Spring 1997 - Issue Number 39
In February, Tom and Darylene Shea visted their longtime friends, Judy Ress and David Malineaux, in Chile. David and Judy are journalists, community organizers, and church workers in the slums of Santiago.
.The women's collective calls itself Con-spirando. That's also the name of their inner-city Santiago women's center and and the name of their magazine. The magazine circulates all throughout Latin America.
Con-spirando just completed a two-week gathering in Santiago of sixty women from all over Latin America. Some participants literally walked a good bit of the way to get there. Called "A Shared Garden," among the gathering's objectives was: "To bring together a group of women from the Americas to share our feminist commitment and questions with regard to politics, economics ,and religion as these concern the earth, our children and ourselves." It was our privilege to meet with a number of the core Con-spirando collective, some of whom, along with my friend Judy Ress, had planned the Shared Garden.
I asked Elena Aquila, Con-spirando's editor, to translate con-spirando for me. Elena is a native of Tierra del Feugo, (the Fiery Island) at the southern tip of Latin America. She speaks with the intensity and direct warmth of her internal fire for the need and work of this women's collective.
"Literally it might mean 'breathing with'," she replied, "but our sense is more along the line of 'spiritual conspiracy' or 'underground.' Our Con-spirando Center provides rituals appropriate for women, our magazine, workshops on everything from bio-dance and salza classes to the recent two week seminar on 'A Shared Garden.' Part of our vision is spirituality and theology and ecology for daily life. Our spirituality reflects our femine-earth connection.
"The feminist movement in Chile became political, a struggle against the dictatorship, (l973-l989). In those years we were all together in the same cause. We felt afraid of the violence of the dictatorship. When democracy came back, like other movements we entered a crisis. A lot of women started working for the state. There is a special ministry of state for women. These women were largely middle class. For the popular class nothing had changed. More radical women don't want division in the movement . They are nostalgic for the days when we were together as one force.
"I like today's more challenging time than the way it was in the 80's. Now it takes more effort for us to see that reality is more complex . Under Pinchot you forgot that. There was a common power to overcome the dictatorship. Now, power is in a different place. It's in the family, it's in the growth of individual women and groups of women. We need to see our connection with the earth and the universe as meaningful, as salvific."
The women participating in the two-week "Shared Garden" gathering are people active in their own communities throughout Latin America. They tell their personal stories in the context of their social, economic, cultural, spiritual and global environments. These are women from the "university of life," with only a sprinkling of academics. They connect their stories to the myths, symbols, writing and images of the spiritual life. They attend to how these sources may perpetuate or help eliminate violence against women. They celebrate their bodies through dance, massage, and exercise. They celebrate the earth through ritual, study, and contemplation. Most of all they celebrate their spirit of search in a common enterprise: a shared garden
My friend David Malineaux picked us up at the Airport in Santiago, Chile, before dawn. On the way into town, he abruptly pulled off the road and looked toward the dark silhouette outlining the Chilean Andes on the horizon.
"See, there's Mercury followed by Jupiter and in another five minutes we will see Venus," he said with enthusiasm. Star gazer? Is this the same David, I asked myself, who's been working with the poor of Latin America for more than twenty-five years, helping them to understand and act on their economic oppression?
In the week that followed, David answered my question. He connected ecological education for the poor of Latin America to the real basis for their economic survival. He gave examples of people acting on that connection.
David began with his own story. In the '70's, he and Judy lived in a peasant village of two thousand people, 12,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andes. No electricity, no cars. Armed with the theories and practice of Brazilian Educator, Paulo Friere, and Peruvian Liberation Theologian, Gustavo Gutierez, Judy and David facilitated a reflection and action process for the villagers. Literacy led peasants to understand the economic system which drove the oppression they experienced each day. With this new understanding, the villagers began to take control of their own resources by forming a cheese-making co-operative and delivery system.
"In those days, " David commented,"assumptions made about a class structured struggle could be analyzed. From an understanding of the social and economic structure, we could make a plan to bring about a better society. We knew ahead of time what our goals and objectives would be to make that society happen."
After three years with the American Friends Service in the slums of Santiago in the late '70's, during the Pinochet dictatorship, David and Judy returned to Peru as publisher/editors of the Latin American Press, and then for two years in Rome as publisher/editors of IDOC, a third world documentary journal.
"Judy'd been active on women's issues for years," David observed. "She began studying the works of Thomas Berry, Bryan Swimme, Riane Eisler, Johanna Macey. Working together on our publications wedded a new world view for both of us. Women's issues, the ecology, and economic survival of people are intimately interrelated.
"For example, here in Chile, the social action paradigm died when the dictatorship ended in l989. We have a 'protected democracy.' The generals say what will be or not be no matter what the political leadership is, left, right or middle. There's no project, no hope for direct impact on this kind of structure. An ecological worldview, however, breaks down that hierarchial way of thinking and acting. Once connected to the earth, to the universe, we realize neither we nor the generals can control the future.
"Ecological reflection puts us in touch with a source much wiser and more deeply spiritual than what we can produce through class or market analysis. It's a process of finding out who we are in the light of the history and dimensions of the universe."
David took me through the outline of his five-day workshop which he facilitates for his slum-dwelling Santiago neighbors as well as the more schooled or economically advantaged. Beginning with Chief Seattle, and using videos, wall charts and time lines, a lot of individual and small group participation, participants roam the galaxies, tour through pre-patriarchal archeology to the industrial mining of earth's resources. Ending with a Native American Vision Quest, participants develop along the way both symbolic and practical activities to concretize a new world view.
"Participants may end up planting green areas in the slums, or taking action on polluted canals," David concludes. "However, if you get people to recycle without helping them question the modern industrial world, we're going nowhere. We're heavy on personal transformation. The real wisdom is in nature. For us to be wise is to listen to that. Each new day begins with star gazing."
Return to the Index of Synapse 39, Spring 1997