and general objective understanding of culture. But we our cultures seem to be standing still and appearance to their political advantage. should ask ourselves whether culture really the cultures of indigenous Brazilians seem to Threatened by a dam project that would flood disappears like a physical object would, or be changing drastically. We understand its their lands, the Kayapo harnessed their cultural whether it merely transforms into something change in relation to our sensation of static images to show outsiders the importance different. However different culture seems, motionlessness. But our own culture is not of maintaining their lifestyles. They filmed it still remains as culture, albeit in different motionless at all. To use a metaphor, even themselves and allowed journalists to take forms. Undoubtedly cultural practices and ways when we feel physically still, we are spinning pictures of them dressed entirely in traditional of seeing the world fade out, but as human around the earth’s axis at over a thousand clothing and jewelry. Environmentalists used beings we are culture- and meaning-makers, miles per hour. Likewise, although we have the images of beautifully-dressed natives as constantly trying to explain and understand the the sensation of our culture being still, it is in testimony as to why their way of life should be environments we live in. constant flux. Like the sense of motionlessness protected, attracting international support for we get on Earth, we Westerners are oftentimes their cause.14 After the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, which not aware of our culture’s perpetual movement. spilled over 11 million tons of crude oil off the We think it is static, although at every moment But are the Kayapo absorbed in some sort of coast of Alaska, Alutiik people living there we are active members in its change. false consciousness of culture by objectifying were no longer able to practice subsistence it, as Paul Bohannon might suggest? If culture production. The oil spill polluted the waters We have a concept of culture that is in large is indeed fluid, then is it incorrect to treat it as to such an extent that sustainable fishing part developed through seeing other people’s something that we could grasp, or even draw became impossible. The group tried to collect movement, not our own. Through colonial close to our hearts, as is common to hear in court for special damages from the Exxon oil processes Westerners have noted differences amongst the indigenous of Chiapas? Going company, claiming that the harm done to their in other people and defined it as culture. Much back to the earth metaphor, a helpful way to economy extended beyond the material effects. of the time we impose this concept where it conceptualize the question is to ask, “Can They claimed that their loss was distinct does not already exist. For instance, the Kayapo we still call the idea of no movement on the from the sufferings of other fishermen in that of Brazil had no concept of culture until after earth’s surface ‘stillness’ when everything is their very culture had been damaged, being increased contact with outside Brazilians. spinning around the earth’s axis?” Stillness so closely intertwined with fishing. Although Before, they had viewed themselves as the is defined as the absence of movement, but the company paid the indigenous group in center of the universe. Life was oriented it is experienced as the absence of change in a settlement, the ruling judge, “refused to around the creation and recreation of beauty, movement. We would only become acutely recognize cultural differences between native and the Kayapo as its beholder. But increased aware of our movement around the earth’s and non-native fisherman with respect to integration into Brazilian economies and axis if it suddenly slowed down or sped the impact of the oil spill.”11 He sided with political systems relegated them to lower up. We would need to feel the change that anthropologist Paul Bohannon who described status within Brazil’s pluralistic society. They would indicate to us that we are no longer culture not as something objective or concrete, began to find themselves no longer at the stationary in our perpetual, steady movement. but rather as a “strategy for adaptation.”12 center of the universe, but at the bottom rungs Likewise we can experience, conceptualize According to his theory of culture as a fluid way of a ladder. Also they found themselves in a and define culture’s movement with shifts in of interacting with the world, the Alutiik would world of multiple truths where before there the speed of change. When cultural traditions integrate themselves into a capitalist economy, had only been one. No longer unquestioned and the historical contexts that give them finding new meaning in life there. In this sense reality, Kayapo worldviews became less true as meaning dissipate quickly into the past, the we can never lose parts of our culture, nor all “culture.”13 sensation of their absence becomes acute of it, since it is not as much a thing as a way of with the memory of their presence. And what acting or being. We are always participating in It is not only outsiders who treat culture not as is false or less real about our understanding and renegotiating it. fluid but as static. Different indigenous peoples of stillness or objective culture if they are have done it as well. The Kayapo eventually understood within the same logic that we The film “Meu primeiro contato” contrasts found themselves as possessors of a culture use to understand our physical presence on Amazonian indigenous people before serious that was politically valuable to the outside the earth’s surface? Although Paul Bohannon contact with white Brazilians, wearing world for its uniqueness and distinctiveness. might say otherwise, if we consider our almost nothing but beads, to the present Along with anthropologist Terence Turner, the movement around the earth’s axis stillness, time when they smoke cigarettes and wear Kayapo learned that they could use images of then even in culture’s perpetual motion one

20 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 can understand it as still. Furthermore feeling I was surprised to see the films, and even more including films from anglophone North America, it pass, its “loss” can also be very real, as we surprised that I didn’t find many of them to be Africa and Latin America. Mostly white and saw with the Alutiik. personally inspiring. But this is not to say that I mestizo audiences discussed the significance had nothing to learn from the films. Instead the of the movies with directors after each film. But films had much more to teach me than I could the potential to distribute the representations el eco possibly understand. Comprehending them was on a broader scale is weak. The grim reality The office of Red de Comunicadores Boca de largely a matter of knowing where they came for indigenous filmmakers in Mexico is that Polen where I worked is the second story of a from in order to understand why filmmakers avenues of mass communication, broadcast house in the outskirts of San Cristóbal de las chose to highlight certain figures, images and television and mainstream cinema, are largely Casas. The office was quiet or even vacant identities. closed to them. Likewise for radio broadcasters; sometimes, as most of the people involved there is little space on most commercial with the organization, including myself, A common characteristic among the styles airwaves for indigenous productions. spent a good deal time giving workshops in of some filmmakers was to show seemingly the field. The office’s primary component is mundane aspects of life, such as different So what practical purposes do the films serve, a large front room with a computer, several techniques of farming, town markets or if any? If the finalized representations are to workspaces and Zapatista posters on the walls. traditional music. One of José Alfredo’s films help achieve political ends, they cannot just The back room is sectioned off as a sound is a tour through a market where locally grown sit on a shelf and accumulate dust between and production studio. Lazy late afternoon foods are sold. The camera pans across sacks random screenings in different parts of the aimless wandering, chatting and kicking of beans, corn and women selling their produce. world. Like a family photo album, the reordered around the office sometimes brought us all to The scenes are explained but the significance representations of our collective past can get that dim, soundproofed room, hunched around and meaning of each shot is allowed to speak pulled out to help us see the present differently. the computer, camera, microphones, editing for itself. Images of trading locally-grown crops Video and radio function politically within equipment and stacks of video tapes. index small-scale markets that are centered communities just as profoundly, if not more so, around what indigenous people grow themselves. than outside of them. On a particularly quiet day I sat there, leaning Traditional, or more personal economies are against the back wall while Vladimir and José more ideal. The placement of these people and In the community of X’oyep I gave a workshop Alfredo developed a film in Adobe Premiere, crops in the film, rather than outsiders selling with Vladimir at the Las Abejas autonomous speaking softly to each other in Spanish about food from abroad, is no accident. They represent radio station Radio Chanul Pom. That afternoon where to cut and splice certain scenes. Before the values of an indigenous identity, humble and we, along with the Chanul Pom radialistas them the screen took them on a virtual tour close to the land and production. Capitalization set up a television underneath the enormous through an indigenous man’s field, passing and corporatization, on the other hand, would corrugated roof of a partly-completed church. through rows of corn. The frame of view probably represent more alienated relationships, As the community began to file through the jerked around unsteadily, depicting indigenous between people and people as well as between empty frame that would later become the farmers working quickly, grasping the stalks people and production. So in highlighting positive church’s front door, they sat on several dozen and stripping them, then repeating the motions aspects of Mayan culture, José puts it on a benches. For reasons unbeknownst to me, they while José’s voice boomed from the speakers in pedestal, treating it as something to be valued. sat as far away from the screen as possible. Tzotzil. At one point, José turned his attention We showed films on indigenous migrants to me, smiling and seeking my approval on If the films are most meaningful to the in the United States, and as the sun began some aspect of the film. I grinned and agreed indigenous people who make them, what to go down rain started to pour, thundering with him, but not wholeheartedly. Although are the prospects of getting the images out on the roof. Our films on migration ran out, I wanted to see the aspect of the film that to broader audiences? Just because the but we were stranded there in the rain, and was so compelling to him, I secretly missed films are not meaningful in the same ways everyone still sat on their benches expectantly. the point and had to pretend the film was to most whites and mestizos does not mean Vladimir put in a DVD about Radio Chanul Pom as meaningful. From my perspective the film that the films cannot be interpreted outside filmed in the region by him and José Alfredo. lacked the dynamic of conflict and resolution of the communities. Public film festivals put When words in Tzotzil began to come from that made good storytelling and inspiring film. on indigenous movies occasionally. In June, I the speakers, people leaned in closer to see José’s films, however, caught my attention traveled with both Vladimir and José Alfredo the screen better, smiling. Where they had more than some of the other indigenous to Oaxaca for an indigenous film festival that originally sat quietly, they began to interact productions I saw in Mexico. showcased hundreds of indigenous films, with each other and with the film. A woman

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 21 sitting amongst us appeared on camera, On the one hand there is a certain fixation neighbor located in its own back yard. But still I working tortillas in her hands and throwing with middle class life in the United States. In was shocked when, within 24 hours of landing them over a fire as she talked about the radio San Cristóbal, a man stands in front of a used in Mexico City, I was told that there was no station. People around me shrieked with joy, clothes store, announcing into a microphone place for me there, that people wanted to turning to the woman and grabbing her by rapidly like an auctioneer that the style of chase me out across the border. They said I was the arm. The film depicted a protest down the clothes there is “American.” Just the fact of loathed not for personal reasons, but for what road from us in which tiny girls literally shook their origin is enough to draw people. It is said I represented. Maybe, they said, the Mexicans soldiers with full armor and rifles at their sides, that those few Mexicans who live close to the in Chiapas would be more accepting since the holding them by the collars of their jackets. The border with the privilege to enter the United people there are more indirect with expressing room buzzed with excitement at the defiance States sometimes cross it to binge shop in the way they feel. However this did not mean embodied in young girls who resisted fully middle class clothing stores. Immigrants often that chiapanecos would be any less resentful of grown men. Toward the end of the film a group send back clothing, toys and electronics to my identity as gringo. They explained to me that of curious children examine the camera as it their friends back home. The family washing all Mexicans, secretly or openly, whether they films them, blabbering in Tzotzil. One of the machine, video games and milk in a box, would admit it to themselves or not, despised children was present, and people shook him all indicative of gringo consumerism and gringos for the empire we represent. laughing. By the end of the images depicting convenience, are popular. Mayan cultural practices (for example making It is unclear where the word gringo comes tortillas by hand), resistance and community, But also we represent opportunities to be taken from, but according to one story, it was first people were chatting excitedly. advantage of. When a taxi driver in Mexico sees uttered by Pancho Villa, a leader in the Mexican a well-dressed white tourist walking down the Revolution. Hollywood filmmakers are said to While the consumption of indigenous media can street, that driver feels cheated out of business. have documented his life for a time, having be politically important outside of communities, We represent capital. Gringo tourists are seen money to be made in his image and they are most meaningful within communities. expected to bring capital to the region, but not name. Apparently their uptight, demanding By representing aspects of indigenous life to give in other ways. Indeed if a gringo tourist and hurried ways during filming annoyed Villa. on a medium like film, the represented is doing anything else but spending money, they Because they kept shouting “green” to mark the are elevated to another level. Perspective are automatically suspect. For instance, in trying beginning of each scene they were filming, he changes when these images are rearranged to explain my purpose to immigration officials exclaimed, “Green, go!” drawing from the little and recontextualized to make a point. With at the airport, I stupidly let on that my trip might English he knew to get rid of the filmmakers. indigenous media, merely highlighting certain include volunteer work of some sort. Volunteers As the story goes the poorly pronounced term aspects of life is enough to evoke pride. Just as and businesspeople have visas different from eventually became “gringo,” although the filming the women in market takes the act of tourists, but I had applied for a tourist visa. The word’s true origins are unclear. And to whom selling produce and makes it tangible, valued by woman behind the immigration counter looked exactly it refers is at least as hard to say, as it itself, the evocation of local values can elevate at me skeptically with her eyebrows cocked. depends a great deal on context. For example, and glorify them. She half smiled and chuckled, turning to her in San Cristóbal, the word usually signified counterpart, a darker-skinned man with thin someone specifically from the United States. eyelids that framed dark eyes. He commanded However in the indigenous communities, even el gringo my mind with his stern expression. I stuttered my Mexican friends were gringos merely In much of Mexico, the United States citizen and insisted that I only had intentions of because they were outsiders. or estadounidense barely fits the criteria of traveling, of staying on the beaten path and of a whole person. Another Mexican, or Latin blessing Mexico with my fruitful debit card. And how do Mexicans generally interact American is someone else to whom one can with gringos? Two other gringo friends from relate, but generally a gringo is not, at least But where tourists can only spend money it Brandeis, Josh and Neena, were volunteering not in a meaningful way. It is not just the would seem that gringo businesses do little and doing research in Chiapas while I was stereotypical ignorant bumbling tourist that more than suck up resources. A “gringo” is there. They stayed in the hostel where I was makes Mexicans turn their noses up. The also a symbol of status and an agent of empire, located for all of my time in San Cristóbal. identity of “gringo” is hard for Mexicans to pin which is oftentimes not at all discernable from A few times we traded ideas or helped each down – it means many things. The uncertainty, capital or the spread of consumer culture. Even other to find interviews or work, which is why not the certainty, of exactly what gringos are before arriving I was familiar with what it Neena invited me one day to accompany her to complicates their relationship with Mexicans. entailed to be a part of Mexico’s paternalistic volunteer in an indigenous community. Neither

22 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 of us knew anything about the volunteer were. We walked over to the one that said I were silent as we passed shacks and stray organization, although it was located only two “oficina.” The fatter man invited us to sit down dogs along a dirt road. There was no one out blocks up the hill from our hostel. Not even the in two plastic chairs with Coca-Cola logos to be seen, but the fat man assured us that the director at our hostel, Carmen, knew anything on them. We took our seats. A sticker of the people there were extremely poor. about it, and she was something of an expert Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which in San Cristóbal’s civil society. Neena had reigned in Mexico for over 60 despotic years of Then we merged back onto the same highway simply walked into their office right off the both subtle and overtly violent repression, was before we had gotten out of the truck to do street while looking for volunteer opportunities on the wall above his head. He spoke to Neena anything. Neena frankly and confusedly asked and with her interest to visit an indigenous in a suave, disingenuous Spanish in such a way what we were really doing. The man assured us community she signed up to volunteer, despite that alerted me I couldn’t trust him, even if he that we were going to a meeting of the PRI. the “sketchy” appearance of the place. were telling the truth. Restless, I butted in and asked if the organization was affiliated with the “But you told us we were going to a women’s Waiting on the curb with Neena at 6:10 a.m. church. I was suspicious because many church cooperative and that this wasn’t a political for the organization to pick us up from in front groups in the region have the intentions of excursion!” we protested, half laughing. The of their building, you could still see our breaths maintaining dependence in poor communities man seemed confused as to why we gringos in the shadows under shop overhangs, but the in order to draw people into the faith. The were demanding so much information. I think sun coming over the mountains was beginning question had an obvious answer, which is why he realized, based on our protest, that he had to warm our bodies. Having waited for ten I was surprised when he said “no.” I waited said something we didn’t want to hear. Seeing minutes and being intoxicated by our early- a moment for him to explain more. He sat that this lie hadn’t worked, he bypassed our morning sleepiness, we laughed and joked that there quietly. I burst out laughing at such a questions and changed gears, channeling the the whole organization was really a hoax and poor attempt to convince us. He laughed along discussion in a direction that would likely shut we would be waiting there all morning. nervously, but looked confused, as if I had us up. In order to win the favor of us activist asked a silly question. gringos, he said that he had been involved with “What is this place called anyway?” I asked the Zapatistas and was shot by the Mexican Neena. “So then how do you explain the cross military for supporting them in 1994. This had painted out front? What affiliationsdoes the the desired effect. Like infants with pacifiers I turned to the building’s wall and was startled group have? What will we actually be doing, Neena and I quietly chewed on his fantastic into sobriety when I read the sign painted anyway?” stories, staring ahead wide-eyed in awe. They there. Around an insignia of a chapel topped were likely fabricated, considering the history with a cross read a halo of words, all of which To all of these questions the fat man had no of the Zapatista rebellion, but made their way I have since forgotten except for “renacimiento” responses, but according to him we shouldn’t through back doors into our imaginations. (rebirth). have been worrying about it anyway. This resonated with me in a bad way. But despite After driving up into the mountains, we pulled “Neena, this is a church group – I think they are this Neena and I both had free time. We off the highway, again for reasons unknown Evangelicals!” were both still hoping to see an indigenous to us at the time, and entered an ejido. The community, and I was curious to see what truck pulled up in front of a small white house, She turned from her seat on the curb and would happen. So we signed on, nudging and more upscale than usual for a mostly poor, frowned, and at that moment a truck pulled up winking at each other, partly to express how indigenous area. By the time we got out of the in front of us, with two men in front. They came ridiculous we thought the situation was, and car, asking each other why we stopped, the fat out and introduced themselves, the fatter man partly to quell our nervousness. man had already gone over to the front door with his hair slicked back the director of the of the house and was talking to an indigenous program, the other skinnier man his assistant. We all stuffed ourselves in the front seat of woman. We approached smiling, not wanting The fatter man unlocked the door and led the truck. Bound for the outskirts of town, the to intrude and keeping our distance. Getting us into his office. Seeing the inside, it was fat man told us that we were on our way to closer I could tell that their conversation was clear that “sketchy” was an understatement. a women’s cooperative meeting. I finally felt more or less pointless and forced by the fat The office was a grey, vacant, single-room a bit relieved to know where we were going, man, as if they were distant acquaintances warehouse, lit only by a few light bulbs hanging but apparently the fat man decided to take us who met accidentally and were obligated to from the ceiling. Instead of walls, signs on through a detour, and we pulled off the highway keep conversation for nothing more than to the ceiling banisters told us where the rooms into San Cristóbal’s poverty belt. Neena and avoid awkward silence. Except we had come

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 23 to this place deliberately and the fat man had As we drove further on in the truck Neena and with them, but every instant they let go I was engaged this woman in conversation having I looked at the end result on her digital camera, again too dumb to move. The soft music felt nothing to say. As Neena and I drew nearer to completely confused. “That was so horrible!” shrill in my ears. them, he smiled she said in English. I nodded in agreement. “Neena turned to the and introduced us On the screen she and the indigenous woman Suddenly the music stopped. I felt lucid again, as volunteers for faced the ground, both looking humiliated and standing there beside Neena, who seemed the day. For reasons standing as if they were naked. dazed. As the fat man spoke through a woman and said she unbeknownst to microphone to the lines of children, it became us we became Along a dirt road the truck stopped again at the partly clear to me why we had been brought didn’t want to bother her. the center of bottom of a hill with green manicured grass. to that place: because we were gringos. Or it discussion. Neena and I were already exhausted. We might be more accurate to say that we would With her eyes the woman were almost to the point of demanding that not have been brought there in such a fashion The man led us we return to the city. However in the distance if we were not gringos. The fat man likely pleaded back for Neena to a bowl in the music beckoned us. As we trudged up the hill expected us to romanticize the indigenous grass in front of and over a ridge we found ourselves facing a there, to identify with the missionaries, to the house. Lifting beautifully landscaped schoolyard, teeming proudly soak up every moment in which we to stay away. But the man it, a small rabbit with indigenous children and several white were called “volunteers” despite the fact that bounced toward us nuns. Behind them sat a small school. From we did no such work that day. We were not so answered verbally for from underneath. an enormous loudspeaker protruding from much people who deserved explanation, but Neena’s eyes lit the school’s overhang, a symphony version of instead opportunities of which he was happy to her that the she would up, and before “The Sound of Silence” played. The nuns, all take advantage. When Neena walked into his I could stop her of them white missionaries, came to greet us office, he likely saw the potential to capitalize she had produced smiling with their bonnets bouncing along as on us, not monetarily, but by selling us the be happy to have her her camera from they walked. We were introduced to them as church. He meant to draw us closer to the her bag and was volunteers, although I hadn’t done anything to church through flattery. photo taken with Neena. I taking pictures. be called that, and was beginning to wonder The fat man asked if I even knew what the word meant since it This concept of “gringo” is made by gringos wondered why it was his if she wanted him had been miscontextualized already that day. just as much as by Mexicans. Although to take a picture The sisters led us, both stumbling disoriented it is unclear what the fat man was trying place to say that, and not for her. She said behind, in the direction of basketball courts to accomplish with driving us around that fine, crouching where the children had begun to line up morning, it is clear that he saw himself as a near the rabbit to according to gender and age. patron to his imaginary, yet informed idea of the woman’s.” pose and handing gringo. And now it always drives me crazy to him the camera. Simon and Garfunkel had faded out and see other Americans complaining of the way But when he took The Sound of Music began to play from the they are treated in different countries. Much it she realized what he had really meant loudspeaker. It added an aesthetic of European of the time such behavior is just a dialectical as he motioned for her to stand next to the purity to a place peopled by brown bodies in response to our own. The dehumanization indigenous woman to get in a picture. The shabby clothes, augmenting the cruelly ironic can go both ways. Where we exploit other woman looked embarrassed and stared at the facade that hopelessly failed at obscuring the countries and fetishize their cultures, ground. Both Neena and I protested politely racist paternalism there. It was screaming at our tourists are manipulated. The reality at first, and then stubbornly said no, but the me from places and faces. I was too distracted sometimes is that what bothers us is not the fat man insisted. Neena turned to the woman by it to focus on a single person, or on where people there, but the reflection we see in and said she didn’t want to bother her. With I was going. I became fixated on a smiling nun them, that of ourselves. her eyes the woman pleaded back for Neena patting a boy on the head, nuns correcting to stay away. But the man answered verbally children’s postures. It all carried striking for her that the she would be happy to have tones of conquest, residual traces of colonial una lagrima her photo taken with Neena. I wondered attempts to convert a native race of people in It is striking to realize that nearly every person why it was his place to say that, and not the order to control them. The missionaries kept praying in Acteal’s tiny dilapidated church on woman’s. pulling me by the hand, insisting that I come the morning of December 22, 1997 – almost a

24 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 quarter of the people living and taking refuge in Luckily I was able to set myself apart from Chiapas. Autonomous groups are threatening that community – was murdered in a five-hour the horde of tourists who took photos and in that they are more committed to making period. Paramilitaries in cahoots with the then video of the service. Although we knew that revolutionary change happen themselves than powerful PRI party in Chiapas chased people it commemorated a massacre, we did not they are to asking the government for change. out of the community’s church and killed 45 of understand it. Running into Clemente, with They are repressed because they do not ask for them as they fled toward the community center whom I worked back in San Cristóbal, I felt permission—for the fact that their growth and and into the brush. They had stepped over the relieved to separate from them. The two of us development is not filtered through or endorsed line in their struggle for indigenous autonomy, sat together on a stoop and he explained to me by the state. to live outside of the domain of the government in Spanish what was being said in the mainly and wealthy landowners. Tzotzil ceremony. He pointed out the Mesa But when a movement can be drawn into Directiva. They sat on the amphitheater floor, the state apparatus or paid off, betraying its Almost ten years later their torsos are frozen in all wearing enormous hats with multicolored ideals and followers, there is little need for stone. They all reach up toward the sky, forming strips of tape cascading on all sides. Then he police force or physical violence. All of Mexico a giant black obelisk. There are no eyes in their pointed me in the direction of the community’s has a history of cooptation and betrayal that decomposing and agonized faces, just blind church, where the paramilitaries had arrived dates back to the last years of the Mexican vacant pits. The statue depicting the victims and had begun to shoot the praying community Revolution, when opponents lured Emiliano draws the attention of passers-by and visitors members and refugees. The refugees had Zapata into a trap, saying they wanted to make to Acteal, a neighborhood in the municipality been taking shelter in the community under an agreement with him but instead murdering of Chenalho, alongside a mountain road that enormous tarps, having been uprooted from him in their own territory. They took a photo of skirts the community’s highest elevated limits. their own communities by the same violence themselves with his dead body and sent it back Despite the statue’s terrifying appearance, that would ultimately catch up with them. to his supporters as testimony to the death of ladies perched around it selling apples and Throughout late 1997 and 1998, paramilitary radical land reform. The same elite co-opted tamales are somehow able to ignore it, groups with names such as Peace and Justice, Zapata’s vital image, not that of the pale, dead speaking softly in Tzotzil among each other. Red Mask and Anti-Zapatista Revolutionary face sent back to his supporters, and built the From this high point a break in the banana and Movement terrorized the Zapatistas, Las Abejas PRI party on revolutionary ideals as a way to pine trees gives way to a view of the valley and their supporters. The paramilitaries were “institutionalize” the revolutionary changes below. The grids of tiny farm plots and patches indigenous people, oftentimes from the same set into motion (PRI stands for Institutional of clouds fill the valley floor like cereal and milk communities they terrorized. The ruling PRI Revolutionary Party). The PRI pulled virtually fill a bowl. party in Chiapas funded the groups in order that all unions and institutions under its wing, they might burn houses, kill civilians and chase ostensibly to give the revolution permanence I arrived there in August with a handful of the survivors into the forest. and solidity. Where progressive reforms were noisy European tourists in the bed of a truck. written into the new constitution, such as the We had careened through the mountains Although the indigenous have historically had ejido system that granted farming communities for two hours, whistling into the wind and some autonomy under colonial and post- collective ownership of lands, a hierarchy of letting the extra material on our sleeves flap colonial regimes, powerful groups in Mexico corruption and impunity emerged. Efforts of like sails on a boat. As the truck came to a cannot tolerate the indigenous people that slip progressive movements were drawn into it to standstill, I jumped down, teary-eyed, and beyond their realm of control. In the legacy serve the interests of the party rather than the descended a cement staircase through banana of conquest, the indigenous are good to the revolution. Now in Chiapas, co-optation reigns. trees to the amphitheater where priests and elite for the resources, symbolic and material, For example, several leaders of leftist peasant the Mesa Directiva, Las Abejas’ judicial and that can be cheaply extracted from them. organizations in the 80’s eventually joined the steering committee, were leading a service Indigenous people who cease to serve that role administration of President Carlos Salinas de commemorating the deaths of the 45 victims are inherently at odds with elite power, which Gortari who led free-market restructuring of the killed on that same day in December of relies on their complacency and docility. The economy.15 Also NGOs with government ties 1997. On the 22nd of every month, hundreds Zapatistas, Las Abejas and others involved try to convince Zapatista leaders to take less of members of Las Abejas fill the small in autonomous movements are usually not militant positions to get government aid.16 amphitheatre that serves as the group’s repressed because they are aggressors to the organizational center. There they pay their state or wealthy landowners. For example, Historically wealthy landowners in Chiapas respects to the dead in a customary Catholic those killed in Acteal were all pacifists, yet they have hired thugs and gunmen to act as the ritual. still represented a threat to the government of arms of capital, securing or stealing land

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 25 for large ranches and plantations on which to identify with the victim. Since my range of below. Eventually the prayer ceased and man indigenous people are employed. Likewise, the experiences with loss has been so limited, I raised his fist in the air out of the shoulders, government has violently repressed the more would become self-aware of how ridiculously screaming, militant elements of indigenous communities. privileged I was to be forcing myself to feel However, where actual acts of violence destroy bad, and I would end up feeling more guilty “¡Viva! the mothers of the resistance!” significant parts of the population, be it a chunk than anything else. But staring at me closely “¡Viva!” they responded. of the community or central figure, the violence from their faded photos on the wall the thin “¡Viva! Las Abejas!” in Chiapas has not been as significant as a faces of the victims had a certain familiarity. “¡Viva!” they responded. full-out genocide, as in Guatemala. The point of They leapt out at me and held me in their “¡Viva! the insurgents for autonomy!” violence in Chiapas is not so much that a state gaze. The floor above me began to rumble and, “¡Viva!” takes control of a community by literally killing suddenly conscious of where I was, I realized it, but rather by intimidating people. Violence the air had become heavy. I walked outside into might kill leaders, but more importantly to the the light. Family Albums life of organized struggle, it kills the will of Understandings or strategies for supporters. A hump of earth just outside the memorial describing human differences have helped gave me a view of the amphitheater floor recreate and reproduce social hierarchies. By getting preoccupied with death and where most of the men and women present At the least, those hierarchies have terrorism, were Las Abejas becoming docile— stepped slowly to a band of men who were created small humiliations and rejections, essentially doing what the paramilitaries plucking discord out of some fiddles and a and have lessened opportunities. At wanted? Was death haunting these people so harp. People shook maracas and tiredly moved the worst, they have abetted wars of much that it became an obsession obscuring their shoulders into the slow, persistent extermination, lynchings and rape. their struggles? Were they being controlled? rhythm. Watching everyone there in this act, I Representations may be deployed for I couldn’t say for sure, because although finally made the connection that the faces in or against such horrors or indifferently Clemente translated, I still didn’t understand the photos below were those of families and in relation to them, but they are never the service. I was more or less bored. However friends. Before everyone had been passive in irrelevant, never unconnected to the world I was still more committed to the service the ritual. I understood it only as restriction of actual social relations. Images of the than the tourists who had given up and were because to me enduring the hours of Tzotzil non-Western world draw on and articulate smoking cigarettes together in the back of the was little more than that. But seeing each ideas and thus, like all conceptual work, amphitheater. Having heard of a monument person plodding along I became aware that become cultural and historical, mutable for those killed beneath the amphitheater I they were celebrating, healing wounds and and political in intent and/or effect.17 ventured along its side, looking for an opening. nurturing memory. It was no longer spectacle. Descending steps I slipped underneath the The memories of the dead were embodied, I left the hostel one night with my friend Marga, amphitheater’s floor. My eyes adjusting to the making themselves alive, present and real. a Guatelajaran college student doing the civil light, I was further disappointed to find very service work required of all university students in little there besides barren concrete floors and The dancers formed a procession that passed Mexico. Across the street passed an indigenous bare brick walls. A cross painted with small down steps in front of me and under the woman wearing a sheepskin skirt and a sash praying figures leaned against a far wall and amphitheater floor. Gathering myself I entered cradling a child against her back. Mid-sentence a candle offered a tiny warm glow in the vast again, following them. The music stopped, Marga stopped, producing a black camera from cold chamber. and they all kneeled. Realizing that I was the her bag. By the time I had also stopped to turn to last one standing, I fell to the ground as well. her she had it against her eye and was skillfully Over my shoulder I noticed eyes fixed on me I entered into prayer with them, but in the turning the lens. As the woman passed directly and quickly turned my head to see that the wall dark my thoughts were distracted by the hum underneath a street lamp, the shutter snapped, from which I entered was covered in photos of prayer around me. Still bowing I opened and she was frozen in that moment, silhouetted of unsmiling faces. Squinting and moving my eyes a little bit to see if anyone was against colonial red adobe brick. Marga closely I noticed that most of the dark-faced watching me. No one was. I opened my eyes disappeared the camera into her bag, grinning figures wore brilliant dresses. In fact at a closer completely, still feigning prayer. Around me a at me, but I didn’t return a smile. Clearly taking glance I could see that almost all of the victims sea of hunched shoulders bent over the cold the picture without permission hadn’t made her pictured were women and children. In other concrete in which bodies of the 45 victims of as uncomfortable as it had made me. I wasn’t memorials to tragic events I had forced myself the December 22 massacre were entombed tactful at all in telling her how angry I was.

26 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 “Why did you do that?” I demanded, negative light as the photographer has the But still, my own personal inability to “speak” deliberately blowing her cover. “You didn’t power to highlight certain elements of a about indigenous people did not come so ask first!” My outburst annoyed her, and she person to express something about them. Also much from the fear that I would say the wrong seemed suddenly uncomfortable around me, photos have a reciprocal relationship with thing, although an overbearing blonde boy drawing attention articles, headlines and captions in the way this is sometimes “I hadn’t expected to to his fragmented Spanish. She hurried along the former help us to understand the latter, a concern. What past me, performing the part of young woman and vice versa. Together the photos and text troubled me more accosted by disorderly male stranger. Uncoolly I create a total message. This presentation than how people have to explain myself persisted. She asked me what I meant. I hadn’t can have a harmful effect when explanations speak is who expected to have to explain myself because of photos appeal to people’s prejudices or exactly is doing the because the injustice the injustice seemed self-evident, and I hadn’t reinsert them into negative contexts. But, she speaking, or who prepared a way to articulate my thoughts. She said, her situation was different. Certainly is able to speak seemed self-evident, and responded to my silence, saying simply that with the news media, the represented and be heard. They the best photographers didn’t ask before taking peoples’ public reputations were at stake. call the Zapatista photos. However, she only wanted to keep the photos radio station I hadn’t prepared a way to for her own personal use. So what harm could Radio Insurgente, “My professor in college would be walking be done? “the voice of articulate my thoughts. She along side you like this, then jump in front the voiceless,” of you, and BOOM!” She blocked my path, I knew we were talking about something because it is an responded to my silence, thrusting the lens in my face. In it I could see more than the public image of a few people, outlet for people my frowning reflection. The shutter snapped but I couldn’t respond at the time. I still felt who cannot usually saying simply that the best open and then closed again. She pulled the uncomfortable with the whole situation and make their own camera away from her eye and the frown in my concluded that I must be paranoid. But even representations reflection had displaced onto her face. Clearly though what we do with the images that heard. They are photographers didn’t ask I hadn’t taken her point. I could tell already we take is important, an even more serious voiceless, not in that arguing with her was going to make me issue lay beneath the entire discussion of the sense that they before taking photos.” feel self-righteous and probably alienate her. how they are manipulated. We are constantly are mute, but in I knew also that our friendship was delicate representing things. For example, with the sense that their and precarious under the strain of differences language we substitute the word for a thing, voice isn’t afforded the same legitimacy or in opinion. But I couldn’t help myself from concept or action. It might scare some people can’t be projected in the same way. speaking my mind, as the issue that brought to think that a word is not a concrete or me to Chiapas in the first place had just static concept. Every time we use a word, we Vocalized sounds make a voice when they manifested itself before my eyes. It had taken recontextualize it and redefine it. In a sense understood as such, when they cut into the a very simple form, that of the unequal control we are always misrepresenting what we multitude of voices and asserts themselves of representations between tourists and local want to talk about because the thing, concept as truth. In Mexico and in most places, some indigenous people. I explained that white and or action is understood within a totally new voices are audible and understood while mestizo people are almost always the ones context. The gravity of realizing that this others are not as much. I thought there who choose the ways in which indigenous imperfection in language has a potential to do was something inherently wrong with this people are represented. By taking a picture, good things as well as horrible things can be imbalance. The ways in which we explain even the tourist is assuming a degree of power frightening. But Marga probably would have ideas, situations and other people through the over the subject of the photograph. Photos said that if we thought about this every time use of representation is critical, but no matter make it into family albums, alongside other we spoke, we would get paralyzed, so afraid what we do, the harm has already been done images of ancient ruins and landscapes. that we might misrepresent something with before we even open our mouths, put a pen to our language. Then we would never be able to paper, click on a tape recorder, or reach for a She was patient as I spoke and agreed with say anything. To her it was probably all right camera. me that recontextualizing images could have that language would misrepresent something a harmful effect. She used the example else at times, or all the time. That is the But this is not to say that the harm is of publishing a photograph of someone in nature of language as well as representations irreversible. Because although there are deep a newspaper. A person could be cast in a in general. systematic problems that precede everything

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 27 we do, change can come when marginalized Bibliography people put more pens to paper, click on more Bakunin, M. (2002). Bakunin on Anarchism. Lutz, Catherine A. and Collins, Jane L. (1993). tape recorders and use more cameras. The Montreal. Reading National Geographic. University of indigenous media activists in Chiapas know Chicago Press, Chicago. that control of major media will not simply fall Barras, B. (2004). ‘Way of Life’ or ‘Who into their laps. But they know that for the most Decides’: Development, Paraguayan Marcos, S. (2003). “Chiapas: La Treceava part they don’t have to fight over it either. Indigenism and the Yshiro People’s Life Estela, Ediciones del Frente Zapatista de Instead they make their own. Projects. In the Way of Development. M. F. Liberación Nacional.” Blaser, Harvey, A. and McRae Glenn. McCaughan, M. (1997). “Chiapas Massacre Collier, G. A. (2005). Basta!: Land and the Exposes Low Intensity War in Chiapas”, Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas. Global Exchange. Oakland, Food First Book. O’ Connor, G. (1995). Amazon Journal. Contreras, V. (2006). Interview. D. Duffy. San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Ochoa, A. (2006). El Cancionero Popular Vol. 1 (Audio Recording), Fonarte Latino. Corrêa, M. (2006). Meu primeiro contato. Paoli, A. (2003). Educación, autonomía y lekil Domínguez, O. H. (2006). “La recomposición kuxlejal: Aproximaciones sociolingüísticas a de fuerzas en Chiapas, rumbo a las la sabiduría de los tseltales. . México elecciones para Gobernador.” Boletines de Distrito Federal, Univesidad Autónoma CIEPAC, 513. Metropolitana.

Eisenstein, S. (1931). ¡Que viva México! Perez, J. A. J. (2006). Interview. D. Duffy. San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Golden, T. (1994). “Rebel Attack Hit Four Towns in Mexico: Reports Say Guerillas Killed Up to Picard, M. (2005). Los migrantes 7 While Demanding Broad Social Reforms.” mesoamericanos en su travesía hacia el The New York Times. New York: 9. norte. E. P. d. l. Americas. Silver City.

Gupta, A. (1998). Postcolonial Developments: Rostow, W. W. (2004). “The Five Stages of Agriculture in the Making of Modern India. Growth”. Development and Durham, Duke University. Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality. M. A. Seligson. Boulder. Hernández, M. C. (2006). Interview. San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Illich, I. (1968). Talk Delivered at the Conference Condition Have Failed. Yale University. of Interamerican Student Projects. Chicago. Turner, T. (1991). ”Representing, Resisting, Kirsch, S. (2001). “Lost Worlds: Environmental Rethinking: Historical Transformations of Disaster, “Culture Loss’ and the Law.” Kayapo Culture and Anthropological Current Anthropology 42(2). Consciousness.” History of Anthropology.

Landau, S. (1995). El sexto sol: rebelión Maya en Chiapas.

28 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Notes 1. Landau, S. (1995). El sexto sol: rebelión Maya 15. Collier, G. (2005). Basta!: Land and the en Chiapas. Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas. Oakland, Food First Book. 2. Golden, T. (1994). “Rebel Attack Hit Four Towns in Mexico: Reports Say Guerillas 16. Domínguez, O. H. (2006). “La recomposición Killed Up to 7 While Demanding Broad Social de fuerzas en Chiapas, rumbo a las elecciones Reforms.” The New York Times. New York: 9. para Gobernador.” Boletines de CIEPAC 513.

3. Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: 17. Lutz, Catherine A. and Collins, Jane L. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human (1993). Reading National Geographic. University Condition Have Failed. Yale University. of Chicago Press, Chicago.

4. Rostow, W. W. (2004). “The Five Stages of Growth.” Development and Undevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality. M. A. Seligson. Boulder.

5. Perez, J. A. J. (2006). Interview. D. Duffy. San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

6. Hernández, M. C. (2006). Interview. San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

7. Bakunin, M. (2002). Bakunin on Anarchism. Montreal.

8. Marcos, S. (2003). “Chiapas: La Treceava Estela, Ediciones del Frente Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.”

9. Eisenstein, S. (1931). ¡Que viva Mexico!

10. Ochoa, A. (2006). El Cancionero Popular Vol. 1 (Audio Recording), Fonarte Latino.

11. Kirsch, S. (2001). ”Lost Worlds: Environmental Disaster, ‘Culture Loss’ and the Law.” Current Anthropology 42(2).

12. Ibid.

13. Turner, T. (1991). ”Representing, Resisting, Rethinking: Historical Transformations of Kayapo Culture and Anthropological Consciousness.” History of Anthropology.

14. O’Connor, G. (1995). Amazon Journal.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 29 The Politics of History Education in the Balkans: The Young Generation as Transmitter of Reconciliation

Kosmas Kaprinis ‘07

alkan, a: Of or pertaining to the peninsula bounded by the Adriatic, Ægean, and Black Seas, or to the countries or peoples of this region; spec. with allusion to the relations B (often characterized by threatened hostilities) of the Balkan states to each other or to the rest of Europe; so in the derivatives, Balkanic (blkænk), Balkanoid adjs., Balkanism. Hence Balkanize v., to divide (a region) into a number of smaller and often mutually hostile units, as was done in the Balkan Peninsula in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Oxford English Dictionary)

I was not sure of how concise my definition of membership being a far dream for most of the microcosm of the complexity of Macedonia, the terms “Balkans” would be, so I resorted region’s countries, Balkan people see their lives a sub-region of the Balkans with a rich to the Oxford dictionary for a more accurate doomed in this everlasting narrative of warfare. multiethnic heritage of more than 3,000 years. result. Even for somebody unfamiliar with Indicative of this situation is that immigration The geographer H. R. Wilkinson, in his book on contemporary world politics, Balkans is to Western Europe is the aspiration of the the area, comments on the complexity of the synonymous with ethnic antagonism, political majority of the population. region, contending that the term Macedonia and military upheaval. Political scientists and “defies a definition.” The post-1990 nationalist policy makers, in terms of promoting a new My belief is that we should abolish any era, in the wider region, revived the questions image for the region, initiated the use of the metaphysical determinism that the Balkans regarding Macedonian history and identity term “Southeastern Europe” to describe the have been historically a venue of warfare and which were set aside for many decades. My same geographical area. The name change, will remain so in the future. Young people, personal situation illustrates the quest of though, cannot delete historical memory. constituting the most dynamic group in the every Macedonian for ethnic and cultural self- Narratives of numerous wars, relocation of society, can bring the desired change. My determination in this new age. borders, exchanges of territory and people, and aspiration is that young Balkans will maturely inter-ethnic conflicts are prevalent within every manage their historical heritage and get actively I was born in Thessaloniki, the capital ethnic group in the region. involved in forging modern Balkan states. of historic Macedonia and birthplace of Alexander the Great. Thessaloniki has been, Are we citizens of the countries of the Balkans for the last century, part of the republic to consider ourselves as a unique case, as Throughout history, the Balkans have of Greece, with a population of whom 95 ill-fated peoples who should be pitied because been a crossroad, a zone of endless percent identify as Greek-Macedonians. The military, cultural, and economic they are destined never to see the light of Macedonian atmosphere is prevalent all over mixing and clashing between Europe day? The post-1990 era has provided no and Asia, Christianity and Islam, the place: ancient temples, statues, venues sustainable solution for the region. Devastated Catholicism and Orthodoxy. (Mark of Ancient Macedonia remind everybody of economies, dysfunctional political systems Mazower) a glorious Macedonian cultural heritage. and ethnic tensions comprise the image of The history of the Balkans is depicted in the Consequently, it is inevitable that this the contemporary Balkans. The recent shift narratives of its people: personal stories population feels detached from its history of interest of the international community to of individuals who confront the issues of and is confronted with an international other parts of the world left most of the Balkan ethnic identity and historical heritage in their environment that denies its right for self- disputes unresolved. With the European Union everyday lives. My life scenario constitutes a determination as Macedonians.

30 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Slavic Macedonians comprise the majority in language spoken in South Bulgaria. I think that the development of human networks for the the neighboring state, the Former Yugoslavic it may make some sense to a foreigner now promotion of inter-ethnic understanding and the Republic Of Macedonia (FYROM), established why we refer to the situation as a Macedonian advancement of knowledge with an emphasis in 1991. This group has different cultural salad. on public policy. It characteristics from other ethnic groups in is widely regarded “We should abolish any the region. They proclaim their distinct ethnic The history of the Balkans was more than a today as the most origin, declaring that they are the only ethnic plain historical inquiry for me, as I was raised prominent institute metaphysical determinism Macedonian group, something that is heavily in a period of ethnic tension that emerged after in terms of research disputed by Greeks and Bulgarians. the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early on Balkan politics 1990s. Questions that dealt with contemporary and economics. The that the Balkans have regional politics and history were considered Balkans Studies ...a Macedonian salad, in the end, taboo, even in an academic environment. After Seminars constitute been historically a venue is just a mixed salad. A salad with ten years of high school and college education a unique (for the a diversity of similar ingredients— in history as well as personal readings, I was region) educational fruits, veggies, warring ethnicities, of warfare and will remain whatever. convinced that I had a solid background in initiative of high Balkan history and was open-minded enough to quality, organized Whenever I identify myself as an ethnic discuss these topics; my summer internship at in collaboration so in the future. Young Macedonian, an international would assume the Kokkalis Foundation was a unique chance with Yale and Duke that I am of Slavic origin and not Greek. I would for me to be “exposed” to an environment of Universities. The people, constituting the definitely not consider this an insult, since people with the same interests and concerns main thematic every civilization has its cultural heritage that as me. unit of the 2006 one is proud of. I feel, though, deprived of a most dynamic group in seminars was vital part of my national identity. My situation I thought myself as extremely privileged that entitled “War, exemplifies the complexity that arises from the society, can bring the I could form my own inquiry in respect to the Conflict and the content of the rule of self-determination, Ethics Center Student Fellowship. I chose to Identity.” A number the situation where the rights of two different work for the Olympia 2006 Balkan Seminars of acknowledged desired change.” ethnic groups conflict. There are no legal organized by the Kokkalis foundation in Greece. academics and procedures by which one can protect his The central mission of the Kokkalis Foundation researchers right to a national identity. All international is the promotion of a peaceful, democratic and addressed the above theme with respect to the charters denote the supremacy of the right of prosperous Southeastern Europe through the current developments in Southeastern Europe. self-determination, assuming this is the main development of public, cultural and scientific principle, which will regulate the relations life in the region. Through its various initiatives, between neighboring states. it seeks to leverage the region’s human capital My return to the Balkans and cultural heritage in order to develop a I spent the first part of the internship in the Besides its political aspects, this situation democratic polity, a new economy and a civic headquarters of the Kokkalis foundation in brings many practical problems to everyday society that provide opportunities to all nations. Athens, welcomed by my supervisor and issues. An ethnic Macedonian may be a citizen The Foundation sponsors numerous initiatives the rest of the academic staff. Although of FYROM, but the airport of Macedonia and relative to the region, including the organization my assignment there entailed a series of the University of Macedonia are located in of public fora, international conferences, administrative issues, I was able to get Thessaloniki, Greece. Macedonian is the

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 31 valuable feedback on the formulation of political status in Southeastern Europe. I was different opinions on the topics, as a result of my proposal. The staff of the institute very interested to read pieces that comment personal experience and national sentiment. was comprised of experts on issues of on Balkan politics in a very moderate manner; public policy and politics of the Balkan many of the applicants included their personal Then came June 30th; my last day at the office region. They expressed their interest in my experience in terms of the recent events in filled me with anxiety for what was going to project and provided their insight in terms the region, such as cases where their families follow. It was time for the seminar to start, to of the issues that were expressed in my were dislocated because of warfare. I felt like put into action all the theoretical preparation of proposal. Their practical experience and an “outsider”; I belonged to the “privileged the previous period. perennial engagement with the Balkans side” of the Balkans, since my generation in was an invaluable source for me. Although Greece did not experience any warfare. The frustrated by the administrative workload Balkan controversy was an academic issue Moments from the seminar at the beginning, I felt privileged to interact for me, whereas for others was an everyday July 1st, 2006. We were on the bus from Athens with these individuals. They were highly reality. International Airport heading to Olympia. I felt qualified scholars, who returned to the region like a tourist guide, and crowd control was and devoted their careers to the prospect of Besides the administrative aspect of my certainly not my forte. Thirty-five students from a better future for the Balkans. Even tasks duties, I was able to devote some personal ten different countries were selected from a that might originally seem trivial and of no time to my research project. It set the pool of more than 120. I had worked towards particular interest for my research helped me question of whether the contemporary young their selection process for the past three weeks conceptualize the real socio-political situation generation (the age group of 15 to 30 years and read extensively about their backgrounds. of the contemporary Balkans. For example, old) has the potential of transition or such a I talked with some of them on the phone, I spent a considerable amount of time every goal would be unrealistic for the near future. helping them with their travel arrangements. day helping out participants with the visa The proposed research project examined Although we had done extensive research documentation and the procedures at the the attitude of a group of young Balkans on their backgrounds, I felt that there was Greek embassies in Southeastern Europe. (these are participants of the seminars, a lot more to know about them. All of them Having myself a passport of the Republic who identified themselves as coming from were leaders in their communities and had of Greece and the European Union, I have countries of the Balkan region) towards the demonstrated extensive interest in the field of traveled extensively in the region without issues of reconciliation within the framework political activism. I anticipated our first meeting the burden of issuing a visa. This was not of the already existing nation-states in the with great anxiety, since I didn’t know what to the case, though, with the citizens of the area. During this internship, I would have expect. other Balkan states who wanted to travel to the chance to interact with a solid group Greece; they cannot travel freely around and of young individuals from the Balkans and Our responsibilities would primarily demand their visa authorization procedures can take get concurrently academic training on from our side (the host organization) a many months. There were cases of students issues of Balkan history. The researchers politically correct approach to a number of who were awarded fellowships to attend of the foundation assisted in formulating issues; history is still in the making in the the seminars and were not granted visas in my research inquiry; they proposed a less Balkans and many of the participants are time to come to Greece. It seems that in the structured model of research, since the body personally involved in the events that were Balkans of 2006, we are not as close as the of participants was not a representative going to be discussed. We needed to make travel signs indicate. There are still barriers sample of contemporary Balkan youth them feel comfortable, in order to establish that keep us apart from reconciliation. (they were “community leaders,” having a truly multi-cultural environment in which already demonstrated commitment to the students would be able to express their Another task that I was assigned, while reconciliation process). They expressed their views freely. (This is the main reason why the in Athens, was to assist the Committee in concerns over the structure of the survey (I seminars are conducted in a hotel detached the evaluation of the applicants. University was in favor of a quantitative written survey, from an urban area: to decrease the impact of students and recent graduates from different whereas they proposed an open discussion the local community, Greece, on the work done backgrounds comprised a group of highly in a form of workshop); they helped me at the seminar.) I got advice to be prepared motivated young people, bringing in different address my topics in a politically correct even for a possible tension between students. experiences from academia, government and manner, in order to comply with a respectful Having all this feedback, I expected a rather civil service. Their application form asked for attitude towards every participant’s view. It is challenging two weeks ahead. their personal views in terms of the current challenging to address individuals who have

32 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 One main goal of the first days was to achieve side of it. Being occupied with a number of Their politically correct approach was really the cohesion of the group. The ice-breaking administrative issues, I was not able to attend remarkable (sometimes humor is the best way practice I got in the States was definitely the full session during the first day. At dinner, I to address “sensitive” issues in politics). The useful; but would this work with a group of got positive reactions about the quality of the comparative analysis of the problems of the people from Eastern Europe? (I have to admit course from the students. Balkans with the ones in other countries in that I did not think highly of those techniques the world was something really innovative. (I when I first came to the U.S.) My original Seeing the group around the dinner table, I was think that it was plan was to assign seats for the four-hour reminded of the Balkan villages of the Ottoman the first time that “A new Balkan identity can bus trip and rooming assignments at the Empire. A Balkan community isolated from the most participants hotel, “forcing” participants to socialize outside world had existed for more than five saw the Balkan arise from the new Balkan with people of different nationalities. I was hundred years during the previous millennium. conflict expressed really surprised to see that little effort was The people of the region were not separated by a mathematical- required in this field. Without even following into Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Romanians statistic equation.) cinema, contemporary a procedure of introducing everybody or Yugoslavs. In Olympia, the participants For me, though, publicly before getting on the bus, students were free of skepticism and resistance caused what was going to literature and music of themselves took the initiative of introducing by their national environment. They had be more interesting themselves to the rest of the group. They the chance to redefine themselves in terms was the discussion the region. All we need dashed to the back of the bus, making jokes of a collective Balkan identity. For them, in that followed. with each other; the bus ride resembled a high comparison to their ancestors, the bonding (At this point I school field trip rather than a politics seminar. factors might not be the Balkan folklore music should note that is to bring young people The stamina of participants was something or past historic experience. A new Balkan the participants of that really surprised me. Although our meeting identity can arise from the new Balkan cinema, the congress were together and let them point was the airport, most of the participants contemporary literature and music of the selected in terms had arrived in Athens by train or bus, after region. All we need is to bring young people of their academic interact without a hitch. very long journeys. It was definitely a smooth together and let them interact without a hitch. background beginning for the group. Give them voice, give them ownership of their and personal Give them voice, give future and the process for reconciliation might involvement in As though at a class reunion, some of the be simpler than we think it is. Balkan politics from students asked for music during the bus ride; among a big pool them ownership of their besides being a bit skeptical at the beginning, I It was a great privilege for us to have world- of applicants. They went forward with it. Listening to them singing class faculty from U.S. universities coming to were expected to future and the process for all together, I could not imagine all these Greece, providing their insight on the politics of have an active role “tension scenarios” that we were prepared for. the Balkan region. The sessions were organized in the discussions, reconciliation might be The power of rock music certainly had a bigger in a discussion mode, as the participants which were led impact than I could have imagined. You could had already had some exposure to the topics by the academic hear “heated” arguments – not about politics addressed. The second part of the seminar was experts.) simpler than we think it is.” but about bands and concerts. bringing in the most provocative issue of the seminar, the workshop on the “Macedonian” At the same time, The seminar hall was located opposite from our issue. The subject, which is of prime concern I was involved in organizing my workshops; hotel. A picturesque school building, used as for most countries in the region, constitutes from the first moment I would have to deal the local high school during the school year, had not only a historic inquiry, but brings up many with my dual role. My supervisor had advised been lavishly refurbished by the local council in controversies on the current status quo of me to “keep some distance” from the group; order to host the seminar. The freshly painted the Balkan region. The conference program the fact that I was at the same age as most walls and the brand new projector contrasted included a series of lectures, which were to be of the participants would potentially hinder with the casual spirit of the participants, who followed by a discussion by the participants. me from exercising control over the flow of reluctantly woke up at 7 a.m. to attend the the conversation. I would have to behave as a first day of the seminar. The orientation of the The lectures were really very interesting. student, integrating into the group, and, at the seminar was towards contemporary problems The lecturers were highly knowledgeable same time, acting as an administrator of the of the region and less on the historical and captured the attention of the audience. workshop.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 33 My overall impression from the discussions The right question is not “Is it true?” Trade is incompatible with War. was below my expectations. I definitely did but “what is it intended to do?” (Immanuel Kant) not witness a true political debate; I thought (S.H.Hooke) As in most cases in world politics, businessmen of most participants as part of their national From an academic standpoint, the focus of my are ahead of politicians in attempts of delegations, rolling out their pre-rehearsed inquiry was the developments that followed rapprochement between conflicting nations. speeches. There was no real exchange of the disintegration of the Republic of Yugoslavia The post-communist economic opportunities articulate argument between young people, in the early 1990s. This was a period of gross attracted a large number of businessmen who supposedly would bring innovative human rights violations in the area, with the to engage in inter-Balkan trade. In spite of ideas on the current issues. This is certainly first priority of the international community to the big business opportunities, companies a paradox for people who have committed be the cessation of violence. The long-term had to face a hostile environment, stemming their lives to studying political science and planning for a sustainable Balkan community from inadequate and irrational historical are engaged in public service for their local should not have been, though, limited to a arguments from the local communities. communities. It was depressing to see that the ceasefire, but should have implemented a This environment has obstructed their future leaders of the Balkans were not much radical social reconstruction. The question of economic activities and growth potential; different from the ones who had brought so how to deal with the legacy of past wars is they realized that a normalized present for many calamities to our region. It was my sense acute; the past in the Balkans entails traumatic the Balkans presupposed the arrangement of that the participants had no real interest in experience for all communities, since a high the past. Using their pressure towards local politics and had already adopted a bureaucratic percentage of the current population has had governments, they succeeded in putting the approach, with no real interest in the essence personal involvement in such events. issue of reforming history education on public of political activism. My above argument is agendas. Local governments, in cooperation not against the specific group of students, but Reconciliation is a concept used by politicians with the international community, started a reflects the general standing of my generation and political scientists to describe the series of initiatives towards history education. towards political issues. progress towards peaceful and democratic societies. But what is reconciliation all about? It is almost 1 a.m. after a very tiring day Most interpretations include the themes of The Balkans produce more histroy working the seminar. Wandering around the international justice, apology of politicians, than they can consume. (Winston hotel, I stop by the computer room. I see forgiveness, individual heeling, commemoration Churchill) Dusan, a senior politics student from Belgrade, of grievances, reform of history education. Among the various initiatives regarding the Serbia, still working. Waving his hand, he asks Many historians argue that history education politics of history education in the Balkans, I me to come to see his PC. Noticing that he is cannot be disarmed; history classes are focused on the very systematic work done by browsing the pages of UK universities, I ask experienced as training for citizens, in order the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in him if he is interested in continuing his studies to effectively argue in favor of the nation’s Southeastern Europe, in Thessaloniki, Greece. there. “Masters in Politics in London?” I ask. interest. The various initiatives around the This project was a result of capital and personal world are attempting to set up new standards involvement invested by Kostas Karras, a Greek “No, my friend, politics is interesting, but and principles in history teaching. They have ship owner and an Oxford history graduate business is where all the money is” he examined a vast range of violence, from the who made the change in the approach to replies. “Come with me to do business in the protracted cases in Northern Ireland and South history his mission, acting within the Center Balkans.” Africa to civil war in Guatemala and Somalia. initiatives. The CDRSEE three-year project on All these attempts can be helpful in establishing the politics of history education in the Balkans Doing some thinking that night, I acknowledged a framework for the case of the Balkans. The produced interesting findings. The comparative that my initial impression of the group might ultimate goal is to transform history education analysis of national educational systems have been an easy generalization. Maybe they from a cause of conflict to a means of mutual revealed that, regardless of the education and were materializing their reconciliation with a understanding. It is certainly challenging to democratization standards of each community, more practical mindset, avoiding a pretentious confront a reality different from the national history education had some common problems political approach. Since all traditional political historiography and the family narratives, facing in the region. First of all, they indicated that norms have failed in the Balkans, we might a very different perception of the same historic there was no will towards knowing anything need to experiment. As my friend from Belgrade events. This transformation, though, is an about each other. History books, focusing on illustrated, inter-Balkan business might bring us essential precondition for the establishment of the broader European perspective, were geared closer than peace initiatives. sustainable democratic societies. towards the history of Western European

34 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 nations, omitting any developments in the term agents in the process of reconciliation. conflicting “Textbooks create the neighboring countries; they were depicted with As stated by Elizabeth Cole (world expert in narratives. “dim colors on the maps,” giving the impression the politics of history education), “five or ten Additionally, of an area that does not need to be studied. years can make a difference.” My generation we should notion that we have always Furthermore, these books transmitted to the has had direct experience from the warfare; acknowledge that student bodies the sense of victimization, the next one will have vague memories of it historical research been winners and our through simplified and biased presentations and might consider it irrelevant to its political does not always of military events. The project identified a standing. The situation in the Balkans is even result in objective neighbors losers, or that we common pattern according to which “we have more complex, as ethnic tension still prevails findings, but is never done anything to harm our neighbors and in certain regions, undermining any systematic strongly related are the eternal victims.” have never waged wars to conquer.” Textbooks attempt for a regional reform in history to the viewpoint create the notion that we have always been education. of the historian winners and our neighbors losers, or that we and his audience. are the eternal victims, providing an “excellent Furthermore, it would be beneficial to The controversies over the events during the psychological background for generation of connect the regional and domestic conflicts Yugoslav wars make consensus a very difficult conflicts of varying intensity” (Elizabeth Cole). with examples of fragmented societies and task. reconciliation processes around the globe. The The experts in the field agree on some common legitimacy of international organizations and Special attention should be given not only recommendations in terms of reforms in the the credibility of academics from the West to the content but to the methodological area of history education, applicable in the case can be helpful in overcoming the local political approach as well. Teachers should promote of the Balkans. First of all, we should denote disputes of who will be in charge of the critical thinking, which will motivate students the primary role of school as an agent of social reform, bringing all groups to work together. to seek the truth between the various transmission. Especially in cases of fragmented “Outsiders” can bring their wisdom from narratives. Teachers of history in post-conflict societies, where ethnic division, mistrust and similar cases abroad, add professionalism areas are more than instructors. They need propaganda are prevalent, the school can be a to the projects and attract funding from to become mediators between the political place of responsible and democratic education. foreign governments. We should not, though, reality and objective history. We should help It should be an agent of positive values, overlook the local teaching methodology and teachers to gain the necessary skills that promoting critical thinking towards politics. knowledge; in many instances, foreign aid will enable them to handle a comparative failed to adapt to the regional circumstances, approach to history. Whereas official history Another aspect of reconciliation, which is producing overall very poor results. reforms require years to pass, teachers can related to my personal inquiry, is the issue promptly embrace change in their teaching of time; sociologists argue that the idea In terms of the actual history curriculum methods. As past experience indicates, that hatred fades as time passes by is not and its revision, one should note that this though, it is extremely difficult for them to necessarily true (see Elizabeth Cole, “History is primarily a political issue. In most of the cope with this task; it is irrational to ask high Education and Sociopolitical Reconciliation Balkan counties, the revision of history school teachers to become leading figures in after Mass Crimes”). Time does not heal all books is a highly formalized procedure that the struggle for social change. wounds; communities tend to return to past is administered by government officials. events to address their current and future The extent of the revision is often a debate It is generally acknowledged that history political standing. Consequently, this would be between political parties. As a result, education is undervalued as a means a problem, not only for my generation but for debatable narratives that deal with highly of providing transitional justice and all the forthcoming ones. We need to approach sensitive national issues are usually absent reconciliation. Current administrations in with maturity the origins of the conflict, from history books. The major problem of the region have set history education as a since historical disputes will be a source of a reform would be to reach an agreement decreasing priority in their agenda, because instability for the future of the Balkans. It takes on historical narratives; ethnic groups have of its long-term character and its costly a number of years from the time that a change interests in retaining narratives that glorify implementation. The education is geared is initiated until it reaches the classroom their past and promote current national towards practical skills that will enable (this is the time needed for the consensus cohesion. They denote sharp divergences students compete in the marketplace, of academic historians to make its way into between themselves and the other ethnic implying that less practical initiatives like history textbooks), constituting schools as long- groups, with no interest to present the reforming history education are a luxury for

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 35 “The younger generation the Balkans. This approach is very similar to And yet, if the Balkans were no more than what I perceived as the aspiration of many horror, why is it, when we leave and make Balkan youths that I encountered during the for this part of the world, why is it we feel has adopted a much more seminars. They anticipate that their education a kind of fall – an admirable one, it is true will be oriented towards the economic – into the abyss? (Emil Cioran) realistic approach in development of the region. The whole debate in respect to the curriculum of history is of In order for Balkans to escape the tyranny of terms of political activism. less importance to them. Their “ostensible the past, our role is to restore hope to younger indifference” to their historical heritage generations, who are morally and spiritually Through their stance, they should not be misinterpreted; the younger enervated. My overall experience from the generation has adopted a much more realistic fellowship gave me reason to hope for a better approach in terms of political activism. future. It is high time we spoke openly about all expressed the view that Through their stance, they expressed the view painful subjects, setting aside our nationalist that the economic development and social sentiments. Instead we should try to revive the economic development reconstruction of their local communities is a the spirit of the traditional “Balkan village” of prerequisite for any attempt for reconciliation. the Ottoman Empire; a community of peaceful and social reconstruction of coexistence and mutual understanding of all ethnic and religious groups. And maybe the future generations will find a different definition their local communities is a for the term Balkans in their dictionary. prerequisite for any attempt for reconciliation.”

36 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Bibliography

Andric, I. (1959). The Brigde on the Drina. Mazower, M. (2004). Salonica, City of Ghosts: New York, The MacMillan Company. Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950. Harper Collins. Barsalou, E. A. C. a. J. “Unite or Divide? The Challenges of Teaching History in Societies Meshkovska, B. (2004). “Redefining the Emerging from Violent Conflict.” United Balkans: how the European Union offers States Institute of Peace, Special Report. a prospect for lasting peace in South-East Europe.” New Balkan Politics, Issue 9. Barsalou, J. (2005). “Trauma and Transitional Justice in Divided Societies.” United States Mouzelis, N. P. (1979). Modern Greece, Facets Institute of Peace, Special Report. of Underdevelopment. Holmes & Meier Publishers. Brown, S. (1989). Human Rights in World Politics. Longman. Najcevska, M. (2004). “Macedonia: Understanding History, Preventing Future Collective Volume (2003). Education of Conflict.” United States Institute of Peace, Minorities and Peace Education in Pluralistic Special Report. Societies. Prager. Pavkovic, A. (2000). The Fragmentation of Coulouri, E. b. C. (2002). Clio in the Balkans, Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the The Politics of History Education. Center for Balkans. St. Martin’s Press. Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe. Richard, B. (2006). “Rebuilding Balkan Bridges.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February Gallagher, T. (2005). The Balkans in the New (23): a12-16. Millennium: In the Shadow of War and Peace. Routledge. Ruzica, R. (2000). “Grappling with Peace Education in Serbia.” United States Institute Hoepken, W. “History-Textbooks and of Peace, Special Report Peaceworks. Reconciliation-Preconditions and Experiences in Comparative Perspective.” World Bank Todorova, M. (1997). Imagining the Balkans. meeting. New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press. Holly, H. (2004). “You, Me and Never the Twain Shall Meet: Perceptions of Education, History, Justice and Ethnicity.” Copenhagen: ADRA.

Jelavich, C. B. (1977). The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920. University of Washington Press.

Mazower, M. (2000). After the War Was Over. Piece and Oxford, Princeton University Press.

Mazower, M. (2002). The Balkans: A Short History. Random House.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 37 The End of Transition? Information and Democracy on the Brink of Bulgaria’s Accession to the European Union

Josh Rosenthal ‘07

hange at the Foot of Continuity C A Soviet soldier’s strong, iron fist thrusts into the sky, clenching the rifle that liberated the Bulgarian people from the Nazis. Standing atop a tower several stories tall, he is flanked by a brave man and a woman carrying a baby, and all three look forward into a proud Communist future. Around the base of the tower, proletarians in bas relief toil and fight, carrying flags, guns, blueprints and hammers courageously. Dark metal wreaths line a pathway from the monument to the street. Halfway down the path on the platforms on either side, frozen men, women and children coming back from war cheerfully greet each other, the children bearing baskets of food for the undoubtedly hungry soldiers.

At the end of the pathway lies Boulevard footballers and its namesake Vassil Levski. barriers aren’t covered in posters announcing a Tsar Osvoboditel, or Tsar Liberator, named for Levski is a martyr of the Bulgarian national Depeche Mode concert on Wednesday or the Alexander II of Russia in honor of his role in movement, hanged for organizing networks of strippers at a nearby club, they’re decorated liberating Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the fellow revolutionaries five years before Bulgaria with brightly colored graffiti, mostly in Latin late 1870s. At the corner of the park where would gain its statehood. lettering. (The crowd has a large white speech the monument stands, the road is divided into bubble saying “Yeah!”) A sign rises from behind two halves: leading south, the road is asphalt, But the monument of the Soviet soldier is not the barriers announcing that this is where but as you move north, the asphalt gives way only surrounded by other colossal memorials of the Taisei Corporation, a Japanese company, to yellow Viennese bricks, which lead to the the past. To the right, a ramp descends from the is building an extension to the Sofia Metro old National Palace, which once housed a base of one of the cheerful proletarian groups. system, a one-line subway that goes out to the royal family from Bavaria, and the old Party There, you’re likely to see a teenager on a bike city’s far suburbs. More than one Sofian will Headquarters, dedicated to leaders loyal to or skateboard performing some complicated proudly claim that it’s cleaner than any subway the Soviets. Nearby, the golden domes of trick that probably has an equally complicated they’d seen in the states. More noticeable, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral glint in the sun, name. At almost any time of day, at least however, are the commercials that are memorializing the Russian soldiers that died in one or two kids are maneuvering the maze of projected onto each station wall at rush hour. the process of Bulgarian liberation. ramps, rails, and obstacles that have been built These commercials are mirrored in the glass up here. At night, the baggy-shorted high- storefronts that line nearly every underground On the asphalt end of the boulevard, the schoolers seem like they could be anywhere, street crossing, displaying a narrow strip of monuments celebrate less foreign figures. drinking beer on the benches surrounding the goods and accompanying salesperson. skate park. When they can get their hands on The white edifice of Sofia University “St them, they like to shoot off fireworks that seem Back above ground, the park that contains the Kliment of Ohrid” takes up an entire block, to shake apartment buildings for blocks around. statue is filled with carts and small buildings memorializing the priest who codified the that sell food or drinks. Each vendor has at Cyrillic alphabet. The national stadium on On the left side of the path, the other group of least a few tables, sheltered from the sun by the other side serves to recognize both immortalized proletarians stands surrounded umbrellas. When a football match is being the Bulgarian man’s pride in his country’s by prefabricated metal walls. Where these played in the stadium, the park fills with old

38 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 women, sitting behind card tables. Some of 1. “Maybe it was just an interesting history is frequently recreated by Bulgarians them are Romani (more commonly known by time”: An Oral History of Transition through rituals and holidays, the years the derogatory term, gypsies) and some of As I tried to prepare myself to travel to Sofia, under Communist Party rule and those years them came from their small village farms or I tried to read as much as I could, whether since “the changes” of 1989 and 1990 have gardens nearby, but the peanuts and sunflower travel book or academic volume. Although I actively formed the perspectives and lives seeds they are selling all look the same. A few had decided to spend the summer interning of the founding generation of the Access to blocks away at Nevsky Cathedral, the card for a Bulgarian non-governmental organization Information Programme (AIP) and many other tables are more permanent, and more uniformly (or NGO), I still felt largely ignorant of the organizations. manned by Romani. They use their sparse place. Few Americans know much about this English to hock old Socialist license plates, small country, wedged between the former Looking at Gergana Jouleva, founder and musical instruments, and rose oil to tourists Yugoslav states, Turkey, Greece and Romania. executive director of AIP, as she sips freshly and passersby. Yet I would be traveling to this hidden place squeezed grapefruit juice at a chic café, it is and working with the Access to Information not hard to imagine Little of this commerce would have been Programme, an organization of Bulgarians who her when she was “In its geography and its allowed before the fall of communism in try to increase the availability of government in her early 20s. 1990. Teenagers would have little access to records, documents, and reports for citizens. She wears the cultural history, Bulgaria is the Western subculture of skateboarding, let matching jewelry, alone permission to skateboard around one of While preparing myself to leave, I kept seeing shoulder-length Sofia’s main monuments. There is no chance one metaphor over and over again. In its hair, and stylish perpetually portrayed as a that a Japanese company would have been geography and its cultural history, Bulgaria clothes of a young constructing a public works project. As each of is perpetually portrayed as a crossroads woman. At the crossroads between East these activities occur around the monument, between East and West. In the early middle same time, a few the meaning of the monument changes. Of ages, this played itself out in Bulgaria’s strands of graying and West.” course, there is no longer a Soviet Union leadership within the Orthodox Church, in hair and bags under for Bulgaria to pledge friendship to, but the opposition to the Roman pope. After the rise her eyes indicate monument has taken on other significance. It of the Ottomans in Turkey (its neighbor to the the nearly constant has become a skate park, a gathering place south), Bulgaria became a site of contestation stream of work, phone calls and meetings and a market. For executives halfway around between Christianity in general and the with a stream of journalists, clients and the world, it is a building site. For the few “threat” of Islam and the Orient. As soon as others. After ordering a vodka (and pressuring Western tourists who come to Sofia, it is an Bulgaria gained its independence, the people me to do the same), she begins to describe the opportunity for a souvenir photo – a photo that realigned themselves with the West, highly turbulence she felt at the time. Bulgaria was could say to disbelieving friends, “I was really valuing Western European thought and high one of the most closely tied satellite states there, and they really were Communists!” culture, even as they paid their allegiance to to the USSR, even applying to be one of the Although this monument and counterparts in the Russians for successfully liberating the Soviet Socialist Republics at one point. This other aspects of Bulgarian life celebrate history country from Ottoman rule. During World War led some of the best and brightest students and mark continuity with the past, everyday II, the Bulgarian state swung from supporting to study there, including Gergana. This time actions and the developments at their feet the fascists to supporting the Soviets, in the USSR in the 1970s laid the seeds of her continue to define how they are understood and cementing the relationship that would last tendency to dissent. experienced. for the next 45 years. Although all of this

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 39 Gergana: I was in the faculty of the younger students. So we could talk Under the leadership of long-time Communist philosophy and there were professors about anything. Even in the philosophy dictator Todor Zhivkov, the Bulgarian who had just come back from the camps class, we only read an early piece by government’s secrecy with environmental in Siberia. And they talked about their Marx, which the teacher described as information from was not its only violation experiences. One of them had lost an “the last worthwhile piece he wrote.” As of citizens’ rights. In the 1980s, the state eye, and he was teaching the class on I continued with protests and NGO work, also initiated the “regenerative process.” History of Marxism. Soon, I decided to students from my gymnasia who had Intended to bolster Bulgarian nationalism, start a discussion group in the Philosophy gotten a similar education were often at the government claimed that all Bulgarian faculty, because the Engineering faculty the forefront. citizens were ethnically Bulgarian, forcing had created a very good one. We couldn’t ethnic Turks and others to choose Christian, criticize socialism too explicitly, but we Just as Sasho entered high school, the “Bulgarian” names. As glasnost, or openness talked about all sorts of things. I’m glad Chernobyl disaster struck, spreading clouds and transparency, became the buzzword that I got to learn from them, because a of radioactive materials across Europe. Upon in the USSR, Bulgarian dissidents made few years later they were banned from learning about this crisis, Gergana started their meetings and actions more public. An teaching again. There was a lot going on to become more involved in the budding environmental group piled dead birds in front at Moscow University. Maybe it was just environmental movement out of concern for of parliament to protest rodenticide use, and a an interesting time.1 her and her family’s health. protest against the regenerative process ended in violence when the government bussed in For most summers, we had to go work Gergana: The Bulgarian government anti-Turkish counter-protestors. in the farms, repaying our debt to did not inform the Bulgarian population the Russian people for financing our about pollution after Chernobyl disaster. In May 1989, facing intense opposition over education. After a couple of years, we I was pregnant at that time and I worried the “regenerative process,” Zhivkov opened didn’t have to go on these trips, but I was a lot about what will happen, because the border to Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of friends with several Jewish students at in the beginning of May at that time in ethnic Turks left Bulgaria, depriving several vital the time, and they still had to go work. I 1986, we heard from Radio Belgrade agricultural sectors of workers. That autumn, at remember thinking and talking about how and other radio stations about the a heavily publicized ecological demonstration, unfair that was. My father was always pollutions. We realized as a family, police beat and harassed protesters. On really apathetic, but my grandfather was my husband and I, that Bulgaria had, November 10, the day after the fall of the Berlin a strong Communist who died trying to obviously there was pollution. And I was Wall, it was time for Zhivkov to fall as well. The protect Spain from fascism in the Spanish pregnant. I worried about the future, how Communist Party chose Petar Mladenov as his Civil War. it will be for my child. It was somehow successor. one of factors which were the reason Alexander Kashumov, or Sasho, the head of I was involved in the environmental Sasho: All of the democratic-thinking AIP’s legal team, carries a similar youth. His movement, first in Rousse Committee people were very disappointed by salt-and-pepper hair seems to have grayed and after that in Ekoglasnost. One of the this fact. And then, the students from prematurely, perhaps from too much hard work. main purposes and objectives of these Sofia University started their first Nonetheless, he retains a useful excitement dissident organizations was to have more strike, because they wanted to force about the specifics of law, philosophy and information about environmental issues. the Socialist2 president [Mladenov] to religion. He found the start to his questioning Of course it is somehow connected resign. A tape had been spread out about character while going to high school, or with the social and political changes in protests that had happened several gymnasium, in Sofia in the late 1980s. Bulgaria because it was obvious that months before and the record showed without normal government and elected that the president had actually suggested Sasho: I attended the Classics Gymnasia, government and change in the political that the military come, the tanks, to deal which is where I hope my son can get system, we would not have normal with the protesting people. And he was in. The teachers were largely professors information or normal environmental taped by an amateur’s camera, video from the university, where they were policy. camera, and this information was spread under strict surveillance, but no one was out during the elections or right after the paying attention to what they taught elections.

40 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Gergana’s husband ran for the National Power switched hands frequently between For Sasho, this was less a time for NGOs than Assembly to help determine the structure of the UDF (“democratic”) and Socialist forces for movements. And instead of ideology, he a new government for Bulgaria. Meanwhile, in the early 1990s. Finally, in 1992, a UDF was most concerned with the practical impacts Gergana was involved in several groups government failed a vote of no confidence, of the Socialist government enacted. advocating for democratic and market reform. and the Bulgarians went to the polls again. The emerging government was led by the Sasho: They [the people in the Socialist Gergana: Of course everything was on Socialists, but they were maintained in power cabinet] were introduced as experts. Then a voluntary basis, because people were by the Turkish party, Movement for Rights and in the beginning of ‘94, the Minister of very enthusiastic. You had to have been Freedoms. Little more than a century after Education said that it’s not possible to there in order to have this impression. achieving independence from the Ottomans, have free education, and that students It is somehow the feeling that you are many Bulgarians were uncomfortable should pay for their [higher] education. involved in very radical changes in with this privileged position of the Turkish And this was announced that they were society, because we were moving from an minority. And former dissidents like Gergana starting to introduce fees for students. authoritarian regime to a new society. were disappointed with the approach to This was the reason for the next strike, liberalization that the Socialists took. which I participated considerably more in. The leader of the United Democratic Forces, the anti-communist party, claimed that the first Gergana: This Socialist Party, when they We had some elections and we elected elections after the fall of Zhivkov had been came to power again three years after a board of people who are in charge “free but not fair” because of the significant changes, they had new arrogant leaders. of the policymaking of the strikers. But logistical advantages of the Communist party. They blamed a very weak Democratic this board actually did nothing, they While there were many reasons for Bulgarians, government which was ruling for two were just there, they didn’t do anything. largely in rural areas, to vote Communist, for years for all problems in Bulgarian However, one of those people was quite many people in Sofia, the result, a Communist society. Everything wrong in Bulgaria experienced, he was in the past in one victory, was unbelievable from their point of view, it was because of the students’ organizations. And also, of Democratic government. Of course it he was in the fifth-year class of the law Sasho: After that, in summer 1990, wasn’t true. They ruled Bulgaria that way, faculty and he was out of my gymnasium they formed a socialist government and so we had a collapse of the economy, of as well. He suggested that we form an in October 1990, a new student strike the bank system, of everything. That’s why expert group of mainly lawyers and other started. It was just in my beginning. I was at that time, in this period, I think more people who like to think on the rationale a freshman in university. The goal of the active people who understand things or of things. We formed this group and we strike was asking the Socialist government pretended to understand or has somehow started to develop the reasoning of the to resign. It was a purely political aim, the feeling that they may help, returned to claims of the students, so we relied on but at the same time, in these months, some kind of NGO work. I think all these some laws giving arguments that it’s not Bulgaria was put in great isolation. The people who established organizations, only unfair but also unlawful to shift to economy was in very bad condition, and NGOs of different kinds, different paid higher education and some other the crisis was great. The government advocacy groups or think tanks, they were things. introduced coupons for food. We had to somehow involved in the first movement wake up early in the morning, actually for democratic society. That’s why I think In the beginning when we only had night, to go and to buy bread or cheese it was time in Bulgaria in which NGOs about 50 people who were actively or something like that. And in December were more powerful than the government. striking, everyone was nervous. Some 1990, the strike turned into a national Powerful meaning that they had a more bad professors were making groups of strike of everyone because the trade clear understanding of the agenda of anti-strikers who were giving trouble for unions joined. We started occupation of society. Because they somehow have us. And the ministry was saying “Who the streets, I mean we the students. The more permanent work on these issues. are you, we don’t like to negotiate with trade unions were helping us, but people Because government in that time, 1997, you or do anything with you.” In the end, there because they were not as young as we did not have stable government. Every I really don’t know how it happened, it we, they had more fear, they were more two years, new government. just happened. We succeeded. We got afraid of what is happening. the signatures of the minister and one of the deputy ministers, I think. We got the

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 41 agreement that the government will not 2. “The Time for Discussion”: administered, but need not register high introduce fees as long as we were there. Democratic Theory and Practice in turnouts. Additionally, the government must Bulgaria operate according to some sort of set of rules, During this period of political unrest, Gergana As hardship threatened the country and riots including rule-of-law precedent. Beyond these recognized a need for targeted advocacy on a overtook the cities, Bulgaria’s seemingly basic guidelines, however, Comisso shares specific issue: freedom for citizens to access inevitable movement toward “democracy” Schumpeter’s disregard for the outcomes of the information. Out of this need, the Access to became more complicated. With the process. Information Program was created. government switching so frequently, it became more relevant to understand what kind of Many other models of democracy, including the Gergana: In the beginning of the political democracy Bulgaria would be. Recognizing two I will discuss, share this basic procedural changes, I used to work in National the ambivalent nature of “democracy” in any framework. However, these “substantive” Public Opinion Polls Center and after that context, not just a time of transition, I took a forms, as Comisso calls them, add a concern for in a marketing agency. It was in early particular interest in the perspective of political the results that come out of the process. Liberal ‘90s, and a new Socialist government theory toward this vague term. In trying to – or libertarian – democratic thought works started political campaign for mass understand how political theory is understood from the assumption that political freedom privatizations. Our market agency where and can be applied to the Eastern European requires property rights to maintain itself. Led I used to work in that time, we were case, I found Ellen Commisso’s presentation by theorists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich involved in an association of sociological of three streams of thought on the subject to Hayek, who wrote during the height of the and marketing agencies. Social Change be a useful starting point.4 The first stream, ideological Cold War, this movement discredits was the name of this organization. My procedural democracy, is the most limited in social democratic states for their willingness personal involvement in this organization its requirements, looking only toward how to plan or even regulate the market. Democracy was a survey of public attitudes to mass leaders are selected and the rules by which is valuable inasmuch as it leaves people alone privatization. At that time I realized again they set policy. Liberal democracy is often and to their own devices. The major goal of how it was important to have informed conflated with pure procedural democracy, but this stream of thought is liberty in an absolute public opinion to have knowledge of it prioritizes certain outcomes of the process, sense, with the protection of property rights every ordinary citizen what is the policy especially the liberalization of the market. the paramount and only goal of government. In of government. To know what are the Similarly, egalitarian, or “strong,” democracy this context, elections exist less to express the projects of government in order to have requires specific attention to the way decisions people’s will than to keep the government in normal public participation. Otherwise are made and how social and economic check from becoming too large. it is propaganda, these decisions of inequities are corrected. government and political parties without The final stream of thought in democratic access of ordinary people and citizens to Joseph Schumpeter is the most prominent theory, egalitarian democracy, takes an the documents, the information which theorist associated with a procedural approach opposite stance toward the outcomes of the [influenced the decision]. That’s why it to democracy. With an eye toward the USSR process of governing. Rather than valuing most was my somehow personal belief that and radical social movements of the American highly the right to be left alone, egalitarian it is important issue. Several people, Great Depression, Schumpeter avoids ascribing democrats, according to Comisso, prioritize sociologists, three lawyers, we applied for very much meaning to democracy. Instead, he political, social and economic equality, our first project in 1995. treats democracy primarily as a method for encouraging outcomes that reduce inequality society to choose between elite groups that are among citizens. In order to achieve this end, You have to know that the second Socialist competing for power. He has little hope, or even groups affected by policy must be involved government in 1994 started again very interest, in the possibility for ordinary citizens in the decision-making process to ensure typical socialist behavior as a government. to have any more control over the policy and that their needs and opinions are taken into That’s why it was in the end of 1996, it governance of their state.5 All that matters is account. Although Comisso presents this as was hyperinflation in Bulgaria. It was that there is some mechanism for the citizens instrumental to the real goal of social equality, bankrupts. The entire bank system was in to change who is in power. In developing other theorists discuss this involvement in catastrophe and for three months people Schumpeter’s theory into a broader and more policymaking as valuable for its own sake. went on the streets in the beginning of contemporary one, Ellen Comisso includes Benjamin Barber speaks from his experience 1997. People surrounded parliament. It a few other basic procedural measures. in the American New Left movement of was an interesting time again.3 According to her, elections must be accurately the late 1960s and 1970s about democratic

42 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 involvement’s potential to change how a person However, to look only at these factors in only wanted the beach to stay protected so approaches the political community and public Bulgarian democracy would be a mistake. they could continue to camp there illegally, not interest. By speaking with more people and Sasho’s experience as a leader of the student because they feared the detrimental effects to becoming more involved in the political process protest movements in the early 1990s the beach’s environment and wildlife. she should gain a greater appreciation for the illustrates the more active side of Bulgarian community as a whole and be more willing democracy. At first, student strikes and protests Even as I heard about the declining impact to make compromises for the sake of the were more general, demanding that entire and occurrence of these protests, I also heard community.6 Similarly, Amartya Sen discusses governments step down or striking for human about how important they were for the people the “constructive function” of democracy, which rights. As the political situation “normalized,” involved. The leads a community to discuss its values, goals the reasons for striking became more and more students who were “This was the first time and even needs.7 narrowly defined. As Sasho said with regard to working on the the student strike against tuition: Irakli campaign In the end, these theories are useful in two saw themselves as when we had the feeling ways. The aspects of the theories that focus This was the first time when we had the hope for the future on results, whether the libertarian dedication feeling that we were doing something of meaningful that we were doing to property rights or the egalitarian quest for ourselves, not for political reasons. democracy in their for social equality, serve more accurately as The first discussion was what would be country, and were something for ourselves, ideologies that guide the actions of citizens the aim of the strike. There was a big generally amazed and governments than as accurate descriptions discussion whether to have the aim be at the attention not for political reasons.” of democracy as enacted in the world. For an to ask the government to resign, but we that they could American “progressive” like myself, concerned decided not to have this claim because garner. Sasho’s for social justice, the transition into the of at least two reasons. The first reason experiences as a student helped him to libertarian environment at AIP was a shock. For was that the students participating had understand his goals as a lawyer, so that he not them, the state was necessarily construed as different political views and some of them only addresses public concerns as head of AIP’s enemy of society, blocking the people’s right did not like to have political statements legal team, but tries to address corruption and to exercise control over their own property and claims. The second reason was that injustice in private practice as well. and live their own lives. From working on there was not much justification. We grassroots electoral campaigns like Howard didn’t face any kind of crisis or something These effects confirm some of Barber’s and Dean’s unsuccessful run for presidency and like that, so it was not justified to have Sen’s ideas about the transformative and Deval Patrick’s successful bid to be governor of political claims. And the real reason we constructive potential of democratic practice, Massachusetts, I was much more accustomed were there was these damn fees and the but they also seem to disprove others. They line to rhetoric about working together toward a fact that it’s not fair, when you went to up well with how the Irakli protesters described common good through government. the university, when you had your plans, themselves, but Sasho doesn’t seem to fit well you bear in mind that you have free into Barber’s paradigm. As he and his friends In practice, the situation appeared to be just as education. This is the ground on which from school became more active in politics, strange for a hard-line American progressive. you make your plans and suddenly they their concerns became more and more specific, At first glance, many of the people I spoke with change the rules, that’s not fair. and more and more parochial. in Sofia had little trust in the accountability of the political process. The political parties seem Many of the people I talked to echoed this In order to understand this paradox, it is helpful essentially interchangeable, and politicians sense that personal issues should be prioritized to look further back into the history of political reinforce this belief by frequently switching over broader, “political” ones. Protests still thought, to Benjamin Constant. Constant, a parties and ideologies. Even among active occur on specific issues and are organized by French liberal (libertarian) of the 19th century, groups like AIP, there was little faith in the specific affected groups, like the protests in arguing against the participatory democracy ability of anyone who was not a member of towns that are in consideration to be the site of and violence of the French Revolution, claims parliament, or even a member of one of the the next Sofia City Dump. But general protests that with the advent of capitalism, participatory ruling parties, to actually generate policy. are often viewed with suspicion. When students democracy has less of a place in modern Publicly declaring legislation as a goal, whether this summer began to campaign against the society. The market has a fundamentally in a funding application or a statement to the re-zoning of a protected beach named Irakli, I privatizing logic, promoting a division between press, was considered very irresponsible. heard many other people hypothesize that they the public and private spheres of interest and

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 43 activity. Beyond that, it promotes an ever- 3. “They have to be interested more.” restructured Bulgarian government, enshrined expanding private, commercial sector with The Whys and Hows of Freedom of the right “to seek, obtain and disseminate which the public is expected not to interfere. In Information Advocacy information” as Article 41 of the Bulgarian a context where democratization is so closely If concerned citizens want to find out what the constitution. This guarantee, without specific intertwined with movement toward market projected environmental impact of a nuclear laws clarifying its procedures and limitations, capitalism, this effect would be even stronger. power plant will be, they need access to the proved largely ineffective. Progress would be associated with more government reports that led to that choice and more “privatized” political involvement, of location. When others raise questions When AIP was founded in 1996, most Bulgarian representing narrower issues and interests. of government corruption in the financing journalists, the most natural exploiters of the of NGOs, the right to know allows them to right to know, were hesitant to pursue the Taking Constant’s point to another level may examine the contracts for signs of foul play. creation of formalized structures for provision explain the dynamic of competing elites in the And after a controversial vote within the United of public information. They were more willing political scene. The market operates primarily Nations, the freedom of information allows to rely on the informal networks they had on the basis of choice between pre-existing any organization or person to leaf through the established under late socialism and since options, rather than a more abstract sort of position papers commissioned by their country’s then, and concerned that a law would merely voice or participation in creating those options. U.N. ambassador. create more difficulty and bureaucracy in the The most direct application of this kind of search for information. Even if there had to choice to politics would be a system like the Whether approaching democracy from a liberal be a law, they thought that they should retain one Schumpeter describes. Bulgarians today or egalitarian perspective, it is necessary to a monopoly on access, with no other citizens choose products and parties from among those secure this right to freedom of information. allowed to make requests. In this harsh context, that are provided by economic and political The AIP website, written by staunch liberal AIP began its campaign for an Access to elites. Considering democrats, states, “As information is a Information law, modeled after the American “Transparency merely that these elites resource of vital importance at the present Freedom of Information Act. Thanks to AIP’s frequently overlap, time, public servants must not be held in efforts, Bulgaria’s Access to Public Information entails the government’s consolidating privilege because of their advantage of Act (APIA) was enacted in 2000, one of the power further, it’s possessing it.” As a vital resource, information earliest in Eastern Europe. unsurprising that should not be greedily held by the state. choice not to actively hide many Bulgarians As pioneering as this law was, it could only be are pessimistic and But AIP also has a streak of Barber’s “Strong as useful as it was implemented. In order to information, but information apathetic about Democracy,” recognizing the importance ensure that this implementation fulfilled the politics and their of an involved and participative citizenry. potential of the law, AIP has continued activity cannot be free in and of abilities to effect For this reason, Gergana hates to discuss along several lines. Foremost among these is significant change. “transparency.” “Transparency is somehow litigation and legal advice. Cases pour into the itself, in some passive the policy of the government. Access to AIP office by a variety of means. Journalists A coordinator at the Information is more important for citizens in towns across the country form a network of Red House Center because it is a right of citizens. They’re coordinators that gather cases of information way.” for Culture and interested more in the right to information; requests and refusals from government Debate told me, they have to be interested more.” Transparency agencies that require legal advice. Thanks to “Then, it was the merely entails the government’s choice not AIP’s prominent position among many local time for protests, but now we are in the time to actively hide information, but information advocacy NGO’s, groups from all corners of the for discussion.” Unfortunately, the discussions cannot be free in and of itself, in some passive country and a wide variety of issue interests still only happen among small groups, like the way. Citizens have the right to know what the contact AIP for help finding information. Finally, concerned citizens that meet at the Red House government knows, and therefore to speak, a small group of individuals also employ AIP’s or the members of the business/political elite publish, petition, and protest with just as much legal services. who discuss real estate and banking reform information. This right has only been recognized at their mountain villas. As Bulgaria goes recently, with legislatures worldwide only All of these cases are important on a number further in this age of discussion and the Irakli starting to recognize it during the 20th century. of levels. First and foremost is the significance generation takes the reins, it is hard to say Nonetheless, concerned democracy activists at to the requestors of the information. With which direction “democratization” will go. the Grand National Assembly of 1990, which AIP’s help, they can uncover information of

44 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 public interest about highway contracts, about the extensive process of litigation that produced leading up to a final report or environmental impact plans or conflicts of follows, which has the side effect of further action, often contains vital data or is the only interest of elected officials. Furthermore, by educating the public about their information knowledge available before a government setting an official judicial precedent, each rights. action, but it is frequently kept secret by successful case makes future information institutions, supported by the courts. requests easier. Thanks to laws passed quickly Along with all of these efforts on the demand after the fall of communism that require high side, AIP pays constant attention to the levels of experience to serve in the court, institutions and agencies that hold public 4. “A Spirit of Common Work”: many of the court officials remain statist and information. For several years, they have Sustainability, Leadership, and Communities in the Day-to-day Life old-fashioned. This leads to tensions between organized trainings for public servants at of AIP precedent and the personal preferences or the local, regional, and national levels of As funding grows scarcer for NGOs in Bulgaria, interests of the judges involved. While early government. At the training I attended for AIP is looking at diversifying its funding sources rulings were remarkably erratic, it is now regional government officials in the Southeast and its activities. Although the litigation more likely that precedent will be followed on area of the country around the coastal city program is permanently funded by the Open freedom of information cases. Judges have of Bourgas, specific cases clarified some Society Justice Initiative, all the other activities now begun to define the difficult balances of the complicated nuances of the Access are funded by limited-term projects. Because between protecting non-governmental persons to Public Information Act’s exceptions and of their frequently oppositional stance toward and releasing information of national interest requirements. At the end, all of the officials the government, it would be difficult and or between national security and the citizens’ participated in a simulation, deciding how to problematic to provide government services right to know. From early in AIP’s history, these respond to real cases that AIP has brought to beyond the implementation trainings. While I cases were put to even further use. the court. In addition to these trainings, AIP was in Sofia, the staff discussed possibilities staff, particularly the younger coordinators, such as long-term corporate sponsorship Even before the Access to Public Information Nikolay and Diana, conduct monitoring to remedy this problem. In addition, AIP is Act was passed, Gergana and the other surveys of government institutions to see enhancing its visibility on the international founders determined that AIP must be a how well they are meeting international level as a leader and successful model for “Programme,” incorporating a wide range of and Bulgarian standards of information information rights campaign. Many staff activities. They realized that the best way to provision. For example, many of these surveys members hope that they can leverage this improve understanding and exercise of the right are coordinated with organizations in other status to become consultants for organizations to know among Bulgarian society was through countries, so as to provide a comprehensive currently pushing for information rights individual stories of information refusal. People picture of the state of active provision of legislation. With more academic “experts” were skeptical of broad political ideologies and information over the internet or reactions floating around the world of freedom of abstract campaigns, but specific stories and to information requests by ethnic minority information access, AIP’s focus on practical people could still speak to them. Sometimes representatives. experience would be less problematic than the cases appear to be trivial, as with the artist imported theoretical models. whose design was not chosen for Bulgaria’s Although AIP has been pursuing these new official seal and wanted to know why. litigation, education, training and monitoring One of the primary networks that organizes this Other times, the cases highlight important activities for 10 years, the right to know still community of activists, NGOs and academics is questions for Bulgaria as a whole, such as the faces serious challenges in Bulgaria. Ministries FOIANet. FOIANet, the Freedom of Information issues raised with regard to the building of a and agencies often use excuses like the Advocates Network, most commonly interacts nuclear plant in Belene. Over the summer that protection of a third party’s (often commercial) over an internet listserve maintained by AIP. I was there, the stories from these cases were interests or the protection of personal data. Several times a week, an organization will publicized through interviews and stories in the Where they could merely block out a page or ask the 90 or so organizations and individuals mainstream media, a monthly online newsletter two of sensitive information, sometimes as in countries around the world for advice or and a weekly radio show. (Because the radio little as a sentence, they block the release information about the state of the right to know station that had hosted this show is converting of the entire document. Even worse, an in their countries. FOIANet members also meet from public radio to entertainment radio, it is entire category of internal, “administrative” at regional meetings and conferences. Diana, unlikely that the radio show will survive.) It has information is exempted from APIA, in order my supervisor and friend, described how one now become trendy among journalists to make to “protect the decision-making process.” This meeting of Southeastern and Eastern European a high profile information request and write information, which includes any documents

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 45 organizations convinced her to continue to work resources. This is why a conference on archives of less tangible support from following others’ for AIP. “I felt like I belonged to something, of the totalitarian security services was activities around the world. that I was a part of something bigger.” Through sponsored by Zelevi Balkani (Green Balkans, the cooperation of these groups, individual an environmental group), and AIP was formed Within the office, Gergana continues to display organizations can easily find facts and support in the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee’s offices. a remarkable sense of initiative. Moving quickly to bring “global/European standards” and The reciprocity involved in these relationships around the office, she growls in frustration or the “global community of FOI advocates” into is particularly illustrated by CIL, who uses AIP’s excitedly points out an article that quotes her discussions with reluctant governments. These legal services extensively and also volunteered in the International Herald Tribune. Although groups lean left, right, and center, attaching to be in the trial group of AIP’s NGO trainings she talks about maintaining a “spirit of many different values on ideas like democracy on the right to information. common work,” she is definitely the boss of and human rights, but on this issue they can the office and the regional expert on freedom find consensus and work together. Beyond Bulgaria’s borders, a broader of information. All decisions inevitably defer ideological movement, the right-wing to her. In addition to this wide-ranging group, Gergana libertarian movement, connects Gergana maintains contact with a community of along yet other lines. She joined somewhat This expertise can be so strong as to be NGO leaders who she had known during her by accident. Her husband, Krassen, had been intimidating. When Diana stayed home to days as a dissident before 1989, particularly friends with members of the American right work on her thesis, Gergana was still not far environmental movements and those opposing wing for years, since America first sent political away. Diana sat surrounded by freedom of the government’s “regenerative process.” This experts to him in 1989 to help him build the information legislation from around the world. community can be difficult to define. Certainly, Institute for Market Economics, Bulgaria’s first Some Midwestern American state’s law on some individuals and the organizations they free think tank. Thus, Gergana encountered electronic publication was now a bookmark in represent are obvious members, such as Kapka these American “democracy” experts in a the South African access law. In the margins Panayotova’s Center for Independent Living (CIL) social capacity, at dinners and parties after of these scattered books and sheets of paper, and Yurii Ivanov’s Public conferences. At one of these dinners, Gergana short notes in small, neat handwriting extracted “These groups lean left, Barometer in Sliven. was energetically explaining the work of AIP important facts in Bulgarian or English. As After the early changes, to representatives of the Heritage Foundation she rose to make a cup of tea, she began to this group quickly and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation discuss her anxieties about finishing her thesis right, and center, attaching became disenchanted (named from Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged), before the deadline and taking time off work with the corrupted when Kiril, one of the AIP lawyers, walked into to write it. She explained that Gergana hadn’t many different values politics of the United the restaurant with a group of friends. This wanted her to take on this Master’s in the first Democratic Forces and chance meeting illustrated the concreteness of place. As she spoke, her dark eyes grew wide. on ideas like democracy sought ways to effect the work of AIP, and before long, Gergana was “Josh, Gergana knows so much about freedom change in the “third invited to apply for Atlas’s Templeton Awards. of information. There’s no way I can teach her and human rights, but sector” of civil society. That year, AIP won the Templeton Freedom anything new.” Other individuals Prize in Ethics and Values and a Templeton and organizations Freedom Award Grant. (Ironically, Diana, the Nonetheless, Gergana frequently is successful on this issue they can in the community, member of the staff most notably associated in having a “spirit of common work” in the like Dessislava and with the Left, wrote this application as one office. Sharing whiskey and peanuts in the find consensus and work the Bulgarian Gay of her first jobs at AIP. Winning the grant kitchen-turned-smoking room. Standing Organization-Gemini solidified her decision to work there.) At the together at a wedding, whispering about together.” were influenced award presentation and following a conference how beautiful the bride is. Furtively chatting strongly by these in Miami, as well as later conferences in across the office on ICQ while the boss thinks former dissidents (in Colorado, Gergana learned more about you’re working. All of these activities, ranging the Gay Organization’s case, Panayotova and fundraising and organizational strategies, from official and sanctioned to informal CIL). Although there are no official networks, and connected with other individuals working and probably forbidden, reinforce the sense conferences or meetings connecting these for free governments and markets from the of social connection within the AIP office. organizations, their common memories and the Philippines to Nigeria. Thus, beyond the The internet, in particular, appears to serve value they place on self-sufficiency encourage organizational tools that Gergana takes from Gergana’s purpose of “common work.” Internet them to cooperate and use each other’s these annual meetings, she also gains a sense chat programs help to combat the spatial

46 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 divisions between the different working groups. the Bulgarians I talked to, the opening of some the idea of opening the files while reserving Although the general “coordinators,” lawyers dossiers was merely a political ploy to discredit the government’s right to keep some personal and Mariana the accountant are only a few feet enemies, suck up to the European Union, dossiers secret. As the microphones followed apart from each other, their separate offices or both. Finally, as I was preparing to leave Petkov out the door, hoping for a sound bite, could easily limit communication without ICQ, Bulgaria, there seemed to be developments. the remaining journalists were weeded out their chat program of choice. Furthermore, The Green/European Free Alliance block in by a series of presentations on the logistical the conversations that take place over those the European Parliament was sponsoring a and methodological issues of dealing with programs and in person use lighthearted conference, along with AIP and several other totalitarian archives, a topic which I think criticism and joking to flatten the office organizations, to discuss the opening of the only Diana found interesting. By the afternoon hierarchy and make a horizontal workspace. archives, and Roumen Petkov, the interior session, there were no journalists left. These relationships provide a welcoming and minister was attending. informal base to which AIP employees can At this point I began to realize how unusual bring ideas and from which they can draw I was very excited as I approached the my presence at this conference was. For one support to pursue organizational goals. National Palace of Culture, or NDK, a massive thing, there were so few non-Bulgarians that structure that dominates the southern half one friendly woman, upon noticing that I was of the city center. This maze of conference listening to the English translation, tried to 5. Opening the Box: Dossiers and the halls, performance spaces and exhibitions was tell me that I was on the wrong channel. More Past created at the desire of Lyudmila Zhivkova, specifically, I noticed how old the attendees for One of the first displays of Bulgaria’s ability daughter of Todor Zhivkov. She believed that the conference were. The average age seemed to be healthy enough to join the European the children of Bulgaria needed a palace to to be around 70, and most of them were men. Union was a far-reaching 1997 report that celebrate arts and culture, so she bulldozed a Furthermore, all of the individuals who spoke documented the past involvement that many small central neighborhood to build it. Today, appeared to be former dissidents. One man, public figures had had with the Socialist the building echoes the rise of the Vitosha who called himself a “client” of the security government or even its security services. With mountain behind it. Billboards, banners and a services, broke into tears as he described the the European Commission ready to vote on giant television screen advertise products and torture he had experienced and questioned whether Bulgaria was ready to enter the Union events, while semi-permanent food vendors whether “my children will be governed by the in the fall, the next major step to transparency hawk pizza, ice cream, beer and sausages. Old people who sent me to prison.” In fact, not all in the country’s past happened on May 15. men and women sit on the benches, watching of the old men were victims of the security The Minister of the Interior announced that he the skateboarders and bicyclists negotiate services. Sasho, one of my colleagues, pointed would finally implement the decision to open Zhivkova’s landscape design. Stairs lead down out to me that many of them were actually the archives, inspiring journalist Angelina to a shopping center and bus stop below former agents of the totalitarian regime, Petrova to request the dossiers of many leading NDK and security guards wait just inside the currently on state pension rolls. This was the journalists, editors and owners of media doors of the building. Diana and I approached first conference any of my colleagues had seen outlets. The results from her request revealed the main entrance of the building, only to be with such high attendance from this group. that four current leading journalists had been directed around the back to what looked like Although they remained too stigmatized to agents in the totalitarian security services. a service entrance. Slipping between news voice their opinions, any victim who spoke Media organizations expressed outrage, vans, we wandered through back hallways, graphically about his experiences or angrily creating an organization named Clean Voices asked directions to two oddly placed security regarding the future got applauded loudly for the explicit purpose of ridding the media guards, and finally arrived at Hall 6, where the – drowning out the rest of his speech. of former collaborators. In the next weeks, the conference was being held. A tall, elaborate government slowly opened files implicating mural in the social realist style appeared to The one young person who asked a question, several more prominent individuals in the document the history of the tortured Bulgarian a student, blamed the notable absence of activities of the security services. As political proletariat, as archivists from across Central other young people on the excuses that all parties wheatpasted conflicting demands Europe lined up in front of it. ruling governments have made for keeping across Sofia’s walls (“Open the dossiers,” the files secret, claiming a lack of “political “Protect personal information”), the conflict At first, reporters were buzzing around the will.” This sentiment resounded throughout simmered over the summer. For some of my entrance and the front of the room, but most of the conference. Even the host of conference, colleagues, the scandal was very important them disappeared soon after Minister Petkov’s a Member of European Parliament from for Bulgaria’s future. For others, and many of address, which predictably paid lip service to Belgium, spoke disdainfully of “European

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 47 Socialists who don’t realize that changing a trying to read his lips. In the midst of this in place and Great Britain has already C [for Communist] to an S [for Socialist] does chaotic scene, one victim of the dissidents announced that Bulgarians will not enjoy free not create democratic, legitimate socialism.” approached a microphone and waited his movement to their country, many questions Yanko Yankov, a law professor who Amnesty turn. When it came, he introduced himself, are left unanswered. Will the exodus of the International called Bulgaria’s foremost and asked whether information concerning productive generation of Bulgarians to the political prisoner in the 1980s, compared the contemporary persecution of persons West that started in 1990 grow even worse? the conference itself to players performing claiming Macedonian ethnicity would also Will all of the Bulgarian small businesses for Hamlet’s uncle, with the king remaining be published. Before he could finish, he was that are not run into the ground by more unguilty. While his analogy may not quite fit booed and pushed away from his microphone. developed competition simply be bought out most understandings of Shakespeare’s play, Only two participants went to speak with him by multinational corporations from Germany the sense of futility which he described, afterward, both affiliated with the Bulgarian and the Netherlands? Will shkembe, a soup of with all the speakers and attendees merely Helsinki Committee, a human rights group. tripe that is practically the national dish, pass entertaining the elite, was clear. Without any Apparently, the one thing that all of the muster for EU food safety laws? real hope for progress, it was unsurprising participants could agree on, whether dissident that no one without a personal stake in the or agent, was the illegitimacy of Macedonian With all of these questions looming, one proceedings would show up. ethnicity.8 last set is particularly appropriate for AIP and many other NGOs. A brochure for the As the conference went later into the As I left the conference, I stopped to take Sofia public transportation company, begging afternoon, the civility and tedium that one of the conference posters as a souvenir. residents to follow the rules of the buses and had dominated the morning session soon Between the title and the long string of trams, exhorts, “Make our capital a European disappeared. Screaming, crying men sponsors’ logos, there is a picture of a statue one!” Now that Sofia and Bulgaria have been would speak out of turn, unable to get to a against a black background. An ancient accepted into the club of European capitals microphone. Over and over, the men expressed Pandora leans over her ornately decorated and countries, will the pressure be off the their distrust of the current government, box, poised to open it. Undoubtedly, some people and government? Without the threat of despair of the future and disgust at the social ills will escape when she opens the “European standards,” will citizens and groups European Union for not pushing the Bulgarian box, like political unrest and discrimination on be able to affect the actions of the state, or government more the basis of people’s pasts. But the box also has joining the European Union removed the “Over and over, the men visibly. Although holds something incredibly valuable: hope for last carrot and stick from the NGOs’ arsenal? they often seemed Bulgaria to be able to move beyond its past and Now that Bulgaria is a member of all the to say the same into a future without fear of neo-totalitarian European and Atlantic organizations it had expressed their distrust things, there were mafias or governments. aspired toward, what is next on the horizon? many arguments. Is the transition that lasted a decade-and-a- of the current government, At times, half finally over? At this point, these questions disagreements Epilogue: “Make our Capital a are unanswerable. No matter what else, I am despair of the future and were so loud European One” certain that on January 2, 2007, as the debris and frequent On September 26, 2006, the European from New Year’s and Accession celebrations that in order to Commission’s Monitoring Report on Bulgaria is cleaned up from around Nevsky Cathedral, a disgust at the European understand, I and Romania confirmed that Bulgaria will staunch Soviet soldier will continue to fix his had to look at enter the European Union on January 1, 2007. iron gaze over the changes below, his cold fist Union for not pushing the the translator, Although there are some official safeguards raising a rifle high into the air. Bulgarian government more visibly.”

48 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Further Reading Constant, B. (1988). The Liberty of the Ancients Notes (2004). NGO Alternative Report on Bulgaria’s Compared with that of the Moderns. The 1. Although the other passages in this Progress Towards EU Accession. Sofia, Save Political Writings. Cambridge, Cambridge section are transcripts from taped interviews, the Children UK, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, University Press. this passage and the one that follows are Inter Ethnic Initiative for Human Rights, Center reconstructed from notes taken after un-taped for Independent Living, and EveryChild. Council of Ministers (2002). Recommendation interviews. on Access to Official Documents Rec (2002)2. (2006). “Citizens initiative “Let’s save Irakli!”” Council of Europe. 2. The Bulgarian Communist Party quickly Retrieved November 6, 2006, from http://www. changed its name to the Bulgarian Socialist bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/Emission_English/ Cowley, J. (2003). “Being Political: Polish Party. Theme_Science_And_Nature/Material/Irakli. Youth and Democratic Practice.” Journal of the htm. Society for the Anthropology of Europe 3(1): 3. Blame for the hyperinflation and economic 27-36. crisis of the mid-1990’s lies on both political (2006). “Former State Security Files- issue parties, as well as on forces beyond their of past and present.” Retrieved November 6, Crampton, R. J. (2005). A concise history of control. Faced with external, internal, and 2006, from http://www.bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/ Bulgaria. Cambridge, UK ; New York, Cambridge ideological pressures, both sides implemented Emission_English/Theme_Lifestyle/Material/ University Press. hastily constructed policies, especially dosieta.htm. with regard to privatization. The Socialist Creed, G. W. (1998). Domesticating revolution: government’s refusal to accept IMF guidelines (9.26.2006). Monitoring report on the state of from socialist reform to ambivalent transition made the crisis inevitable. preparedness for EU membership of Bulgaria in a Bulgarian village. University Park, Pa., and Romania COM (2006) 549. Pennsylvania State University Press. 4. Comisso. 1997. “Is the Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty? Reflections on Five Years of Barber, B. R. (1984). Strong democracy : Jung, Y. (2006). Consumer Lament: An Competitive Politics in Eastern Europe.” Journal participatory politics for a new age. Berkeley, Ethnographic Study on Consumption, Needs, of Communist and Post-Communist Studies University of California Press. and Everyday Complaints. Cambridge, MA, 30(1) 1-21 Harvard University. PhD. Bodnar, J. (1998). “Assembling the Square: 5. Joseph Schumpeter. “Another Theory of Social Transformation in Public Space and Kashumov, A., D. Palova, et al. (2006). Access Democracy” in Capitalism, Socialism, and the Broken Mirage of the Second Economy in to Information in Bulgaria 2005. Sofia, Access Democracy Postsocialist Budapest.” Slavic Review 57(3): to Information Programme. 489-515. 6. Benjamin Barber. 1984. Strong Democracy: Schumpeter, J. A. (1976). Capitalism, socialism, Participatory Politics for a New Age Berkeley: Brunwasser, M. (2006). Bulgaria’s painful past and democracy. London, Allen and Unwin. University of California still hidden, but for how long? International Herald Tribune. Sen, A. (1999). “Democracy as a Universal 7. Amartya Sen. 1999. “Democracy as a Value.” Journal of Democracy 10(3): 3-17. Universal Value” Journal of Democracy 10(3) Center for Liberal Studies and Institute for 3-17 Market Economics (2003). The Inflexibility Shchekochikhin, Y. (1994). “Where Does the Trap: Frustrated Societies, Weak States, and “Mafiya” Come From?”Demokratizatsiya 2(2): 8. The uniqueness of Macedonian ethnicity, Democracy. Sofia. 191-193. nationhood, and language are heavily disputed by two of its neighbors, Bulgaria and Greece. Comisso, E. (1997). “Is the Glass Half Full or Half Verdery, K. (1996). What was socialism, and When the Former Yugoslav Republic of Empty? Reflections on Five Years of Competitive what comes next? Princeton, N.J., Princeton Macedonia (FYROM) declared its independence Politics in Eastern Europe.” Communist and University Press. in 1991, Bulgaria recognized it as a state, but Post-Communist Studies 30(1): 1-21. refused to recognize the nation or language. Even this step was highly controversial among Bulgarian citizens.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 49 The Art Therapy Centre: A Portrait

Naomi Safran-Hon ‘08

o be creative a person must exist and have a feeling of existing, not in conscious awareness, but as a basic place to operate from. Creativity is then the doing that arises T out of being. It indicates that he who is, is alive. – W. D. Winnicot, Essays by a Psychoanalyst. New York: Norton, 1986, p. 39.

The summer of 2006 I spent in Johannesburg’s This collection of photographs and personal The portraits together with the written text try dry winter. That summer/winter I got the stories brings together the people who make to capture the vibrant community which makes opportunity to work at The Art Therapy the Art Therapy Centre what it is. Without The Art Therapy Centre. At the same time, Centre, a small NGO doing an ambitious job them, there would be no art and no healing. these people represent different segments of of contributing to the healing of the South Their portraits and stories represent not only the society in South Africa. Hopefully, it will African community. I was doing my internship the Centre’s work but also the story of South enable the reader to experience some of what with the Centre as part of my fellowship at Africa. The anthropologist Lindsay French is difficult to imagine. the International Center for Ethics, Justice and writes that photographs have a unique way of Public Life at Brandeis University. capturing reality: Many people, including the staff and teachers of the International Center for Ethics, Justice The Art Therapy Centre works mainly with Photographs – especially portraits and Public Life, helped in making this project survivors of the Apartheid regime and offers – really contain very little information. possible. To them and to the people who let healing in a social context. Although Apartheid They cannot tell us very much. They are me capture a part of their lives and soul by was officially over with the first democratic mostly suggestive – as Roland Barthes sharing their life stories and letting me take elections in 1994, almost thirteen years ago, says, “Photographs make novelists of photographs for this project, I am thankful. there is still a lot of need for emotional support. us all.” … But photographs can suggest I especially want to thank Danny Myburgh, The Centre offers group counseling as well something … They establish a human who drove me all around Johannesburg and as training to people from the community to link with someone whose experience is welcomed me into her life. I also thank Pam become art counselors. distant from ours and difficult for us to Allara, Daniel Terris, the ECSF of 2006, Marci imagine, and in that way bring us closer McPhee, Alfredo Gisholt, Hannah Safran and to something that is otherwise very hard Giora Hon, who helped me create this work to think about.

The following portraits and narratives are part of a larger photography project.

50 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Mokgadi Ratable, who lives with her three children in Hoodsport

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 51 Hayley Berman 37 Galway Road Parkview

Hayley Berman lives with her husband, son, daughter and two dogs.

I grew up in Johannesburg, in a big house I had moved schools, so I was in King David When I finished the training in London, I came in Sandhurst, which at the time was like a School, which is a Jewish school. I went for back to South Africa. It was 1992. It was about remote suburb which is now the elite suburb, my last two years, and it was the first time I coming back and sharing the work. I think and it was a really lovely big, big thatch roofed had experienced any kind of liberal democratic it’s always been from the beginning about house, with a big garden, lots of dogs, three thinking about the country or having a history creating spaces for people to create and be sisters, mom and a dad, and I think I had a very teacher that was a politician and had done all they want to be and make it available and privileged life. I think the fact that I had three history at Wits. We used to go on marches accessible to everybody. older sisters was useful because they started as part of our history classes and deconstruct asking the questions before I could start asking cartoons that were written by government, so The Art Therapy Centre was my studio; I just the questions. So I sort of understood from it was a very exciting year. I had an art teacher called it that because when I had to write for quite early, I think, what Apartheid was and who was British and really supported me proposals or when I was asked to do a job I what indoctrination was. making art as part of healing and understanding would have a letterhead that said Art Therapy where I was coming from. Centre. So it was not formalized as an NGO. When I was in my matric, just before matric, In 1994, I started training people and laying a when I was 17, I had a car accident. In the When I did art for matric, I got a distinction foundation course in art therapy, and that is accident I broke my back and I was burnt so for art and got the art award and it was the how the NGO came about. I was in hospital for about two months in first time that I sort of felt like I was – that my — From an interview with Hayley Berman traction, and so I missed my first term of school, art had meaning. I think before that it was my 21 July 2006 really of my matric year. When I did go back sister who was the artist and I wasn’t. I mean to school, I didn’t go to school much because I didn’t think I would pursue art. Then I knew I was having lots of operations and surgery. about art therapy and did some. Even then I The power relations that I was sensitive to started reading books about art therapy and as a child around black and white, I sort of decided that was what I wanted to do. When experienced as a patient in a hospital with I started my fine arts degree, I did it with the doctors that didn’t speak to me as a person but aim of becoming an art therapist and my initial rather as an object or as a thing or talked past interview was – I said I wanted to be an art me or through my parents. therapist, and they said, “Well, by the time you finish, you will forget you ever wanted to do that.” I didn’t.

52 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 53 Phumzile Rakosa 19 Moepel Street Elspark, Germiston

Phumile Rakosa lives with her two sons, Katlheo and Siphiwe, and her daughter, Lebohamg. (Phumzile’s two nephews, Swazi and Lesego, are also in the photograph.)

I was born and grew up in Soweto, We had a house in Vosloorus, and then he Before I went to art therapy I felt like I was Johannesburg. We were nine at home. There passed away in 1998. He was involved in a alone and then all these things were happening were a lot of us there and although we car accident. He was with my kids. I had two to me because I was… I don’t know how to put struggled, it was fun. It was a very notorious kids then and I was expecting my little girl. So it, but I felt there was something wrong with place to be in. So many things were happening he passed away during that time and both my me. But now after I have been to art therapy in Soweto. It was a place with a lot of children were injured in the accident. After he I realized that it was not only me. I would like gangsters and riots. Everything that happened, passed away I stayed for about three years in to have more time to do art therapy, but I am happened in Soweto. We were always kept at Vosloorus, and then in 2001 I moved to this finding it very difficult because I have to be an home. We had to be home before six, because house, because it was not easy for me to stay educator in the morning. I teach at school for after that time it was very dangerous outside. in that house. Because of him, knowing that he children with mental illnesses in Katlehong, We used to go to church on Sunday. That was was there and he is not there anymore. Living and then in the afternoon I have to go to art our source of survival, which I think it still is. I here is very quiet. My life is mine, no one to spaces and work there. At the end of the day I go every Sunday to church; it is in Vosloorus, intrude. I am just happy. get very tired, but because I am enjoying it I am about ten kilometers from here. My priest has not finding it hard for me to continue. I feel like been a very important person in my life. I got involved in the Art Therapy Centre if I could have more time; maybe I would leave immediately when my husband got injured in teaching to do only art therapy. I think that it is When I was doing Std 5, I was removed from the accident. I was identified by the department what I do best and I know when I have touched Soweto to come to Vosloorus because it was of education to go there for a support group those children’s lives I can notice a difference. very dangerous for me to stay in Soweto. Girls for educators. I went there for getting my own were raped and a lot of things were happening support, and when I got there I realized how — From an interview with Phumzile Rakosa there so we had to move to Vosloorus. My it helped me and I felt like I needed to help 11 July 2006 sister got married and got a house, so I moved others. in with her and somehow raised by her until I finished college. I was doing a diploma in education. I met my husband at the college. We had children, got married and I stayed with him in Vosloorus.

54 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 55 Danny Myburgh 10 Armhgh Road Parkview

Danny Myburgh lives with her husband, two sons and four dogs.

I was born in Cape Town but grew up in After I graduated I worked as a judge’s clerk. Also I decided to go into therapy. Someone Johannesburg. I am a white South African. I worked for a very enlightened judge called connected me with Hayley, and I became part I have had a privileged upbringing and went Judge Richard Goldstone. At the time he was of a group that did art therapy together. After to private schools. My parents were not known as a very liberal judge. Although he was about two years I realized that I wanted to be supporters of the Nationalist Party and we enforcing the Apartheid legislation, if ever he an art therapist. Up until then I had regarded it were very critical of the politics in the country could find a reason not to uphold it, he would, as my therapy. That is how I got involved with at the time. My parents were not activists but and it was very often based on some sort of the center work. they were liberal, old fashioned liberal. So they international law. So I did that for about three criticized but did nothing. years and then he went to the Appeal Court At one point I put together a proposal. It and I went and worked for the Weekly Mail. was like a dream that I think that all children I went to a white Afrikaans University. I studied They were also a “resistance newspaper.” should have access to art therapy in schools law. It was in the early ‘80s and Apartheid was There were lots and lots of censorship laws, because art therapy is able to address so still very much entrenched, but there was a so they had to abide by the censorship laws if many internal problems in a non-threatening lot of resistance and the student organizations they wanted to print, and they often got banned way. That is the way that children relate were active in resistance politics. I was a and they often got into trouble and they were to and I had done some research on what member of a number of student organizations, often taken to court, and so I worked for them happens in community centers in England and and that was very difficult because the student because I had a legal background. I thought that this was what one should do in body supported the Apartheid government and South African schools. friends of mine were very critical of what I had I worked there until I had my first son, Simon. — From an interview with Danny Myburgh done and in retrospect I also realized that some Three years later, Thomas was born in 1995. At 8 July 2006 of my class mates that befriended me were that time I stopped working and concentrated actually spies and they were trying to find out more on my artwork. I painted for many years. from me what was going on. And then at some stage, when Thomas was about 3, that was in 1998, I started teaching children art at my home. I was doing what I felt like doing, just being creative, having fun with them and in the process I noticed things about these kids that came up through their artwork.

56 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 57 Samuel Ntuli 612 Skozana Section Hospital Street, Katlehong 1431

Samuel Ntuli lives with his older brother.

I grew up here in Kathlehong in this house. I I started working at the age of 9 as a gardener It was only through art therapy that I realized was born in a two-room house and we grew as well as carrying parcels for people in town my potential. Art therapy became a healing up in this house. We were five. Later on, my in order to get cash and bring it home. I was process for me. I got involved with the Centre eldest sister assisted us to build two rooms, being supported by my mother who was a in 1998. I was invited to attend a workshop then it became four rooms, and when I started domestic servant, she worked in Germiston and where there was a discussion about art and art working, I was helped by my other sister to Boksburg, but my sisters as well were working therapy at the school level. I loved it. Getting build the other two rooms that was outside. on part-time basis in some shops. involved with the center brought quite a lot of This is how we expanded. understanding emotionally how you can live I did join the struggle but without my parents and how you can survive and you can change Growing up in Kathlehong has been wonderful, knowing that. They only knew later that I was things for the better. I grew emotionally and although there have been ups and downs when part of the struggle. I was distributing the there was a great shift in my emotional status. we grew up, later on, when there was violence information for the organization for the student in the late 90s. It was tough, very challenging movement. I was a teenager then. We were too apart as a nation, so I have got growing up in the Apartheid situation. There a lot of white friends now as regard of being was so much segregation and less opportunity, I was an angry young man. I was angry about involved in the art therapy. If I was not involved and so we black people couldn’t do what we the system because it prevented us being in the art therapy I could not have met quite wanted to do at the time, and it was very yourself and exploring in the way that you a lot of people that contributed to the change difficult. wanted to be and it is only now that, at my age, of my life. I was angry, but the anger slowly I can go back and do some of the things that I moved away and I could see life in a positive wanted to do. way.

— From an interview with Samuel Ntuli 11 July 2006

58 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 59 Bibliography Notes

Allara, Pamela. Coexistence: Contemporary Lightfoot, Sara Lawrence. The Art and Science 1. French, Lindsay. “Exhibiting Terror.” In Truth Production in South Africa. Waltham: Brandeis of Portraiture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Claims: Representation and Human Rights, University Press, 2003. Printers, 1997. Mark Bradley and Patrice Petro, eds. Rutgers University Press, 2002. Coetzee, John M. Life & Time of Michael K, Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom: The J.M. New York : Viking Press, 1984. Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Boston: Little, Brown and Company Publisher, 1994. Coetzee, John M. Waiting for the Barbarians. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Marinovich, Greg and Joao Silva. The Bang Bang Club Snapshots from a hidden war. Coetzee, John M. Disgrace. London: Secker & New York: Basic Books, 2000. Warburg, 1999. Matthee, Dalene. Driftwood. Johannesburg; Coetzee, John M. Youth. New York: Viking, New York: Penguin, 2005. 2002. Paton, Alan. Cry, the beloved country: a story of Coombes, Annie E. History after Apartheid: comfort in desolation. New York: C. Scribner’s Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Sons, 1948. Democratic South Africa. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003. French, Lindsay. “Exhibiting Terror.” In Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights, Spence, Jo. Putting myself in the picture: Mark Bradley and Patrice Petro, eds. Rutgers a political, personal, and photographic University Press, 2002. autobiography. London: Camden Press, 1986.

Fuller, Alexandra. Scribbling the Cat, Travels Winnicot, D. W. Essays by a Psychoanalyst. with an African soldier. New York: Penguin New York: Norton, 1986. Press, 2005.

Gerdes, Paul. Liberated Voices: Contemporary Art From South Africa. New York: The Museum for African Art Press, 1999.

Guest, Emma. Children of AIDS: Africa’s Orphan Crisis. London; Sterling, Va.: Pluto Press; Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of Natal Press, 2001.

Hirson, Denis. I Remember King Kong (The Boxer). Johannesburg : Jacana, 2004.

Krog, Antjie. Country of My Skull: Guilt Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness. New York: Times Books, 1999.

60 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006

Finding What’s “Right”: Understanding Women’s Rights in Senegal Through Multiple Identities

Dana Sawitz ‘08

“Man gui dem Ndakaar” I’m going to Dakar

he road from the airport stretches along la corniche as a long tear in the orange sand that would otherwise cover everything – the feet and bony knees of the child standing at its T edge, the patterned dress of the woman walking with a younger girl, the backpacks which seem to be perched precariously on the shoulders of a young student wearing a stark white boubou. It is the rue à l’aéroport, bustling with activity even at 6:30 in the morning.

I look out the windows in every direction, in his passenger seat, with a purse clutched after all, the whole of Dakar is on the coast. eyes darting past restaurants, unfinished tightly in her lap and way too much luggage Here is a residential area, and the only people buildings and glorified mosques, already packed into the back seat of the tiny European who seem to be on the street are those coming trying to take note of the landmarks that will car. in and out of the research center for lunch, eventually form my map of Dakar. We enter and the two men chatting leisurely outside the a traffic circle, then merge onto a new road. After a few hours of rest, he picks me up from public télécentre. Stopped at an intersection with no traffic lights, the humble little hotel room where he had we wait for a break in the endless line of black brought me this morning after picking me up The entrance to the West African Research and yellow taxis, imported cars, buses and from the airport. It is now lunchtime, just 13:00, Center is nothing elaborate: a simple mosaic small, toy-like painted public transportation and he plans to take me to the office for a meal of tiles, red and blue, flank the short walkway vans called cars rapides. Exhaust and the with the rest of the staff. “Past l’École Franco- from the street to the gate entrance. In the smells of Dakar that are still unfamiliar to me Sénégalaise, a left at the tall yellow sign that center of the mosaic on the ground is pieced seep in through the open window that, just marks the DHL office…” He narrates the way together the logo for WARC: an image of the minutes before, had allowed the sea breeze as he drives, knowing that soon I will have to chiwara, a half-antelope half-man who is said to rush through the car as we had sped down learn to walk to the office on my own or face to have saved the Bamana people of Mali by the highway. A young boy reaches his open the challenge of giving directions to a taximan. introducing agriculture. Depicted in the shaped hand into our stopped car through the window, Passing the boutique on the corner, he waves to blue tile, the chiwara’s antlers strategically calling to me, “Madame, Madame, cent francs, the boutiqué1, a friendly man named Boubacar form the “W” in “WARC.” Each glossed tile, Madame.” I shift my eyes away and shuffle Diop. “You can buy soda, Coke, Fanta, biscuits, carefully polished and artistically arranged, uncomfortably in my seat, not yet having any Nescafé there if you would like, but we have a creates a humble display to greet those who currency to give this poor street boy, even the restaurant,” Abdoulaye informs me. enter. I awkwardly step over this little bit of equivalent of twenty cents that he demands, sidewalk art and enter through the gateway, and not yet knowing how to respond to his Turning right after the boutique, finally, he relieved finally not to be trekking once again begging. pulls the car to one sandy shoulder of the quiet through the sand pits that seem to serve as street. Looking westward down the street, only sidewalks along the streets everywhere else. To Abdoulaye, my supervisor, nothing is new; three blocks away, there is an intersection with he drives along this road every day to and from a perpendicular road, and beyond that, one can The plastered cinderblocks and high green the office. To him,I am the spectacle: the petite, see the ocean painted on the horizon. Despite hedges surrounding the center serve as a light-skinned American girl sitting cautiously the impressive vista, this is not a tourist spot; containing wall. Looking about, I wonder if

62 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 this wall is meant more to keep unwanted At the center of each table is a tall recycled modified hijab and a long skirt pulls over a chair guests out or the buzzing whirling minds of the Kirène mineral water bottle, now containing and joins the already crowded table. She is a researchers inside where they can contemplate filtered water from the tap, and a cluster of four Fulbright scholar, preparing to leave Senegal in without the bustle of the city. The center itself or five tall water glasses, each complete with a the next two weeks after spending the last nine seems to be more of a complex of offices than a knife, large spoon, fork and paper napkin tucked months in the country. Introductions are brief, single, concise building: the exterior “hallways” inside. To mark each place setting at the table, and though we are both Americans, we speak and staircases connect the small gardens there is a placemat, the floral design worn from to each other only in of leaning palm tress and magenta hibiscus being scrubbed lunch after lunch five days a French in this mixed “To Abdoulaye, my bushes to the computer lab, the multiple rooms week for who knows how long by the women company. The food of the library, the administrative offices, and an who work at the restaurant. is served, and the supervisor, nothing is new; assortment of conference rooms and temporary conversation eases and resident researcher offices. Although the Here, it is not strange to find foreigners. Based seamlessly from layout of the center may seem backward to on the mix of skin tones bearing colorful fabrics French to Wolof3 to he drives along this road the visiting foreigner, with the reception lobby and styles of dress, from traditional Senegalese English. tucked away at the back of the complex and the boubous to Malian indigo prints to American every day to and from restaurant at the entrance, this organization is denim and khaki shorts, it seems that the After lunch, I perfectly indicative of Senegalese society: the majority of researchers mulling about are either sit down in the the office. To him, I am meal and general niceties must always precede from or have extensively traveled to other upholstered desk the serious business. countries outside Senegal as well. chair in my personal air-conditioned the spectacle: the petite, The restaurant, a portable metal trailer with The regular staff are seated already, waiting office. I am relieved red paint faded from the sun, bears an image for the arrival of Abdoulaye and myself, the to have the time and light-skinned American of a bursting bottle of Coca-Cola next to the new American whom they are told is “spéciale” space to myself. I word “Soif?” (“Thirsty?”). Men and women line and different from the other American students try to absorb and girl sitting cautiously in up at the small window in the trailer and tell who pass through the center. Leigh Swigart make sense of the restaurant servers which of the two plates and John Hutchison, members of WARC’s the mix of people, his passenger seat, with of the day they will choose. Inside the open American-based sister institution, WARA2 at buildings and doorway to the kitchen, a group of women sit Boston University, are there to welcome me resources here that on short wooden stools. In the afternoon heat, as well. I am introduced to the group, one have all seemed to a purse clutched tightly they are perched around a pot that rests over a unfamiliar name after another, and finally take be thrown together charcoal grill, preparing and watching over the a seat in my own white plastic chair. Mame and contained by in her lap and way too cooking that will feed the researchers, hungry Coumba, the secretary, jokes that her placemat the high surrounding and tired from a morning of academic exercise. is not as pretty as mine, hardly being able to wall. The mix seems much luggage packed into read the now faint “Bon apetit!” that was deliberate, with a The dining area of the restaurant consists of once printed in script on its center, welcoming delicate balance of white plastic chairs and plastic tables, the the diner to enjoy her meal. Leigh turns to contradictory and the back seat of the tiny kind of setup that could be seen laid out on the waitress, a smiling woman named Angel, complementary manicured green lawns or wooden decks for an and tells her that we all will be having the ideas, items and European car.” American BBQ or high school graduation party. “soupe kànja.” An American student wearing a identities. Already

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 63 exhausted from my day’s travel, I open the entitled, “Know Your Rights!” The project, still as the home base for the project and the laptop that Abdoulaye has just told me will be in its conception, is an initiative of Leigh and researchers involved. As an ECSF intern at mine for the duration of my internship, and I John, members of the Center’s Boston-based WARC, my role was to begin the background stare above the blank Word document at the sister institution, the West African Research work for the project. Recognizing the relatively palm tree just outside my window, wondering Association, and in cooperation with the short duration of my internship in Dakar (less if I too can learn to become part of this mosaic African Commission on Human and Peoples’ than three months), it was logical that I be that I have stumbled upon. Rights.4 Know Your Rights! has the primary assigned a particular focus within human objective of assisting in the sensitization and rights. In the end, my site supervisor as well education of the rights afforded by national as the founders of Know Your Rights! back II. “I think this tension in society is and international legislation, charters and in Massachusetts suggested that my focus necessary. It’s necessary. And it is conventions within eighteen countries of West be women’s rights.4 Therefore, I was charged perhaps the conflict in the society that Africa. As an effort to reach the masses of with discovering the current actualities of the can make some progress and push for society to change and the mind to West Africa with information on human rights, women’s rights scene in Senegal: what are shift, of course. This tension is very the process entails the collection of relevant the most important issues, what activities important.” legislation, publications and documentation are already being initiated, what publications – Mme. Penda Mbow, outlining human rights for the region and in are available to other NGOs and to the Director of Mouvement Citoyenne each country respectively. The innovative twist: general public and in what languages, how to June 22, 2006, Dakar Know Your Rights! is focused on translating best make these important legislations and this documentation into select languages of documents available to the larger public, what I had just arrived in Dakar, Senegal. It would be West Africa. Most obvious, this breaking away is the degree of networking between NGOs, Leigh Swigart’s last night there after her short from the colonial languages of French and etc. Most importantly, my question became: trip, and my first, and she and John Hutchison English is viewed to be an effective way to To what extent and how does the legislation invited me to join them for dinner. We sat at a legitimize these African languages that have and official discourse pertaining to the women table of the coastal cuisine restaurant in the for so long been unrecognized or deemed as of Senegal actually reach the homes and daily patio dining “room.” Over heaping portions of merely devalued “dialects” that are secondary lives of individuals of the civil society? rice and fresh fish, the conversation jumped to colonial languages. Moreover, the extra from Senegalese cuisine to Brandeis, to social step of translation that Know Your Rights! is Formally, my attention was to women’s justice, to anecdotes of past experience, to a pursuing will be done in hopes of broadening organizations and other NGOs that had a quick things-you-need-to-know orientation to the populations that generally have knowledge particular branch or project concerning women. Dakar. About to take the last bite of fish that of and access to such documents: namely, The list of organizations I pursued ranged my already full stomach could handle, I was to reach beyond the politicians, the formally from the grassroots human rights education interrupted by an object hitting my arm. Now in educated and the international scholars. organization Tostan, known internationally for my lap lay a mango, its skin split open where Ultimately, these translations and summaries its work in eradicating female genital cutting it had fallen onto my arm. Looking up to trace will be digitized and made accessible to the village by village, to the Senegal chapter of the source of this falling fruit, I realized that I public via the internet. Recognizing that internet the German international Foundation Friedrich was sitting closer than I thought to the trunk access only applies to a minority of the region’s Eibert Stiftung, working for social democracy, to of the mango tree under which our table was population, and certainly not to those who are a neighborhood tontine or private microfinance- positioned. Laughing together over my message most vulnerable to human rights abuses (i.e. type group of women in the city of St. Louis. from above, Leigh and John exclaimed with women, children, rural communities, the most Each day I sought out a different contact or smiles, “Bienvenue au Sénégal!,” giving me impoverished, ethnic minorities, refugees, etc.), organization, one leading to another, in search the official welcome to the country that would the hope is that nongovernmental organizations of publications concerning women’s rights become my home for the next ten weeks. (NGOs), schools and other institutions directly and a general sense of the perceptions and in touch with communities would be then able activities concerning women’s rights among the Such was my baptism to Senegal, the to dispense the information through dialogue, circles of urban activists. beginning of a summer in Dakar learning to workshops, formal education programs and keep my eyes and ears open and yes, now even radio broadcasts. It is through these formal interviews as well being wise enough to look up as well. At as the not-so-formal discussions over lunch at WARC, my primary responsibility was in For obvious geographic reasons, the West the workplaces or homes of the scholars and assisting the development of a research project African Research Center in Dakar is to serve activists that I was able to gain the information

64 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 I needed to assist with the Know Your Rights! gifts? Perhaps they give gifts to the family has not yet been forced to put down her project. Who is leading the movement? What of the father, or perhaps even the child books and end her studies after secondary are the ideologies informing the movement? herself? What kind of gift should I bring if school to be married off to a man almost And most simply, what is “right” for the this is the case? twice her age; she has not felt the shame Senegalese woman? and loss of miscarriage from malnutrition

I began to muse over the baby showers or even abuse from her husband; she has and baptism parties that I had been to not yet felt the burden of carrying her own III. “Tout le monde participe dans le in my life in the States, calling to mind child for a full nine months without once mouvement” Everyone participates in seeing the rain to ease the heat of the the [women’s] movement. all the amusing traditions and gifts that become part of the festivities. There are sun; she has not yet felt near death after – Mme Naffie Sow, Coordinator for women’s gag gifts and jokes and games, and it being in labor and delivering a child with local tontine or informal finance group seems as if the adults themselves have no assistance because the husband is July 08, 2006, St. Louis Senegal. reverted back to their own childhood, not home to give permission for her to go cooing and oogling in the newborn’s face. to a midwife or hospital; she has not yet known rape as a “war crime” committed June 29, 2006 Surely the celebration may not be same by the soldiers or officers of some rebel here, but I expect it to be one filled with forces; she has not yet spent hours in the The wife of one of the employees who great joy. A woman is valued according to house waiting for her husband to return works at WARC had her first baby today. the family she raises, from her first child’s home with only meager spendings to Amdy met myself and Abdoulaye as we birth to the day her children have children feed her six children; she has not yet had returned from our morning of rendezvous, of their own. As I contemplated the great to confront the reality that her husband, and told us the good news: “Je suis un significance of this event, I noted that the whom she had cooked for and taken after père!” He walked quickly toward us, with birth of a boy is much more celebrated for the past ten years, is about to take a a lift in his step, coming to Abdoulaye to than that of a girl. And yet I remember second, much younger wife, despite the receive a handshake in congratulations. how Amdy’s smile broke loose after he fact that they both selected “monogamy” “J’ai une fille!” (“I have a daughter!”), he revealed that he was not only a father, but on their signed marriage contract; she uttered, finally allowing his joy and pride that he is the father of a girl. has not yet felt the back aches she will to show through a great grin. Abdoulaye receive in old age as a result of carrying pulled closer to his friend and colleague Now, as I wonder who I should ask to heavy groceries atop her head returning to embrace him, the handshake not being find out what kind of gift, if any, I should home from the market and working so enough. present at the party, I begin to think more many hours in the house; and she has of the child and her future. With perfect not yet known what it is to see one of Congratulations were exchanged innocence, she does not yet know the her grown and married daughters give throughout the offices, and Amdy seemed travails that many West African girls birth to a daughter of her own, knowing to be glowing all day. There is going to and women face: she has not yet had that she too may live the same life. And be a party for the newborn at his house to carry her baby brother on her back, incha’allah, God willing, Amdy’s newborn next Thursday. All the staff of WARC are with her tiny and frail five-year-old body, daughter never will come to know these invited, and that includes myself as well. begging for spare change in the streets; pains. Amdy personally invited me, with great she has not yet felt the power of the pride in his voice – a voice that suddenly beating sun as she sits on the ground all On the day of this baby girl’s birth, all seemed more gentle, perhaps fatherly. morning, scrubbing clothes clean over a of the WARC employees gathered and Silently, I wondered if there were certain bowl of soapy water; she has not yet felt excitedly discussed the news that had traditions for a newborn Muslim child. the weeks of agony and bleeding after so quickly spread. Congratulations were Had she been named the moment she excision at the onset of puberty; she has given by every person that passed Amdy, was born, or would she receive a name not yet spent hours in front of a shard of and he could hardly stop smiling to after some time had passed, perhaps at broken mirror, tugging at her hair to make eat the plate of rice and fish in front of a naming ceremony, as in some other it straight and applying pastels to her lips him. Already he was talking about his traditions? Do the guests at a reception and eyebrows and cheeks to give more daughter’s future, referring to her as a for the newborn present the family with color to her already beautiful skin; she princess and vowing to protect her for

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 65 his life. She will go to school, “only the At its very roots, the women’s rights seems that the more general understanding of best,” and have the opportunity to seek movements in the States began as a way to “women’s rights” is the application of “human out a job. Undoubtedly, with Amdy’s and break down walls and to open doors to the rights” to women as equally to men. his wife’s support, this particular child full citizenship of women. However, with great will live not live her life as a Senegalese regret, I have personally come to experience It has become most obvious to me that woman, but more so, as a Senegalese that while the goal was to disassemble “women’s rights” and even phrases such as citizen.5 prejudices, stereotypes and restrictions toward “the liberation” or the “empowerment of women, the movement has since created new women” can mean something entirely different It is true that my painful imaginings about this stereotypes in other areas. “Get the women in Senegal than it does in the States. The child’s future are not necessarily a depiction out of the kitchen and into the work place,” debate is not only about parity in the economic of the life of every woman in Senegal. These had been the rallying cry, and now, according sector or a fight for freedom from restricting descriptions of a woman at various stages of to some, the woman who chooses to stay at or harmful stereotypes imposed on women as her life have come in bits and pieces from the home with her family is seen as the woman it often is today in the States; rather, for many very diverse intimate conversations, interviews who has given up her rights. I had always Senegalese, “liberation of the woman” often and witnesses that I have had throughout my perceived “rights” to be the ability to be means allowing her to achieve full citizenship, time in Senegal. However, it seems to me now afforded the chance to make a choice – and including everything from having access to that if even one woman has known such pains, now, I question the extent to which there is a the courts to having the personal authority to it is too much. greater element of choice here in the discourse act without requiring permission first from her of today’s movement in the States than when husband or other male authority. I have never considered myself to be a feminist. the movement made its first achievements In fact, I have often found myself disturbed with suffrage and the advances toward equal Perhaps a brief account of an interview with by the current talk of women’s rights in the wages and affirmative action. In this context, Mme Oumou Lam, Directrice of the Reseau United States. Perhaps the director of WARC, the empowerment of woman seems to be de la Femme (Women’s Network) for ANAFA6 Professor Sene, and my site supervisor, defined more by her academic and economic (an NGO that approaches social, economic Abdoulaye, had suggested that I do research achievements than by her own personal and political development through literacy of women’s rights in integrity. education) best illustrates the potential “Suddenly, the question particular because severity in gender disparities to which the they assumed that as I admit that I had not extensively studied either “women’s rights” discourse in Senegal may an American young feminism or the women’s movements in the refer. Mme Lam told me of one extreme case of whether or not, I, as a woman from a liberal States prior to going to Senegal, but it was that Réseau worked on concerning a woman arts university, this these acquired perceptions that led me to who almost died from delivering a baby with female, could jump over a would be my obvious question what really was at stake when talking no assistance. The laboring woman was not interest. I took the about “women’s rights” in the States. This forced to attempt to give birth on her own gutter the same way that assignment not mentality had driven me away from feminism because she was alone. Rather, living in the necessarily because and convinced me that “women’s rights” as house of her husband, she had been surrounded he, a male, had done so, I wanted to support distinct from “human rights” could not produce by her female in-laws at the time of her labor. feminism or women’s positive relationships between men and women However, these women who were present had rights activism, in society – until I had come to be a witness to refused to take her to a hospital or midwife became a window into the but more because I that very reality in Senegal. until the husband returned to the house to grant wanted to find out his permission. Considering the tone of voice larger questions that I had if perhaps there Surely, there are those Senegalese activists with which Mme Lam narrated this story, I got was an alternative deemed as “radical feminists” who, against the the impression that this example was neither been exploring through my way to address the perceived majority, declare that woman must surprising nor rare, despite my own shock. women’s situation. I be entirely independent from man, breaking was prepared to ask away from the nature of symbiotic relationships Regardless of whether or not this particular research interviews.” questions and make that at least ideologically govern social and account is an anomaly or a general challenges. family structures. However, after speaking with representation, it speaks volumes about the those men and women who are advocating for extent to which Senegalese women are able the empowerment of the Senegalese woman, it to participate in decision-making in day-

66 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 to-day life, let alone to be regarded as full prepare lunch and you can come take dinner answers about the “Over and over, those citizens in the public sphere as political or with the family.” After the initial tour of his rights, status and economic actors. In fact, for many activists village and the introduction to what seemed to needs of women in Senegal, “women’s rights” are perceived be all of his family and friends, it became my in Senegalese whom I interviewed to be inseparable from the larger goal of second home outside of WARC. societies, the making human rights accessible to the entire interviews led me expressed the view that population: many have reiterated that women In the time that I spent with him, both in to formulate new need to become citizens in order to enter the office and out, we talked often of the questions. Over men had the power to make into partnership with men. Only through this progress of my research. “Where are you going and over, those dialogue, this partnership, can the nation as a today?” “What’s the next organization?” The whom I interviewed decisions in the public whole strive toward greater development: “the conversation was most often light-hearted, not expressed the role of the movement is to improve the society delving into the greater issues and conflicts view that men and to improve, of course, the role played by within the field. However, it was in his knowing had the power to sphere as political and the individual and the shared responsibility and my focus on women’s rights, thought to be make decisions in giving opportunity to everybody to participate in the classic choice of an American female the public sphere religious leaders, and in the the development of the society. I think it is one anthropology major, that the commentary about as political and of the goals that we are trying to achieve.”7 égalité between genders developed. religious leaders, private sphere as fathers, and in the private From the beginning, he pegged me as a sphere as fathers, IV “Égalité” feminist – again, a label that I myself would not uncles and sons. If uncles and sons. If this We cross the street to walk up the hill to the use to categorize my own ideologies – and I , this was indeed the schoolyard. Ousseynou walks next to me, not interested in raising questions about his own reality, or even the was indeed the reality, or needing to lead the way; for the past month, I perceptions of the role of Senegalese women, perceived reality, it have been coming here almost daily. With ease, often prompted him from this viewpoint. became apparent even the perceived reality, he jumps over the deep rut in the sidewalk Suddenly, the question of whether or not, I, as to me that it would that has been carved in the earth to channel a female, could jump over a gutter the same also be necessary it became apparent to the waters that would otherwise flood the way that he, a male, had done so, became a to explore the first- window into the larger questions that I had person perspectives streets in the rainy season. Once on the other me that it would also be side, he looks back to me, cautioning, “Girls been exploring through my research interviews. of these males, can’t jump. Go slowly.” Ignoring his “advice,” Yes, this may seem to be only a trivial example collectively I jump easily over the gutter. Landing next to of the discussion of equality of capability and identified as the necessary to explore the him, I shoot him a grin. He returns the joking social expectations. But then again, I reasoned final decision- smile, and together, we say the word “égalité” that if the view is that it is not proper for a makers. first-person perspectives (“equality”), miming the word by each holding woman to act in such a way, jumping over both hands out if front of us, the left and the rather than walking around the gutter, or even It was at this of these males, collectively right hand side by side at the same level. that she is physically not able to do so – an realization that I action so seemingly meaningless – then how chose to diverge For now, it is a jovial challenge about whether would a woman be able to pursue the larger from what my identified as the final or not males and females are both physically questions of rights to inheritance, education, undergraduate capable of making the small jump (or large health care and employment, that are already anthropological decision-makers.” step) over the gutter. Really, this became the outlined in law? training on how to punch line to end so many of the conversations properly engage that we had as he helped me explore Dakar. For myself, the interviews were only half of in “participant observation” would otherwise Ousseynou is a colleague of mine at WARC. the research. From them, I was able to absorb dictate. The ethnographers would teach that in Working as the assistant in the library there, he the perspectives and histories constructed by order to complete my research, I would need interacted with me daily. After a month of being the women (and a few men) that were active to see the views and actualities in everyday in Senegal, he had invited me to his home in in the field of empowering the Senegalese life as well as those brought forth through the one of the villages that comprises the greater women. However, this did not seem to appointed interviews, to live among the people Dakar district, saying that “my mother will be enough. Rather than simply providing with whom my studies concerned.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 67 As a female American student arriving in to shake the hand of a woman, considering it complementary, it would be naïve to only listen Senegal, I was faced with two choices: 1. to an improper and unclean action, I was always to the voices of the women. Surely, women may listen to the voices of the women in day to expected to initiate greetings with these same be among those most commonly vulnerable, day life, spending my social time in the home men, complete with handshakes. Although and I do not mean to deny the importance of with the Senegalese women, or 2. to associate bewildering to me, I learned quickly that my giving them voice. However, in order to even myself with the male population, another identity as a foreigner often had more weight begin to formulate the appropriate questions option available to me due to my own identity in determining the way I was perceived and about the roles of women, I needed to discover as an American and received by Senegalese society than did my more about the notions that create and enforce “If many of the activists due to the overall identity as a woman. In many cases, this such a gendered power hierarchy. If many of visibility of the life identity granted me access to interact within the activists I spoke with were at all correct in of men in Dakar. social networks that were predominantly stating that development of the nation must I spoke with were at The men sitting male, predominantly female, or even those not include the participation and efforts of both on benches on the defined by gendered lines (i.e. my environment men and women, then so too are the voices of all correct in stating corners, drinking interning at WARC). Both the relative visibility both women and men needed to conceive of tea and discussing of the life of the Senegalese man and the fact and to fully understand the realization of rights that development of the life; younger that being an American student granted me a for all Senegalese citizens. Therefore, I felt it and older boys certain respected status allowed me the ability just as necessary to be highly attuned to the gathered around to engage in and to witness male social life. opinions, actions, and histories of Senegalese nation must include the foosball tables that men as well. were commonly However, more than just these factors participation and efforts set up along the alone, it was the very fact that it is precisely It is for this reason that I had gone with street sides in these men who are viewed by the women Ousseynou almost every day to the schoolyard. of both men and women, the villages; the with which I spoke to be the power holders Since it was summer vacation, the children businessmen; the – and I note, seldom the malicious enemies were no longer in classes, but the plot of land then so too are the voices street vendors; the of women’s rights, although this view was designated as the school grounds was hardly boutique owners; occasionally expressed – that led me to seek void of people. In addition to the schoolhouse, the taxi drivers – to their voices as well. From the Family Code, a there was a family whose home was also on of both women and men some degree, the legal document that outlines the roles, rights, the property. They were friends and family of public nature of the and responsibilities of the woman and the Ousseynou’s, his grandfather having founded needed to conceive of and male population young girl within the family, to the numerous the school, and they now were designated seemed more international charters for human rights that to be the guardians, holding all keys to the to fully understand the accessible than Senegal has signed and ratified, it seems that buildings and outhouses. Next to the one-story the woman’s life, the legal framework already provides for the school and this family’s house was another, which is largely full citizenship of the woman in Senegalese taller building, resembling more of a warehouse realization of rights for private and confined society. Yet each woman I interviewed would than an education facility. This building ,with its to certain spaces. cite gaps between this legislation and the raw cinderblock construction not yet concealed all Senegalese citizens. Additionally, as reality. After all, this gap is the focus of under plaster and paint, was also a part of an American most of their work as activists and scholars, the school. Apparently, it was an addition that Therefore, I felt it just as student, or even whether from an educational, economical, was started but, due to a lack of funding, time as a light-skinned legal, cultural, political or even interpersonal and/or labor, was left incomplete. necessary to be highly foreigner, I was perspective. And if it is the men who are those perceived by many cited as governing the popular ideologies and In the meantime, this abandoned second to have a higher the ways that they are played out in daily “school house” had become extra living attuned to the opinions, status than many interactions, I was curious to find out what their quarters for the family who lived on the Senegalese women views were. property. The older son, who went by the name actions, and histories of within the society. Vieux, had pulled his mattress up to the second For example, while To study the actuality of women’s rights in floor where he would often sleep to escape Senegalese men as well.” some older religious Senegal, in a society that recognizes men’s the heat and commotion of being cramped into men would refuse and women’s roles as opposite but also the humble house with the rest of the family

68 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 below. Another younger brother had converted As I became more and more integrated into in Senegal could “For me, initially, it was a first floor “classroom” into a bedroom for their tea-time conversations through language, be described as himself, furnished with his own mattress, a I also gained an increasing opportunity to being composed of mosquito net, and a candle stuck into the neck engage in some of the informal aspects of my many wives with a place where I could of an empty Coke bottle. As the sun set each research, the true “participant observation.” equal households, evening, these brothers, Ousseynou, and their I often teased and provoked these men by properties and listen to the leisurely other friends would gather in this building to adopting the views of the women I was attention from their sip tea and discuss life at the day’s end. speaking with in the interviews. My first try shared husband. conversations of the men at this was by interrupting a conversation that After having this For me, initially, it was a place where I could they were having in front of me, but did not debate on many gathered around me. listen to the leisurely conversations of the think I could understand. One of the men had occasions, I chose men gathered around me. Ultimately, I must turned to Ousseynou, and, raising his eyebrows to push them even admit, the school house undoubtedly became in my direction, told Ousseynou in Wolof that further, asking if it Ultimately, I must admit, the a place for me to explore a social network if I returned to Senegal, he should ask me to was really possible whose members would become my friends or bring a girl just like myself for him to take as for polygamy to school house undoubtedly even my “elastic family” – a factor that I am a second wife. Understanding clearly, I waved even serve women. grateful for, and not only for the progress of my my index finger and speaking in a firm voice, became a place for me to research. In the beginning, my presence was uttered the first sentence that I had attempted In the end, their merely as a witness, and I was limited even in to form in Wolof : “Deedit. Bena ngoor: Bena responses varied, that capacity; I was just becoming comfortable jigeen.” Simply, “No. One man: one woman.” certainly not taking explore a social network communicating in French, and my skills in the a unanimous local Wolof did not go far beyond greetings or Surely, their surprise was undoubtedly due in side as “the whose members would discussion about food. part to the fact that not only had I followed male viewpoint.” their Wolof, but was also able to respond in However, it seemed become my friends or even However, the more time that I spent in this their own language for the first time. However, obvious through place, the more the men began to make their as my face remained stern and they began to their reactions my “elastic family” – a conversations more and more accessible to understand the firmness of my statement, the to my poking and me, either allowing Ousseynou to translate brief comment that one of my friends had made prodding that into English or even pausing to speak directly – perhaps even a light-hearted joke – opened these were not factor that I am grateful to me in French. Vieux, the older brother who the way for discussion about the practice of questions that they called the second floor his “bedroom,” could polygamy. They argued that polygamy was legal would expect to be for, and not only for the not speak French fluently himself, having gone in Senegal, and therefore, man had the right to asked so bluntly, only to the Koran schools and not having a take up to four wives as outlined by the Family especially by a progress of my research.” formal French education. However, he made Code. I asked why they thought the practice friend with whom it his mission to teach me Wolof. Calling should be legal, and their responses ranged typical gendered himself my professor and often forbidding from the classic “c’est comme ça” (“that’s just hierarchies had Ousseynou to translate, he would speak to me the way it is”) to justifications through certain seemed to dissolve. In developing friendships sometimes for an hour at a time only in Wolof, interpretations of the Koran and the life of with these men, my identity as an American pleading me with his eyes to understand if not Mohammed. Citing the Koran, they explained reigned over my identity as a woman, although his words, then at least his message. Some that if man could not be faithful to his one both were obviously visible. days he would be angry with me for not trying wife, he should take a total of two, three or hard enough to practice Wolof and demand, four wives as long as each was afforded equal Through these ideological and political, and “Wolof rekk” (“Wolof only”) if I even so treatment.8 Besides, seeing as there are more even at times personal, discussions in the much as slipped in a French affirmation “oui” women than men in the country, and many school house, I walked a thin line. I was able (“yes”) as I followed the conversation. As time widows, they reasoned that it was necessary to maintain their trust and respect while at passed, he even made his own try at speaking for man to take more than one woman, lest the same time challenge their ideas of the French, confessing to me that he did not mind these women not be taken care of. Challenging norms that govern domestic and public life practicing with me because he knew that I too them further, I asked them if this was a reality, between men and women. Often, as the first am just learning the language. if the polygamous families that they knew of conversation about polygamy had begun, the

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 69 debate ended with friendly joking. Knowing V. “It’s part of who we think we are” to research human rights and particularly the topic of my research, they would poke – Mme Khady Ba, Volunteer women’s rights with relation to legislation fun at me, saying, “You, you are my friend, Coordinator for Tostan, and charters, this background knowledge my sister, but sometimes you are crazy,” and referring to reasons for the practice seemed essential. Considering the complex and we would laugh. This is not to say that the of female genital cutting perhaps inseparable tie that is often evoked issues discussed were not serious matters, July 14, 2006, Dakar. between religion and the state in the view of but I too had to play various roles, using my Islam, it would be necessary to have a basis own privilege as an As a student with at least eight semesters in the ideology of politics and Islam in West “When discussing women’s American student of undergraduate training in anthropology, Africa before even beginning to understand the to give voice to the I must say that I was quite absorbed in the status of the woman. Additionally, recognizing rights in Senegal, it women who were ethnographic process during my internship for once again the influence of identities and so often pressured Know Your Rights! at WARC as well as in my communities in shaping viewpoints on into silence within responsibilities, especially in the ever-debated becomes impossible not daily social interactions. However, reflecting Senegalese now, I would rather call the result of my daily domain of human rights, it is certain that Islam society. Ultimately, studying “ethnographic conflict” than simply is one of the possible institutions that would also to talk about the ways by embodying “ethnography.” I make this distinction because, play a role in shaping ideologies. the voices of rather than trying to understand a single in which Islam, traditional the Senegalese notion of culture that would inform women’s The course that I chose to take in preparation, feminists, I was rights, I found myself more and more facing called “The History of Islam in West Africa: culture, contemporary able to enter into multiple understandings of culture, ideologies Tolerance and Coexistence,” seemed to be the dialogue that and frameworks that shifted from person to the perfect fit to allow me to explore these so many women person, community to community, and context realities. The professor, a Muslim scholar who culture, globalization and were calling for: to context. In doing research on human rights, had been born in Guinea, lived in Senegal, and men and women specifically women’s rights, these multiple lived and traveled extensively in the United the changes to African engaging together notions and aspects of culture seemed to be States, France and throughout Europe, was in relationship everything. While there are many institutions well known in his field, and the course syllabus culture by the colonial toward social at play, it is certain that cultural phenomena was promising. First, for myself and as well betterment. In are a huge influence in shaping these different as for the other students in the class, the order to understand course served as an in-depth introduction to system are involved in understandings of women’s rights. Particularly, how this can be when discussing women’s rights in Senegal, the basic principles of Islam. Second, although made a possibility, it becomes impossible not also to talk about I had studied colonization of the African constant dialogue (and there must be the ways in which Islam, traditional culture, continent as well as some pre-colonial history, consideration of all contemporary culture, globalization and the the course provided me with a background more often, I would say, the peoples within changes to African culture by the colonial in the pre-colonial history of West Africa in society. Listening system are involved in constant dialogue (and particular, ranging from issues of statehood argument) with each other sincerely to both more often, I would say, argument) with each to trade and finally to the colonial impact on men and women other to define the women’s rights movements a micro scale. Third, by learning a history of without distinction in Senegal. how Islam first spread throughout the region, to define the women’s must be seen as a arguably mostly via vast trade networks and fundamental step Hoping to further my knowledge of the country’s self-conversions, I was able to identify the rights movements in if the progress of population before arriving, I took note of the originating principles behind Muslim faith in the movement is fact that reportedly 95 percent of the population West Africa. Fourth, as a counter-argument to Senegal.” truly to reach the is Muslim. Islam was a religion that I knew the way that Islam is perceived and addressed Senegalese people. about more from the negative images and in the States, especially in a post-9/11 world, language in American media sources than from the course provided the idea that: 1) Islam, as serious personal inquiry. In the spring of 2006, it is understood and practiced in West Africa, I chose to take a course at Brandeis that could is very particular to the region, partly for better prepare me before going to the country. historical reasons of how/why it even reached Going to Senegal as an Ethics Center Fellow Afrique Noire; and 2) despite the fact that

70 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 extremist sects and brotherhoods are often was not too much surprised. After all, as it was the religiosity of Sufi Dakar, I had to reform perceived as being the majority as they “speak” explained by my new friends and colleagues, my views. It seemed as if there was a mosque louder, the mystic Sufi sect of Islam that is I am a practicing Catholic – something, on every corner; one could hear the muezzin’s most adhered to in Senegal certainly does not according to those I met, “rare” among call to prayer from any location, and it was not follow this “louder” voice. The premise of the Americans – and I was respected for being part uncommon to see people praying on sidewalks course, as suggested by the title, was that of one of the Abrahamic faiths. along even the busiest streets. Islam in West Africa is an Islam characterized by peace, coexistence and tolerance. Of Of course, it was not only my own faith and Yet Islam was apparent not only in those course, the syllabus also delved into issues differing beliefs/practices that made me so activities that were a part of religious obligation, of slavery in Islam and of the jihadic wars attentive to the role of Islam in every day life in the five principles including daily prayers. From that were fought in the 17th and 18th centuries Dakar. In fact, it seemed virtually inescapable. the public transportation, with each bus having as the religion really took hold of the region. My colleagues would stop working to shower or Alhamdoulillah (“thanks be to God”) painted However, according to the course instruction, at least wash their hands, face, and feet before across the hood, to learning to say incha’allah these instances of violence and human rights and after lunch and again at 6 p.m. if they were (“God willing”) after every discussion of a future abuses were looked upon as being anomalies, still in the office, take out a prayer mat (the planned event, it became quite clear that Islam not consistent enough to tarnish the region’s women would cover their head and tie on a pervaded everyday conversation and thought. tradition of tolerance. wrap skirt if they were wearing pants), and fulfill Even for the names of the days of the week, their obligation to the five daily prayers. In fact, Wolof speakers use the Arabic words, reflecting I took this information with an analytical lens, as I went from office to office to do interviews once again the influence of Islam and the way trying to draw my own conclusion about how for my research, I found it was not uncommon to that it spread to the people of Senegal. to reconcile this historical evidence with the see showers in the bathrooms of work places, somewhat apologetic tone of the course. in part for this purpose specifically. Come Friday, Suddenly, my question about Islam’s influence Regardless, the course prepared me with the many offices were closed for the holy day. As an in the manifestation and understanding of knowledge base to seek out evidences and international research center, WARC operated human rights in Senegal became central. I understandings of tolerance and coexistence on Fridays, but the atmosphere was somehow could not ask in regards to human rights in the daily life of quieter, more gentle, more reverent on these questions about the “Sufi Islam is notjust a key Dakar, Senegal. Quite simply, or so it seemed, days. Many of the researchers did not return status, roles and the course’s emphasis on West African Islam after leaving for the mosque at around 1:00. My identities of the as being peaceful and tolerant proved true to colleagues, the permanent employees, at least Senegalese woman influence in the process, me initially. My colleagues at WARC, for one, those who were men, even left to go to mosque, without also seeing the cross I wore around my neck had no certainly adding to the general quiet. And every hearing responses not just one of many. negative feelings or commentary to dispense man and woman, employer, Senegalese student that referenced toward me. Even as they confirmed their or researcher came to WARC on Fridays wearing religion. Indeed, Rather, I came to learn that suspicion that based on my appearance I must their best clothing (I too made the extra effort Sufi Islam is not have Jewish family, there was no judgment, on Fridays, wearing my own tailored boubou, or just a key influence tension, or negativity passed. Likewise, a Senegalese dress). in the process, not it is deeply embedded in Senegalese friend of Leigh Swigart’s, a devout just one of many. Muslim himself, volunteered happily to take Initially, I had assumed that I would have to do Rather, I came other cultural, historical, me around to the two churches within walking a lot of digging or engage in deep theological to learn that it is distance of my homestay family’s house, conversation in order to explore the question deeply embedded and social influences as encouraging me to find which church I preferred that I asked after my Spring 2006 course: How in other cultural, to attend. Later, he volunteered to drive me to do the beliefs, practices and histories of Islam historical, and well, truly inseparable for church and pick me up after the services, at in Senegal translate into shaping the ideologies social influences least for the first two or three Sundays until that govern day to day life, particularly in as well, truly I got oriented to the area and got used to regard to development and human rights? The inseparable for other factors, especially walking on my own in the city. The Islam that class had prepared me for the idea of Islam other factors, I felt and saw was certainly one of tolerance, being quite central to daily life, but perhaps I especially from my from my vantage point in perhaps more so than I had felt anywhere else still expected religion to be only one influence, vantage point in that I have been a religious minority. And yet, I one of many. However, as I quickly experienced Dakar. Dakar.”

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 71 For example, many “cultural” practices in argue that Senegal’s 1999 outlawing of female enforcement. This assumed gendered power Senegal that are sometimes deemed harmful genital cutting (FGC) as stated by the Penal Code hierarchy seems to lie at the base of many to women, from female genital cutting to is a great advancement in terms of questioning issues concerning women’s rights, from access polygamous marriages, are said to have their the perceived religious component of such to education and economic means to decision- root in Islam. Most intelligent readers would practices. Previously, and even today, some hold making capabilities within a polygamous family. point out that Islam was brought to the people the notion that FGC acts as a ritual performed In common discourse, this hierarchy is actually of Senegal and is no more “traditional” than so that women may further aspire to Islamic more cited to be a derivative of Islam than colonial architecture and eating with forks notions of purity, cleanliness and chastity, as colonial or traditional ideologies. and knives. However, the spring 2006 course well as marriageability. The prevalence of this enabled me to understand the connection rationale is evidenced by the fact that several For example, Mme Penda Mbow, a well- between “traditional cultures” and Islam. non-government groups that continue to respected professor at University Cheikh While yes, Islam was not widely accepted educate about or even eradicate FGC in Senegal Anta Diop in Dakar and founding director of among the ethnic groups that now inhabit have often targeted religious leaders in their Mouvement Citoyenne, noted the role of certain Senegal until the 19th century, local marabous campaigns and workshops for change. One interpretations of Islam in the progress of the were present as early as the 7th century, such organization, Tostan, has made significant women’s rights movement during an interview in and the religion had firmly taken its root by efforts and has received quite a positive her home. She commented that while the 1973 the time the French were beginning to gain response by involving religious leaders (namely, Family Code legislation had initially encouraged social, economic and political influence.9 In marabous, or leaders of local Sufi brotherhoods) dialogue about women’s domestic roles and fact, Islam was used as a destabilizing force in the process of human rights education, responsibilities by outlining legal terms for to fight against colonizers until the country’s especially those programs concerning FGC. polygamy, inheritance rights, divorce and child independence in 1960. To this day, especially custody, the local political nature of Muslim in light of a post-9/11 world in which divisions However despite these “successes” in lessening communities had since provided obstacles for between Islam and “the West” have been so the dangers and threats to Senegalese women, any real change in the home: pronounced, some Senegalese still regard there remain great obstacles in the debate. In “What Islam is bringing is, for example, Islam as being an internal mechanism for the effort to eradicate the practice of female is the situation of the hegemony of man fighting the lasting impact of colonialism. The genital cutting, these challenges have now over woman. I think it is something Sufi sect of Islam, with which the majority of been further problematized by issues of stigma ideologically you can find in Islam. And Senegalese Muslims identify, has a particular and fear of talking about an “illegal” activity. it is what is happening and shifted the history of accommodation to and absorption Tostan Volunteer Coordinator, Khady Bâ, has status of the African woman, specifically of many earlier “traditional” practices and indicated that these silences have provided in the area where woman is Islamicized… beliefs. Thus, when discussing movements Tostan’s education program with even more Especially, religion. People used the toward gender-sensitive views and practices obstacles. Having a non-imperialistic policy religion, manipulated the religion, put that do not subjugate women, one must that requires that communities or villages to woman in a situation behind man. I used consider equally understandings of traditional invite Tostan to teach them, the very reach of to say the best example of that is … a cultures as well as those of Sufi Islam. Tostan’s activities has been jeopardized by the Muslim leader [who] is more strong, is Interpretations of both “traditional cultures” legislation that was put forth with good intent. strongest, and more powerful than, for and Islam engage in a dialectic that sets the “What we are seeing more and more is that example, the figure of a father. I think foundation for the role of woman in today’s people are scared to talk about it. Now it is not the Family Code played a great role. But Senegalese society. The result is a perception just ‘bad’ or dangerous. FGC is illegal.” Indeed, now, in my opinion, the role played by of tradition not as “a culture of the past,” but as with any other practices and ideologies the marabou system is very strong and rather, a concept of culture that is very much a that impede the full realization of citizenship for example, constitutes an obstacle to part of modern life. for the Senegalese woman, open dialogue is promoting and using the Family Code.”10 a necessary component to education and even In part, it is precisely this blending and steps toward reform. Using the words of Mme. Mbow, a voice that remembering of cultures and beliefs that further was often echoed in many of the interviews complicates questions about change; practices Once again, Islam plays an important role, and discussions that I held, these “uses” and are not only seen to be rooted in history and interpreted as granting men a God-given “manipulations” of Islam cannot simply be identity, but also in religion in very complex superiority over women, and therefore a louder dismissed as false reasoning. Regardless of ways. Surely, some women’s activists would voice in both the home and in public policy their truth and validity, this ideology to which

72 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 Mbow refers is nonetheless a reality for some with the course, I did in fact experience Indeed, while there are those who use Islam circles of both men and women Muslims in an “Islam of tolerance and coexistence” in to justify the “natural” power hierarchy that Senegal. The attention must be paid toward regard to relations with other religious groups places men above women and to cite the realizing that the “uses” and “manipulations” and peoples. After all, the first president of historical tradition behind this manner of social left so often unquestioned remain to be independent Senegal was the much-loved organization, there are also those who find significant influences of determining gender Leopold Senghor, a Catholic Serer from solace for women in Islam, noting the doctrine politics in the street, in the government, in Senegal. As an American student living and that God created all human beings in His own offices, and even in the home. researching in a post-9/11 world, it would likeness. The purpose for my discussion on certainly be necessary to realize these realities Islam and women’s rights is to explore the This is not to say, however, that Islam itself in order to break down any preconceived multiple ways in which interpretations of is encouraging these arguably negative negativities or nervousness that I admittedly Islam and its role in Senegalese societies and consequences that are felt by Senegalese had in living amidst Muslim communities. identities have served as a hegemonic force in women and young girls. In fact, the activists However, the reality that was significant in Senegal to define the place of the woman. The whom I spoke with as well as many scholars discovering what roles the foundations of Islam role of Islam in women’s rights development of Islam have used the basic principles of played in Senegal’s human rights development demonstrates the complexities that have arisen Islam to point to the value of the woman, was not so much that which came through when cultural, historical, familial, political, and drawing examples from the Koran and the life in inter-religious dialogue and interactions. religious viewpoints collide (or at times, even of Mohammad. So too did Prof Lansiné Kaba, Rather, I quickly came to understand that when converge) in defining who a Senegalese woman who taught the course “History of Islam in West questioning how notions of identity and group- may be and what roles she is allowed and Africa” at Brandeis in spring 2006, highlight belonging contribute to forming ideologies, expected to fulfill. positive powers that the doctrines of Islam may one must look inward. This meant not only grant women. In the words of a Senegalese identifying the numerous factors that were at sociologist, founder of the Association of play in this process, but also the relationships VI. “Unification of rights in our society African Women for Research and Development between these influences.How does Islam means for woman to get citizenship, more and more citizenship, and of (1977) and member of the women’s association relate to conceptions of traditional culture? course, to put all the citizens in the

Yewwu-Yewwi (“Awake”),“the kinds of Muslims How does Islam relate to notions of political same level.” who see the feminist movement as a threat are power? How does Islam generate general – Mme. Penda Mbow, not the only type of Muslims around.”11 I am notions of about the roles and responsibilities Director of Mouvement Citoyenne not denying the reality of these understandings of woman in Senegalese societies, June 22, 2006, Dakar of Islam. In fact, through these arguments, it communities and families? Highly contested by becomes obvious that Islam, like most religions definition and in practice, the realm of women’s The children run up and down the beach, and institutionalized belief systems, is subject rights lies at the intersection between these flirting with the tide that rushes up to their to individual and collective interpretations multiple understandings of political, religious, ankles. One small group kicks around a soccer and manipulations. However, in the context of historical and social ideologies. ball, barely noticing the sand that sticks to Senegal, especially in the local politics that their bare, wet bodies. Beachside “fast-food” influence these collective ideologies, headed Certainly, as in the case with many social stands sell overflowingchawarma -filled often by allegiances to a particular imam or movements, especially women’s movements, pitas and hamburgers, stuffed as always marabou, it becomes necessary to consider the situation can be assessed on many levels. with lettuce, French fries, and a boiled egg, the perceived reality of the understandings Cultural, social, political, economic, religious for the equivalent of $1.50 each. The people of Islam that justify and even encourage the and familial relationships and definitions sitting at tables take swigs from their glass power structures and behaviors that others have are considered, questioned and redefined. bottles of Coca-Cola or Fanta soda to cool deemed harmful to women. Therefore, in speaking of the role of Islam their mouths from the spicy red pepper sauce. within the women’s movement in Senegal, The unrelenting African sun beams down, Ultimately, the course that I took about Islam I do not mean to oversimplify the complex hot and bright as ever, from blue skies. There in West Africa did provide me with a further nature of debate and progress. Rather, my are families, couples, groups of teenage boys background to better understand how Islam intent is to highlight that Islam is only one of affirming their independence as older kids at came to hold a dominant position in past many of the viewpoints that is informing the the beach on their own. Everyone has come out and present formation of communities and movement, and as I illustrate here, contains to enjoy the clear waters and the white sand gender politics in Senegal. In accordance within it many different understandings. – but I have come here for another reason.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 73 I came with my friend and colleague, the island. There is not a single motor vehicle At the very center of the house is a courtyard Ousseynou, arriving just in time at the port here – only walking paths, just wide enough with the two infamous curved staircases. They in downtown Dakar to take the ferry to the to accommodate a passing tour group or a rise ominously to the balconies from which island. He approaches the ticket booth and horse-drawn cart. One cannot tell if the silence dealers would come to place bids on the dark- speaks to the man in Wolof. He gives the man that hangs in the air is a peaceful serenity or a skinned men, women and children wearing 1000CFA (US $2) to pay for his ticket on the solemn remembrance of the painful history that nothing but the weighted iron balls shackled “Coumba Castel” that will carry us the short these lands bear. to their ankles. Upstairs, once the slave house two kilometers or so to the island. I am next in owner’s pristine residence, is now a tidy exhibit line, and without me saying a word, the ticket The pathway leads us past a monument. of the tools and tales that are left from the man at the window says to me in English, Standing atop an African drum, a man and grotesque history that unraveled on the ground “5000CFA, please” (US $10). I hand the man the woman stand, bodies pressed together, his level below. crisp bills that I just retrieved from the ATM, fists held triumphantly in the air with broken take my ticket, and my friend and I board the shackles hanging from each wrist, her arms Somewhere in the house, someone is crying ferry where we sit together and wait silently for wrapped around his torso and her eyes gazing out, “Why?!... why?!...” and for myself, the other passengers to find a seat. Somehow at his hardened face. A sign beside the statue flashback images of tortured faces appear with I am not bothered by the higher price that I am indicates that it is a monument celebrating each look into another chamber of the house. charged because the light coloring of my skin France’s declaration of abolition in 1848, Ousseynou wants to take pictures, and I give suggests that I am a foreigner. My only thought bringing an end to centuries of the slave trade in, trying to let the camera speak for me, as is my destination: Gorée Island. from Senegal. Residents and foreign and I have lost all capacity for words. With each Senegalese tourists alike all stop in respect, and mechanical snap of my digital camera, I frame Once the home to one of the two largest slave continue on their way to their next destination. another image, hoping that framing what I see trade ports in West Africa through which will somehow allow me to box out my own hundreds of thousands of Africans were sold, Just ahead is La Maison des Esclaves, the House emotions, making them easier to comprehend. Gorée is now home to tourist attractions and of Slaves. Built in 1776 by the Dutch who had The “door of no return” looms before us like people who want to escape the chaos of Dakar. held Gorée as a strategic territory, the house a light at the end of a dark tunnel – only this I came in part to continue my research and now stands as the only slave trade marketplace is not the gate to salvation that people speak in part because I could not visit the country left on the island. From the outside, the building of. This is the door from which the slaves, without making the short trip to Gorée as well. looks no different than the others on the after being kept in La Maison for up to three I had an interview scheduled for 2 p.m., and it walking path. We would have walked past it if months – stripped, weighed and evaluated was hardly 11 a.m. For both Ousseynou and I, it not for the small crowd gathered at the doorway by European purchasers – made their final is our first time here, arriving early so we could and the hand-painted sign nailed above the walk to the ship that would carry them to explore the island before my appointment. The entry. We pay the fee and enter, wandering foreign land, if they lived that long. Men to man who helped us step off the ferry onto the about the dark stone corridors. La Maison is southern Louisiana, children to Haiti and the dock that led to the beautiful coastline was composed of several dank chambers which once West Indies, women to Brazil. Ousseynou and calling out the locations of various “attractions” housed hundreds of Africans as they awaited I take turns standing in the open door frame. that we could see. We listen for the name the moment they would be evaluated and sold. He clicks away at my camera and then I do of the island’s most infamous landmark, La Above the open doorway to each chamber is a the same, capturing each other as we look out Maison des Esclaves, and head down the sign, identifying those who had once dwelled into the Atlantic Ocean to the same abyss of pathway in the indicated direction. inside: “les hommes,” “les femmes,” “les blue sea that each person who passed before enfants.” Some chambers had windows carved us had seen. A last glimpse at the free world. The architecture is colonial. The rust, sea-green out of the stone. In the afternoon sun, the rays Later, Ousseynou told me that he couldn’t stop and marigold-colored plaster houses stand of light that pass through these small openings asking himself, “If I was alive then, this would two or threes stories high with large shuttered are fragmented by the horizontal bars that brace have been me. What would I have done?” For windows that open to balconies overgrown the windows. I cannot but help notice that in the myself, the question seemed more difficult, with vines and hibiscus blossoms. The paint is chamber marked “les enfants” (the children), the because my own identity afforded me a real chipped, the walls are cracked, and the gardens spaces between the bars on the windows seem element of choice: “If I was alive then, this grow wild, yet it is impossible not to appreciate to be smaller than those of the others, perhaps would not have been me. What would I have the beauty of the color that abounds from every to prohibit young and slender bodies from done? Would I be one of the women standing structure and cobblestone pathway that graces attempting to escape. up on the balcony, side by side with my

74 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 husband as he made bids on the man with the crimes against the true heart and culture of the Making my final pass around the island most muscle mass and the sturdiest teeth?” country; the rape of woman, both literally and with Ousseynou, we walk through the small in reference to the stripping away of human artisan market on the east side. Jewelry of At last, it is almost 2 p.m. We ask the man at dignity. Of course, she mentions that there has cowrie shells, traditional hand-carved djembé the entrance to La Maison where the Women’s been increased activity in the movement to drums, wooden Museum is, the site of my interview. Without pay tribute to the women who give their lives carvings, batiks “Gorée has become an a word, he points just across the narrow path for the cultural reproduction of the Senegalese and canvases to the doorway right before us. There, directly people and the foundation of the Senegalese painted by various facing the House of Slaves is the Women’s family; indeed there has been liberation, such techniques and honored place which, at Museum. Certainly both buildings are equally as the legal abolition of female genital cutting. artists flank old, with the distinct colonial influence, but the However, oppression remains as history and the pathway, least symbolically, any Women’s Museum bears an entirely different collective memories of the people beg for the all for sale by atmosphere. The walls look as if they have preservation of those “cultural” and “religious” the artists who person – man, woman, been recently repainted, the floor has been traditions deemed harmful to women. created them. We swept, and each surface has been tenderly carouse through modernist, traditionalist, cared for. The courtyard opens to a garden As I leave the museum, I see a large painting the colorful where women chat amongst themselves while propped against one wall. It is of a woman stalls, stopping stitching embroidery pieces to be sold in the with twelve or so arms, each doing a different to have friendly Muslim, Christian – can museum shop. The humming of a woman activity to fulfill her many roles as woman: conversation with who is hand-dying pieces of fabric comes washing laundry, tending a crop, balancing an artist whose rally around to recognize from a room adjacent to the courtyard. Two fruit and vegetables that another arm is work catches our curved staircases rise up to the main parts depicted cooking to prepare a meal, feeding eyes. I marvel suffering, human dignity, of the Museum, the director’s offices and a her husband, breast-feeding the child she at the creative small library that is still under construction. cradles in one arm, while supporting another energy that has Each room houses a different exhibit to pay child tied onto her back. The artist, a woman been brought forth and finally, human liberty.” tribute to the lives and roles of women. They herself, seemed to express pain and fatigue from this island are divided by theme: fashion, agriculture, in the overworked woman’s eyes that she had and wonder silently if the name of the island, culinary traditions, and then rooms dedicated to painted here. In this image, woman is a slave, Good Harbor, may actually have been fulfilled. women influential in the women’s movement. bound to her duties and her identity, which The rooms are brightly lit by the large open seem so unquestionable by social and cultural Gorée has become an honored place which, at windows, unlike the dark stone chambers of the standards. Indeed, by the discourse taken least symbolically, any person – man, woman, slave house just across the way. The plastered up by the museum directrice and curators, modernist, traditionalist, Muslim, Christian walls, adorned with artifacts and images of it seems that the woman’s movement has – can rally around to recognize suffering, female politicians, famous activists, writers and become a modern day cry against slavery. human dignity, and finally, human liberty. It musicians, are alive. Surely in its early stages, the movement for the bears a history that cannot be forgotten by the “liberation de la femme” is a new page in the vacationers relaxing at the beach. The painful Here in the Museum, across the path from country’s history of fighting against oppression cries of oppression cannot be overpowered by the House of Slaves, there is life and energy. of patriarchal colonial powers and toward the young men who gather to teach a djembé However, one cannot easily forget the legacy independence and citizenship. lesson to the tourist purchasing a drum. And of oppression that looms so near in spatial and yet by remembering, that memory has allowed temporal proximity. After taking a tour of the Amidst the House of Slaves, the Women’s for new life on Gorée Island: once home to a exhibits, I have my interview with the directrice Museum, and the laughing children basking in center from which hundreds of thousands of of the museum. She speaks of the history of the natural beauty of the tiny island coast, one Africans were sold into slavery, now home its founding, its mission in education today, sees painful irony in juxtaposition of history to a new hope that the demand for liberation the role that she sees it playing in the modern and the present. Even the name of the island, may once again yield freedoms – this time, for Senegalese society. And yet she uses the same by its first colonizing proprietors after the the women of Senegal. discourse as the men who gave the tours at the Dutch phrase, “Goode Reede,” meaning “good slave house. She talks about matters of being harbor,” makes one recall the horrific ignorance denied citizenship, human rights violations, that has left such a mark on the world today.

International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life | 75 Further Reading Web links Ahmed, Leila. 1992. Women and Gender in Levtzion and Pouwels, eds. 2000. The History of African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. Yale Islam in Africa. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Rights – http://www.achpr.org/ University Press. Press. Pp. 1-129. Goree Island, UNESCO site – http://webworld. Association of African Women For Research Linares, Olga F.. 1991. Prayer, Power and unesco.org/goree/ and Development (AAWORD/AFARD). 1986. Production: The Jola of Casamance, Senegal. “Debates on Feminism in Senegal: Visions vs. UK: Cambridge University Press. The Musée de la Femme “Henriette Bathily” Nostalgia.” ECHO (AAWORD Newsletter). Vol. – http://www.museevirtuel.ca/Exhibitions/ 1, N. 2-3. Pp.9-10. McNee, Lisa. 2000. Selfish Gifts: Senegalese Francophonie/An-/MFHBS/Muse.htm Women’s Autobiographical DisCourses. NY, Brown, Seyom. 2000. Human Rights in World New York: State University of New York Press Tostan – www.tostan.org Politics. New York: Longman. Melching, Molly. 2001. “Abandoning Female West African Research Association – http:// Bâ, Mariama. 1981. So Long a Letter. London: Genital Cutting in Africa.” Eye to eye : Women web.africa.ufl.edu/WARA/index.htm Heinemann. Practicing Development Across Cultures. Edited by Susan Perry and Celeste Schenck. London, West African Research Center – www.warc- Center for Reproductive Rights, The. UK: Zed Books Ltd.. croa.org 2000. Women of the World: Laws and Michael, Sarah. 2005. Undermining Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives: Development: The Absence of Power among Francophone Africa. The Center for Reproductive Notes Local NGOs in Africa. Indiana: Indiana Rights. 1. Colloquial term for the proprietor of University Press. any small boutique or street shop that are Churchill, Robert. P. 2006. Human Rights and commonly found in urban Senegal. Ousmane, Sembene. Xala. 1983. Clive Wake, Global Diversity. Upper Saddle River, NJ Translator. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Pearson/Prentice Hall. 2. West African Research Association Press, Inc.

Cooke, Miriam. 2000. Women Claim Islam: 3. Wolof is one of the many languages spoken Parker, Melissa. 1995. “Rethinking Female Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature. in Senegal, and the most widely spoken in the Circumcision.” Africa: Journal of the Taylor & Francis, Inc. greater Dakar region. In Dakar, and increasingly International African Institute. Vol. 65. No. 4. in other regions throughout Senegal, one can Pp. 506-523. “Feminism in Senegal.” 1987. Interview by find individuals and entire communities of other Ibrahima Fall, July 1986. Excerpted from ethnic groups that also speak Wolof. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1965. Poetry and Outwrite, Reprinted in Off Our Backs. Vol. 1, Prose. Selected and translated by John November 1987. Pp.19, Pp. 22. 4. The general term “women’s rights” in Reed and Clive Wake. London: Heinemann Senegal does not exclude those cultural, Educational Books, ltd. Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock. 1998. In Search social, and interpersonal rights that are also of Islamic Feminism: One Woman’s Global afforded to girls or young women. In fact, much Sidikou, Aissata G. 2000. Recreating Words, Journey. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing of the debate concerning women’s rights to Reshaping Worlds: The Verbal Art of Women Group. education as well as bodily integrity (relevant from Niger, Mali and Senegal. Africa World to discussion of female genital cutting) and Press. Gellar, Sheldon. 1995. Senegal: An African marriage rights (i.e. marriage consent as Nation between Islam and the West. 2nd Ed. opposed to arranged and/or forced marriages Westview Press. at young ages) are particularly relevant to girls from between birth to age 16 (age of consent for legal marriage is 16 for females and 20 for males according to the Family Code). Therefore, when one uses “women’s rights” as a catchall category, it is assumed that young

76 | Alone With Five Others/Ethics Center Student Fellows 2006 girls are also considered without distinction from adult women.

5. Journal entry. 29 June 2006. D. Sawitz. Dakar, Senegal.

6. Association Nationale pour l’Alphabétisation et la Formation des Adultes

7. Mme. Penda Mbow. Interview. 22 June 2006. D. Sawitz. Dakar, Senegal.

8. For decades, this argument has been one most frequently referenced in casual conversation as well as religious and political debate: “A number of religious leaders assert that nowhere does the Coran provide justification for polygamy whereas others categorically point out that it is God himself who has authorized polygamy when he said in vers. 3 ‘Sorate’: ‘Marry those women who please you. Two, three or four.’ The only restriction imposed by Islam is that ‘if you are apprehensive of not being fair, take only one’” (Association of African Women for Research and Development. 1986. “Debates on Feminism in Senegal: Visions vs. Nostalgia.” ECHO. Vol. 1, N. 2-3. Pp. 9-10).

9. Levtzion and Pouwels, eds. 2000. The History of Islam in Africa.

10. Mme. Penda Mbow. Interview. 22 June 2006. D. Sawitz. Dakar, Senegal.

11. “Feminism in Senegal.” 1987. Interview by Ibrahima Fall, July 1986. Excerpted from Outwrite, Reprinted in Off Our Backs. Vol. 1, November 1987. Pp.19 , Pp. 22.

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