Possibility
In Dr Rossatto's book,
Freire'sPedagogy of Possibilty. It is very important to know in
more detail the life of someone who has been dedicated most of his time
searching for an optimistic reality for him self and the community he lives in.
I will begin by writing my most recent dream related to the reading. I
dream of a trip to Africa, I was host by a black family, mother, father, and
children. During my dream I asked my self a question, what am I doing here?
Dreams are nuts, aren't they? I was running up to the mountain,here in El Paso,
I felt tired; I saw books, teachers, and paintings. I woke up thinking of my
own level of racism as Dr Rossatto questions him self in his book.
The most surprising thing is that a day after my dream I went to a restaurant I
was talking to a beautiful German lady that put her cat to sleep, she claimed
that the cat was to old, in my mind I judged her, of being a kind of neo nazi
against old cats; while I was about to speak up my mind, I saw a black family
arriving to the restaurant I was in, their faces looked very familiar, it took
me couple minutes to realized that they were the same family of my dream.
In the Mayan tradition there is a belief call the mirror: whatever you see in
other people you have it in. I'been thinking of racism in my family and in my
own; any time we have a new born in the family my mom said "ya
merobaron mi color' they stole my white color when this new born is white,
buy when the new born is brown she does not said any comment. As
Dr Rossatto said in his book, we learn fatalism, we learn to agree to
things that are against basic human rights which is to be treated with dignity
and respect. We ignore that basic truth, specially when we or our family
members have been oppressed for long time. Dr Rossatto, examines how
real-life situations and social structures influence us to build visions of our
future. The more poor and oppressed we are the less is our hope to improve. I
think most of us continue the path of oppression in different aspects: 1. When woman
search for freedom tend to fall in her own trap;I have seen academic women
who lead feminist programs whose level of misogyny is high, I challenge them to
reflect upon and be careful of what message they are delivering to their
students and community; feminist movement will follow the same vicious cycle if
we do not react now. 2. Slavery, back in time we clearly saw the path of
slavery, chains, skin color, deletion of names, murder, and omission in the
constitution. Now, we do not see it but we are part of new slavery; loans. Long
time ago Chomsky said that there is a force (business, state, and media)
manipulating our lives, they have created necessities and a life style
that we try to fill full by doing business out of religion, education, health care, corrupted food.... We are in constant debt and pain. We believe that
attending university is the best idea, and when we finish a brilliant
future is waiting for us,no, there is not brilliant future awaiting when we are
in debt and we need to remain in a job to pay back. What do we do? Look
for other ways to pay your tuition, avoid student loans or any loan. 3. New
Age tendencies, some of us have realized how playful this world is, we do
not want to be part of the awful game that is already corrupted. We want to be
smart to transform what other people have destroyed; we followed our spirituality with religion, meditation, tarot, women circles, hypnosis sessions, pseudo sciences, most
of these movements use our faith to made their point across, what about leaving
these practices and start following our own instinct, intuition and spirit to
find balance? Have you ever taught about knowing your family history, talking to
your abuela about her own abuela? They hold the secrets and mysteries of the
family, sometimes it will be painful to find out what our ancestors did but we
are here alive to heal our past generations memories that live within our
cells. Guess what?, you will find amazing stories too, their wisdom, their
inner beauty, and so on; let's leave the topic for another moment, now we
talking about the things that oppress us the most. 4. Racism, what is
it? According to the dictionary is the belief that all
members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that
race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another
race or races, prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against
someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is
superior. Be honest and think how racist your are on a daily basis, we
have heritage racism, do we want to stop it? Sure we want a better
present and future, let's begin NOW. It not an easy task.
For now I invite you to
read Dr Rossatto's book. See you all soon
