Dreams and freedom
DREAMS AND FREEDOM
Memmi (2003 p.9) knew the
colonizer and the colonized very well: “Here is a confession I have never made
before: I know the colonizer from the inside almost as well as I know the colonizad.”
To make real changes into our reality we need to look within ourselves. The
author recalled that psychoanalysis could be employed to distinguish roles of
individuals that fit into the categories of colonizer or colonized and to
explain their relation within the context of colonialism
I will trace my
confession back to December of 2012, I resigned from my secondary teacher position on 12/21/12,
when the Mayan calendar was regarded as the end-date of a
5,126-year-long cycle, a new era of good will began. To summarize the reason why
I resigned I will say that I lost hope. I faced the darkness of our time. I began
dreaming, I thought that I could build a better situation when I was asleep. I anxiously
waited nighttime to make sense of the world that surrounded me. I dreamt heavy,
at first I was not conscious of my action, later I knew that I was going to see
what the Mayas named Doble Mirada, Ocultador Serpiente. Briseño (2012 p 53) translated the Mayan sacred book Popol Vuh,
this book provides us with clues about how shadows and ligth become reconciled
when love is present. “Vino y habló
entonces aquí con el que viene del Infinito, El Ocultador Serpiente, aquí en la
oscuridad de noche. Habló con el del Infinito, Ocultador de Serpiente, se
hablaron, pensaron, y meditaron; se juntaron y se pusieron de acuerdo en
pensamientos y palabras se quisieron y se amaron bajo esta claridad”. Dreaming
of a snake can be scary but when you see
it wipe out fear, snake is not a shadow. With not fear guarding,
it was my time to create stories that will overcome my culture of silence. I
wrote two novels (Mujeres cósmicas and San York Kluni), poems and short
stories. Suddenly I stopped dreaming, I realized that resentment, anger, confusion
but at the same time joy were talking in my writing. Overcoming the culture of
silence takes courage; we oppressed, need to claim word property by using
vocabulary to be part of history. When I published my two novels, I decided to
go back to my roots to rescue hope. For me, hope has become a rescue mission
for the past three years, hope is an essence that we, women and teachers cast
away by our effort to make the master content; a human without hope will be
missing her or his constant joy and a natural exploratory feeling. Hope is a
decision that a person make despite hard reality and suffering, Freire (1998)
said that hope is a key component and not an intruder, the author spoke
of a critical hope that is the ability to be angry about injustice, while
continuing to struggle for positive change without cynical and immobilizing
fatalism .
During
my journey to recover hope I visited the land of my great grand mothers, The
Raramuri Mountains; I went there because of a dream, after my mother have told
me horrific stories that happened to my Tarahumara great grand mothers, Cirila
and Cleofas; I dreamt of a Tarahumara calling me, we were siting on a big rock
watching scenarios of darkness and light. I took a train to Urique, Chihuahua
and I found him. He just told me a couple of words “Go back to El Paso, you
need to continue decoding your dreams, revealing secrets”, as he pointed out a
beautiful river he continued saying “look at the river, there are black and
white birds talking to people. I will call you when is needed.” It seems like
he was talking to me in a secret code, I did not try to understand his words
using my western mind, and neither I considered him my spiritual guide. To my
surprise the day I wrote the lines above, the same Tarahumara came to my
dreams, he told me to wash my foot to clean up the mud, he handed me a Raramuri
sandal, “ya no uses esas chanclas viejas- do not use that old sandals”. I tried
it on and it did not fit my small foot.
In
my family having indigenous ancestors has been kept as a secret for generations
until my mother, the youngest child of her family, decided to break it. I am
the only one who is interested in decoding racism. After I visited Tarahumara
land I noticed that my enthusiasm and joy started to flourish as never before.
I was able to combine hope and dreaming. Now being aware about how indigenous constructs
their thinking process, I can freely speak of my own findings. In the Póopol
Wuuj (Popol Vuh) the Mayan bible or main Mayan book, they explain dualism as a
powerful force, binary ideas form circle to create a spiral for new knowledge
as Briseño (2012) pointed, from Mayan perspective events and time complement each other in synchronic
fashion.
“desde
la perspectiva maya las ideas se van complementando a manera de círculos concéntricos
porque se hace con la lógica semántica de la historia, no con la lógica del
tiempo lineal occidental, ” (p.37).
A
couple of weeks ago I
dreamt of a trip to Africa, I was host by a black family, mother, father, and
children. During my dream I asked, what am I doing here? Dreams are confusing,
aren't they? No, this specific one was not crowded at all, in fact during the
day I read Memmi an author
born in Africa. In my dream I was running up the mountain, here in El Paso, I felt tired; I
saw books, teachers, paintings fading. I woke up thinking of my oppressor side and
level of racism as Dr Cesar Rossatto questions him self in his book From
Blind to Transformative Optimism. 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 too old, in my mind I judged
her, of being racist 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 African
family of my dream. I knew that I was very connected to one of the purpose of Dr Rossatto
lesson, to deconstruct racism. First we need to acknowledge what kind of
contracts we have made with our ancestors; Rossato (2005) said that we learned 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, especially when our
family members or we have been oppressed for long time. 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 was born and attended
elementary, secondary, and post secondary education in Mexico; my father was a
farmer in the US during the Bracero program. When I was five years old, the
first kinder garden opened its doors, as a child, I went alone to search for
information to attend classes; my inspiration came from my family who encourage
me to follow the path of education to overcome economic hardship, to be
empowered, as Weiler (1998) locates power as the medium and the expression of
wider structural relations and social forms positions subjects within
ideological matrixes of constraint and possibility, Mexican educational model
follow banking model concept where we, students, appear as empty glasses, women
of my family struggle to flourish their individual identity, their ideologies,
perceptions and original communications
are unknown or kept secret, attending
school does not necessary free us, on the contrary, we are part of social and
cultural reproduction. It took extensive psychological work for us to speak and
share how we learned the world. Weiler (1998)
studied Athusser who was dealing directly with questions of social
reproduction through schools, the schools become the primary means through
which subjects themselves are created. Therefore it was almost impossible to
seek for individuality or trace our memories as women, how do we smell, sense,
see, read and write the world. While interacting with institutional voices, we
adopt what is already out there. We were shaped some times in suffering, pain,
discourage, immersed in social, education, and cultural systems, behaving as an
empty container students are at risk of filling knowledge, feelings and perceptions
without knowing their identity or assuming them selves as part of their own
learning process, Freire (2001) said that one can have a more radical view when
“assuming”, when teacher and learners voices are interacting. They can engage
in the experience of assuming them selves as social, historical, thinking,
communicating, transformative, creative persons; dreamers of possible utopias.
In our family were fortunate to have a father that never instructed us how to
live; he provided us with love and comprehension, and always to have in mind to
be an autonomous person to find dignity, respect and freedom; he thought us to
be free thinkers, despite his low level of academic education, he knew basic
universal rights, he was part of the communist party in Mexico, he fought for
social justice and equality at all times and situations. Parents are the first authority, Freire (2001
p 87) said that rooms could be occupied by dependency of all sort of voices
that will hunt our very ontological vocation.
“ At the heart of the
experience of coherently democratic authority is a basic, almost obsessive dream:
namely, to persuade or convince freedom of its vocation to autonomy as it
travels the road of self construction, using materials from within and without,
but elaborated over and over again. It is with this autonomy, laboriously constructed,
that freedom will gradually occupy those spaces previously inhabited by
dependency”.
Teaching in the US after
teaching in Mexico does not represent much difference. During my professional
praxis as a secondary teacher I tried not to follow banking educational model, as
part of an oppressive educational system teachers do not have many options but
to represent the traditional depository account that promise to generate
“quality” clones to serve the master:
The banking concept of education, a
subtle violence.
Freire talked and worked with educators; in our time, schools have became a
business like models of pursing capitalist interest, therefore the mentality of
oppression has infiltrated schools grounds, walls, administrators, curriculums
that obey standardization. Consciousness
never had significant impact on educational practice. Freire (1973) argues educators ought to
be aware of their participation in the learning; participatory education is
when students, parents and teachers are involved. For
instance in Mexico, a very strict instrument of evaluation has been
designed to control teachers. There is
tremendous amount of violence in this complex format, people immerse into the
flow of “teacher efficiency” or “learner quality” are now aware how oppressed
or oppressors they have become. With violence we have gone from physical war to
subtle war in the way we think, the way we treat others, the way we enter into
oppressive systems without realizing which role we participate in. To end this
internal war that society has been immersed, we need to enter to dialogue from
point zero, empty our selves from pre conceive ideas inherited in the banking
educational model. Perhaps, create from within a different perception of the word
and the world, Giroux (2013) said “if you want to change the world, change the
metaphors, before we attempt to change our lines, we need to feel the real
connotation of words and begin to create metaphors. In Spanish we have the Real
Academia de la Lengua, (Royal Academic of Language) that give us a very
specific definition of words, in order to be successful we must follow
guidelines, any time I want to write a fiction piece I felt trapped in my own
vocabulary. Living in the border of Mexico and the US, I have created my own
literary format to communicate my creativity, I have changed the old painful
metaphor that our Mexican school system had in the past “ la letra con sangre
entra” for “la letra con amor entra” physical punishment was in placed when I
attended elementary school. “Spare the
rod is to spoil the child” its is the
equivalent in English which is the exercise control with sanctions and physical
and psychological punishment, a sick metaphor. Metaphor is a figurative speech
that requires words and feelings that can easily be created from masters for
oppress to swallow it.
We live in constant metaphor of horror
that soon become reality and in order to change it, oppressed people need to
wake up, know their voices, and proclaim ownership of words. We do not want to make permanent the culture
of violence and live a state of fear that force us to keep secrets hidden in
the oppressor rhetoric’s. During Fall 2015 while taking Pablo Freire and Social
Justice class, my impression of the teacher changed drastically, an inner reflection
and sometimes wordy- war began, and I refused to follow guidelines proposed by
teacher. I taught that if we were talking about participatory education, social
justice, hope, freedom, we needed to bring all preceding terms alive.
Unfortunately as an oppressed person, we have storage resentment, which can be
easily transformed in dangerous anger; by being vigilante of our own
perceptions, and word meaning, we can hunt, imprison or propose dialogue with the
oppressor and violence implicit in institutions; we can prove that his or her
bitter words are so far away from love as an organic living system, Freire
(2005 p. 77) cited Fromm, said that banking education has a false understanding
of humans as subjects and it can not promote biophily, it produces necrophilia.
“While life is characterized by growth in a structured, functional manner,
the necrophilous person loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical.
The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into
the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things.
Memory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what counts. The
necrophilous person can relate to an object—a flower or a person—only if he
possesses it; hence a threat to his possession is a threat to himself; if he
loses possession he loses contact with the world. He loves control, and in the act of
controlling he kills rife”.
This is my dream related to murder
what is a living imagery system: In a dream I saw a well dressed white child
wearing a brown hat, he was among children trying to organize an event, I told
him that I will prove that he does not exist, suddenly he become a toy of his
height, it took couple of seconds for him to be an eatable candy, I ate it, he
was gone. I clearly saw a very violent character that cans easily objective
humans. Later my professor delivered a speech about the importance of
organizing to accomplish our liberator causes, he told us, when he was a child,
he organized a soccer team in his community. When the teacher was sharing his
memory, at that moment I knew that the child of my dream was my teacher; when
do we kill or transform our inner child into toy or candy? At what moment we,
teachers are in danger to be a zombie? What kind of silent war we are trap
into? We live in a zombie era, where cyber consensuses slowly is gaining space
in our interactions, sadly, teachers are functioning as the “cultural workers
or intellectuals” that are cords to transfer oppressor venom, Giroux (2011 p.
4) said
“
The roaming hordes of celebrity zombie intellectuals work hard to fuel a sense
of misguided fear and indignation toward democratic politics, the social state
and immigrants, all of which spewed out in bitter words and comes terribly
close to inciting violence. Zombies love death-dealing institutions, which
accounts for why they rarely criticize, they bloated military budget and the
rise of the punishing state and is expanding prison system”. The anti democratic systems work better when
minds are cloned. In a factory like classrooms, students do their work to
memorize what is in textbook, to be ready to pass a standardize test.
It will take a collective effort for us
to be liberated, observe how we communicate to our inner voices and with others
to find if we have the same dream of freedom and betterment. In the process of
decoding the role of victim, oppressed tend to become reactionary, he or she is
reacting and we need to remember, violence is initiated by oppressors; we
oppressed need to move from the neurosis phase that war, blood and violence has
planted us, it will happen when we move away from duality, when we vomit rigid,
smelly and old systems of the Lords. Become reflective and act upon our own
conclusions to necked oppressors and allow are true being to accomplish his or
her vocation, which is to be fully humans.
Freire exposed our educational system as
one in which: the teacher is the depositor, the students are the depositories, the
teacher issues communication which students passively receive, memorize, and
repeat, knowledge becomes a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves
knowledgeable upon those they consider to know nothing, teachers and administrators
choose the instructional program content and students adapt to it. The more
students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop
the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the
world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the
passive role impressed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world
as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.
Banking model is been placed in most
of the classrooms in both sides of the border; teachers are instructed to teach
from textbooks and workbooks to cover state test material. Their own validity relies on standardize
evaluations. I remember one case where student teacher deliver instruction 100%
of the time from textbook during Health class, students read passages out loud
with no innervation or explanation from teacher. Students were not engage in learning, there
were no connections to real life applications, students were in agony, Freire
(2005) brought Fromm’s ideas into Pedagogy the Oppressed; for the masters to be
is to have, for them having more is an inalienable right they acquire through
their own effort. The master have pleasure of complete domination over another
person is the very essence of the sadistic drive and its aim is to transform
humans into a thing, is a love of death, not of life, it kills life. In the
case mentioned above, students’ anima is already out of the equation, teacher anima
as well. There is no interaction with individual’s perspectives of the topic,
words are shadows that came from a pre fabricated hole, there is not generative
themes of a such as human subject which is Health, and in a paradox the
grapheme and phoneme of the word health is sick. Hence Pedagogy of the Oppressed could be a tool for
liberation to end mutual and inner war.
Liberation as a mutual process
I stared this paper sharing my confessions. When I went
to Raramuri Mountains I was seeking for power, I saw how powerful humans can be
when living and respecting nature. I tried to avoid the victim role as much as
possible, I learned that Tarahumaras-Raramuris believe we have 7 identities or
souls, I understood why women in my family are empathetic, they could exchange
identities when talking to any person, -I am you-you are me-. I learned among
other things that sarcasm is their school, I tried not to judge their living
conditions, their suffering for centuries, their machismo, their joking way of
seeing reality. I just went like the river as I was advice to do and in that
stage of mind, I saw reality while hope was rebuilt in my heart to change what
collectively we will consider to be different. Individuals have an ontological
vocation, is to be a Subject who acts upon and transform the world, when doing
it moves to new possibilities of fuller life that benefit the group. Freire
(2005 p. 44) “ to admit dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either
to cynicism or total despair”. I assumed
sarcasm as my first step to liberation, months later I could combine two
consciences magical and critical. For Tarahumaras tracing dreams correspond to
our spiritual realm where true power reside. For religion interpreting dreams
belong to imagination or demonic actions. Religion has used our imagination to
exploit our magical consciences, we can change the metaphor, reclaim our
magical consciences to leave space for dreaming freely to begin the
changes that we like to see. Freire (2005, p. 85)
“As the situation becomes the object of their cognition, the naive or
magical perception which produced their fatalism gives way to perception which
is able to perceive itself even as it perceives reality, and can thus be
critically objective about that reality. A deepened consciousness of their
situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality
susceptible of transformation”.
He continues saying that the process of liberation
is initiated by the oppressed, power should springs from the weakness to be sufficiently
strong to free both. The act of
liberation is an act of love, which opposes lovelessness, which lies at the
heart of the oppressors’ violence. It is to say that oppressed in their initial
stage for freedom tend to become sub-oppressors or oppressors, he or she is
going to the opposite pole. Oppressed carry a mentality of contradictions, they
live in a dual realty and when they seek reform they already have the oppressor
as their model of manhood. They discovered that without freedom they couldn’t
exist authentically. According to Freire the development of the pedagogy of
liberation can happened only when oppressed discover they to be host of the
oppressor. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like,
and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is not possible.
As the title said the process of liberation is mutual, opposite pole are in
gestation what it will emerge is a new person; according to Freire (2005) this
liberation can not be achieved in a romantic way, where the oppressed perceive oppression
as a limiting situation which is transformable, motivating force came after,
and action in dialoguing with the oppressor as his or her antithesis (-I am
needed by the oppressor-); struggle is observed during this process because
when the oppressor discover him self to be one, may cause anguish and wiliness
to help the oppressed in a paternalist way, but oppressed need to remember that
oppressor is independent, was meant to be for him/her self, is the master, or
the Lord. Oppressor can authentically engage at oppressed side when he feeds
her conscious with bio love instead of necrophilia. It is fear what prevents
individuals to seek for the indispensable condition for the quest of human
nature, which is freedom. The oppressed will distinguish between false and true
perception, when the change will threaten individuals interest and there is
fear surrounding his or her revolution the tendency is to behave neurotically;
in this stage is when oppressed are vomiting the myths created in the old order
and creating his or her personal, local new order avoiding global commands that
obey capitalism. We Mexicans have a very valuable knowledge to stop inner
battle, that is to dissolve secrets and recognize our indigenous heritage,
learn from it and develop the necessary humor to make oppressor invisible, than
visible, cut his or her head that ultimately represent ego-center views. Last
night I had a dream, I saw the invisible men hugging headless men, how could I
see the invisible men? I did it, the oppressor is not invisible, I am not
invisible either. Cruz (2014) Juan Villoro a Mexican intellectual and writer
once said “ un vez soñé que me preguntaban, ¿es usted mexicano? Sí pero no lo
vuelvo a ser.” Once I dreamt that I was asked, are you Mexican? Yes, but I
won’t do it again. It is hard to accept our mestizo identity because we live in
a constant inner battle of colonizer and colonized at the same time is the best
stage because we know and live both sides of the story very well.
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