Art Exhibition ‘​María Berrío: Flowered Songs and Broken Currents’​ at the Victoria Miró Gallery

Source: https://online.victoria-miro.com/mariaberrio-london2020/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/09/MBE53_Clouded-Infinity_2020-a.jpg

By: Irene Pérez Beltrán

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

María Berrío is a Colombian artist based in New York, who predominantly uses a magical realist style to explore the themes of cultural heritage and life cycles. Being constantly inspired by the natural world and the Japanese paper–which she usually uses as her preferred medium–her work focuses strongly on colour and texture experimentation. When asked about the title of her most recent collection, Berrío describes Broken Currents as ‘the disruption of our flow of life’, and Flowered Songs, as a symbol of ‘creativity and new forms of reinventing the world’. This motif of the cyclical nature between resilience after a catastrophe and hope for a brighter future is palpable throughout the exhibition. 

Most of the subjects of her pieces are women and children, who are inspired by those she met when visiting fishing villages in Colombia last year. What she found most striking about her visit was the condition of deprivation these women and children faced due to ecological degradation and political instability. Colombia’s landscape is heavily marked by coastal areas that have become increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The communities that live in villages along the coast are often from a low socio-economic background, and therefore their stability is largely threatened by changes in the environment. Despite these hardships, the cyclical link between nature, motherhood and the growth of the new generation, creates a sense of optimism that illuminates all of Berrío’s paintings. This is particularly evident in her piece Clouded Infinity, where we see a pregnant woman with an expression of contained concern in front of a window showing a vast sky. Here, Berrío reminisces her emotions when she was pregnant with her own son, and how the worries about her child’s future and wellbeing would cloud her vision. Amidst all the uncertainty, however, there is this sense of celebration of womanhood as a symbol of new life. 

Most of the symbolism in Berrío’s art pieces stem from Latin American traditions, in particular storytelling as a means of transferring wisdom from the older to the younger generation. She would usually employ a large canvas to have more narrative freedom–constantly adding and removing images directly on the painting as part of a continuousevolving, and dynamic creation. However, forced to paint some of her works from home during lockdown, Berrío had to experiment with painting at a smaller scale. Interestingly, this restraint turned out to be an opportunity to explore the subject of childhood from a more intimate perspective. In both The Combed Thunderclap and Under a Cold Sun, there is a sense of proximity that transmits to the audience the endurance that these children have had to go through. Through their expressions, there appears to be a dichotomy between their innocence and a sense of maturity that has resulted from their experiences in Colombia’s coastal regions. 

Overall the exhibition Flowered Songs and Broken Currents is a beautiful and thought-provoking collection of artworks. Berrío’s exhibition not only provides an insight into her creative process and her intimate relationship to Colombian culture, but also gives a glimpse of hope that inevitably resonates with the audience during these uncertain times. 

Note: All the artworks in the exhibition have been photographed and are showcased online in the gallery Victoria Miro’s website. 

Irene Pérez Beltrán is a 2nd Year International Relations student at King’s College London with a passion for Latin American Literature and sustainable development.

Buen Vivir: an Andean indigenous challenge to modern development

Source: https://www.lostiempos.com/oh/actualidad/20191202/wiphala-simbolo-ancestral-fraude-historico

By: Nazreen Shivlani

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

Latin American politics today is generally centred around how to reach economic development. We hear about inflation, corruption, and economic growth over and over again. From either side of the political spectrum, the dominant voices debate each other over how to increase production to presumably yield a higher standard of living (with dissenting views over the importance of how these benefits are distributed across society). But these disputes conceal a greater, unchallenged assumption about human fulfilment being best realised within the structures of modern society. More practically, political discourse hides questions about society’s ends: what is development and why do we so stubbornly strive towards it? Buen Vivir is an Andean indigenous cosmology which offers unwavering dissent within the mainstream conversation.

Buen Vivir questions social goals from an integrated philosophical point of view and aligns theory with practice. The term is a rough translation of Sumak Kawsay in Quechua, or Suma Qamaña in Aymara, and translates to ‘good living’ in English. Originating from some communities in the Andes’ altiplanos, Buen Vivir’s different manifestations can be found across much of Latin America’s native cultures.

This worldview interprets well-being as the equilibrium between humans and nature. Contrary to an anthropocentric view, which, like the western one, imagines a dualism between society and environment, Buen Vivir believes both are interconnected. In its core lies the idea of living in harmony with nature and with other people in order to live a fulfilling life. The objective of society is thus to foster spiritual growth and a connection with the community and nature; it puts society in the service of people without assuming any previous modern structures like state bureaucracy or markets for consumption. In today’s context, Buen Vivir advocates for decommodifying nature and social relations by disembedding them from the structures of modern society.

Perhaps the most popularized aspect of Buen Vivir is its view of nature. Respect to the earth and harmonious coexistence are based on common sense and the belief that people and nature are part of a greater whole. Buen Vivir clearly challenges today’s post-Darwinian era, where we act as if we were so distinct from other animals and nature, and forget that we created all the modern structures that we now take for granted. The practice values nature independently of its utility to humans, opposing the view that nature is a “factor of production”. For example, we would protect a river not because it has extractable fresh water, but because, like a person, it has a life of its own. By decommodifying nature, we transcend its relegation to a means without denying its importance as one. Simultaneously, defending nature because of its intrinsic worth no longer depends on its defence as a productive life-support system for humans. This directly conflicts with the current system of production, as the latter relies on the exploitation of natural resources and must only necessarily consider sustainability when natural depletion threatens the economic system (be it due to scarcity or public pressure).

If nature is no longer a resource to be tamed and we are instead a part of it, consumption becomes about sufficiency instead of exploitation and accumulation for their own sakes. Thus, Buen Vivir allows for needs to be satisfied sustainably, undermining the ideals the market is based upon, such as the exponential growth of output and consumerism. What’s more, it recognizes material and marketable needs as part of a larger set of needs. Fulfilment and community, for example, don’tneed to be commodified and sold because human relations are prioritised over the market system that now hands them out. This defies the sanctity of markets, encouraging a vida plena (simple and full life) through collective life and conscience. It is easy to see how Buen Vivir might deem us unable to continue with the current scheme of consumption and production.

What about development? Buen Vivir negates the notion of linear evolution in which a country passes from underdeveloped to a superior, modernized state. Instead, through its notion of wellbeing, it proposes that society is under permanent construction and changes the parameters that we aspire to. Granted, living harmoniously with the community and environment requires raising the living standards of many Latin Americans – Buen Vivir does not oppose this. However, it recalibrates our way of thinking because it places raising living standards and other material outcomes strictly in the service of ‘good living’. Thus, it also changes the acceptable means of achieving them: growth cannot come at the cost of environmental destruction nor should it encourage mass economic inequality, as this would harm nature and the community. Buen Vivir thus conflicts not only with capitalist expansion but also with the European welfare state, green capitalism, and other movements which don’t demand the fundamental revaluation of capital.

Most significantly, Buen Vivir cannot be substantially rearranged to fit within the modern system. For example, we cannot dissociate its environmental principles and adapt them to the capitalist society while keeping everything else the same. This is because the philosophy is built so that each principle needs the other – it is holistic. Buen Vivir is also incompatible with the contemporary state because it violates the human rights of indigenous communities. For example, when the state supports the building of infrastructure or grants companies ownership of ancestral land, it denies indigenous people their right to Buen Vivir. The contradiction is more explicit in the lack of representation and self-determination of indigenous groups, and even more so in events of state violence in many contemporary Latin American states. Buen Vivir humanizes the question of indigenous rights, showing it as the basic necessity for the survival of fellow people, and so delivers it from the abstraction of courtrooms. Simultaneously, the clashes show its possible incompatibility with the status quo.

Chilean rappers Portavoz and Subverso put all this much more eloquently in their song ‘Lo que no voy a decir’, which talks about the Mapuche in Chile. The Mapuche’s ancestral wisdom (kimün in Mapudungun) is akin to Buen Vivir (KümeMongen), which the lyricists explain in the following lines:

“El Estado de Chile me reprime, me sigue la pista

Y está a la vista ya que su propia naturaleza es racista

Yo no soy terrorista

Me tienen odio solo porque yo me opongo a vivir de un modo capitalista

Porque no creo que los ríos son nuestros “recursos”

Sino que seres vivos que deben seguir su curso

Porque no saco de la tierra sin pedir

Y siempre trato de retribuirle todo lo que uso

Por eso es que yo asusto al empresariado

Porque mi Dios no es el dinero y no obedezco a su mercado

Me ofenden cuando dejo descansar la tierra

No ven que en este gesto muestro respeto y no flojera (...)

Lo mismo pasa con el trato entre personas

La comunidad se apoya y to’a la zona es una sola voz

Lo que le afecta a uno, afecta a los demás del lof [tipo de comunidad Mapuche]

Por eso los defiendo aunque los pacos digan “mátenlos” (…) 

Y esto es parte de un kimün profundo

Donde ayudar a los demás es siempre lo más natural del mundo”

Full song and video from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lm00GF5Faw&ab_channel=SubVersoRap 

Translated to English:

The Chilean State represses me, it follows me around

And it can be seen that its very nature is racist

I am not a terrorist

They only hate me because I oppose living in a capitalist way

Because I don’t think that the rivers are our “resources”

But living beings which should continue their course

Because I don’t take from the land without asking

And I always try to give it back everything that I use

That’s why I scare the businesspeople

Because my God isn’t money and I don’t obey its market

They offend me when I let the earth rest

Don’t they see that this gesture shows respect and not laziness? (…)

The same occurs in the relations between people

The community supports itself and the whole region is one single voice

What affects one, affects the others in the lof [type of Mapuche community]

Which is why I defend them even though the cops say “kill them” (…)

And this is part of a deep kimün

Where helping others is always the most natural thing in the world

As a whole, Buen Vivir is much simpler than all this theory. It is a lived practice whose beliefs about fulfilment through a connection with nature and society may seem intuitive if not for path dependency. In this context, the cosmology transcends the trends of Eurocentric thought which take modernity and capitalism as the only possible way. Buen Vivir makes us challenge modern society because of its impersonality; we can recognise that the seemingly impenetrable structures of modern society are self-imposed and then ask ourselves if we too want to maximise what they propose. The philosophy condemns the global injustices of the modern system as absurd because it allows for struggle where there need be none. For those of us who are privileged enough that our paths appear set our and the costs of reconsidering our purpose outside of modern ideals seems high, Buen Vivir also poses a personal challenge. But more importantly, it perpetuates ancient knowledge that the current model deems backwards in the few opportunities it is heard. In this context, we see Andean indigenous people who were previously the objects of development, as agents of Buen Vivir.

Nazreen is a KCL student interested in development, philosophy, and literature, focused on Latin America.

Bibliography

 Ancalao Gavilán, Diego. “EL PUEBLO MAPUCHE Y LA SOCIEDAD DEL BUEN VIVIR.” Mensaje . Padre Hurtado, October 4, 2019. https://www.mensaje.cl/edicion-impresa/mensaje-683/el-pueblo-mapuche-y-la-sociedad-del-buen-vivir/. 

Catrillanca, Marcelo. “El Buen Vivir Mapuche Demanda Desmilitarización, Verdad, Justicia y

Libredeterminación.” Mapuexpress , December 19, 2018. https://www.mapuexpress.org/2018/12/20/el-buen-vivir-mapuche-demanda-desmilitarizacion-verdad-justicia-y-libredeterminacion/. 

De La Cuadra, Fernando. “Buen Vivir: ¿Una Auténtica Alternativa Post-Capitalista?” Polis 14, no. 40 (March 2015): 7–19. https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-65682015000100001.

Gudynas, Eduardo. “Buen Vivir: Germinando Alternativas Al Desarrollo.” América Latina En Movimiento , no. 462 (February 2011): 1–20.

https://flacsoandes.edu.ec/web/imagesFTP/1317332248.RFLACSO_2011_Gudynas.pdf .

Gudynas, Eduardo. “Estado Compensador y Nuevos Extractivismos. Las Ambivalencias Del Progresismo Sudamericano.” Nueva Sociedad , no. 237 (2012), ISSN: 0251-3552. https://nuso.org/articulo/estado-compensador-y-nuevos-extractivismos-las-ambivalencias-del-progresismo-sudamericano/ .

León Irene. Sumak Kawsay / Buen Vivir y Cambios Civilizatorios. 2nd ed. Quito: FEDAEPS, 2010. http://www.dhls.hegoa.ehu.eus/uploads/resources/5501/resource_files/Ecu_Sumak_Kawsay_cambios_civilizatorios.pdf. 

Montalva, Felipe. “El Buen Vivir De La Cultura Mapuche.” Rebelión , June 18, 2015. https://rebelion.org/el-buen-vivir-de-la-cultura-mapuche/ .

Quijano, Aníbal. “‘Bien Vivir’: Entre El ‘Desarrollo’ y La Des/Colonialidad Del Poder.” Debate Ecuador 84 (September2011): 77–87. http://200.41.82.22/bitstream/10469/3529/1/RFLACSO-ED84-05-Quijano.pdf .

Rojas Pedemonte, Nicolás, and David Soto Gómez. “KümeMongen: El Buen Con-Vivir Mapuche Como Alternativa De Desarrollo Humano y Sustentable.” Academia.edu .Dissertation, Ponencia III Congreso social: Ecología humana para un desarrollo sostenible e integral, 2016. https://www.academia.edu/31776593/Ponencia_K%C3%BCme_Mongen_El_Buen_Con_Vivir_mapuche_como_alternativa_de_desarrollo_humano_y_sustentable_. 

Subverso y Portavoz. “Lo que no voy a decir.”

Latin American Community: Little Bird

Photo provided by the author

By: Camila Consolmagno

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

My story begins where it ends. All my life I’ve heard people say, ‘when one door closes, another opens,’ and all my life I saw this as nothing but a pretentious proverb attempting to justify the vexatious things that happen in life. In reality, sometimes things just occur irrationally. People seek comfort, sometimes in a proverb, in the same way as a hug; it will never actually solve the problem, but it will still be solacing. While growing up, however, I’ve realised that that saying isn’t as ostentatiously ignorant as I’d always believed. All endings are also beginnings; we just don’t know it at the time. And so, my story begins and ends with an airplane. 

...

It was an ordinary day in Guarapari, Brazil – adhesively hot. I wasn’t born here; my birth-city is a 15-hour car drive away. I was born in Londrina, my mother’s city, but my parents moved to Guarapari just a couple of months after having me. I don’t recall the time, but the sun was out, probably morning. I was in my mother’s flat – which was unusual for a Saturday, considering I spent the weekends at my dad’s. Unwashed dishes from the night before. No toys on the floor for a change. Four packed suitcases by the door. I was nine years old and my brother was four. 

Dad finally arrived, late and impatiently pressing his car horn. ‘Vamos!,’ he yelled still from inside the car but with his head poking out of the window. His girlfriend of a few months was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. My mother rushed down with my brother and I; then ran up and down again but this time with our suitcases. We’re waiting outside the flat. ‘Vamos!,’ Dad shouts again. My mother’s crying. My brother doesn’t understand what’s going on, and I’m mad at him for not knowing. ‘Say goodbye to mum’ I suggest, ‘because you might not ever see her again” – I’ve always been dramatic. He cries and hugs her, and I say a quick goodbye. We get in the car and just as the door closes my dad agilely speeds. I look back but in the flash all I see is a speck of what’s supposed to be my mother’s face. In what feels like less than a second, she vanishes, and I don’t get the chance to look at my mother’s face for one last time before I go. 

I didn’t see that face for another six years.

We arrive at the airport just in time. My dad and his girlfriend say their last goodbyes. I envy their hugs and their kisses and their tears as all of that was blindly swept away from me in the honk of a car. I still hate that noise. 

One airplane, eleven perpetual hours. I remember staring out at the clouds and imagining what it would be like to taste them. They looked like candy floss. Although I hated candy floss, the thought of eating a cloud was incredibly appealing. ‘It’d taste like ice,’ I thought, ‘after all it’s just water anyway.’I tried to look for shadows in the clouds, trying to see if I could find an angel. Eventually I just gave in to the screen in front of me and watched Finding Nemo repeatedly for the remaining nine hours. Growing up in a small town with fifty-two beaches I found comfort in the sea, even if it was pixilated.

...

We were moving to Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, England. I hadn’t really quite processed that – and I wouldn’t for a while. What then used to be a magical town full of adventurous parks where my nine-year-old self could gambol for hours on end, is now a monotonous nightmare for the seventeen-year-old version of myself. ​

We lived with my grandparents for the first bit before we found a place of our own. Their house was a two-storey, three-bedroom, old English brick house. It would be spacious if my grandma had not adorned it with every decorative gift she had received within the past thirty years and bric-a-bracs she’d found in Sunday markets for the last ten. Mini replicas of famous paintings, like the Mona Lisa and Girl with a Pearl Earring hung above the living room’s electric fireplace that I’ve never seen been used. On the wall that followed the evanescing burgundy carpeted stairs that made ghost-like creaks whenever it made contact with any sort of weight, my grandparents blue-tacked framed photos of family members, dead and alive. My father was there, a profile picture of himwhen he was fourteen; that one was my personal favourite.Upstairs were two guest rooms, a bathroom, and my grandparents’ en-suite room. The first guest room was taken by my uncle, so we stayed in the second – the biggest, though not by much. My bed was a single mattress on the carpet floor, coercively squeezed between a wall, right below the only window in the room and next to the double bed where my dad slept. My brother slept on an air mattress adjacent to the double bed, so our mattresses formed an L around its left side. 

My dad’s girlfriend, Carol, joined us three months later and all four of us were crammed into that same room. Sometimes at night, Carol and I couldn’t sleep because of the notable different time zones that we still hadn’t got used to. So, whilst my brother and my dad slept soundly, she’d join me on my mattress and we’d get a pack of cards and quietly, yet competitively, play until we were both finally sleepy, this was often until 3am. Sometimes, we would also watch the current melodramatic Brazilian soap opera on the internet. Or, play the most emulous rounds of dominoes. Together, we always found something to fill our sleepless, empty nights with.

Although, I only seemed to love her when no one was watching. I was still pretty raw from leaving my mother behind and I thought there was a chance I could convince my dad to take us back to Brazil and return to our ordinary lives. But we are better off here, it just took me a while to realise that.

...

I’ve been moving all my life. In Brazil, I learnt never to get attached to a house as every year we moved and changed schools. Now, in England, having moved cities twice, gone to four different schools and lived in five different houses, I’ve learnt not to get attached to people. Albeit, at the same time I’ve grown used to moving, it doesn’t seem to get any easier. Once my dad knew he didn’t have to have it all figured out to move forward, he hasn’t stayed still. I think that’s where I get my impulsiveness from, but some would call it courage. 

I leave Brazil, enter England. My mother leaves, Carol shelters me. One door closes, another opens. 

People often ask me which of the two countries I prefer, almost in a wrong or right form, but they’re incomparable. I can’t note the similarity or dissimilarity between the Latin heat and the British wintry, a feijoada versus a roast dinner, a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. They are countries underneath the same sky and above the same sea, but they are different universes apart. This year when I turn eighteen, I will have lived half of my life in each country. The magic of it all is not choosing which I love most but loving the most of out of both. In the end, I’m only one airplane away.

Camila Consolmagno is a final-year Bachelor of Laws student at SOAS, University of London. She is the first Brazilian President of the SOAS Latin American Society and an aspiring human rights lawyer

Latin American Community: A Very Latino London

Image Courtesy of Migreat Blog

By Maximilian Frederik van Oordt

​On the doorstep of a second lockdown in the Great British capital, now is a brilliant opportunity to glance at this city with a microscope and notice just how Latin Americans have influenced the city’s culture and gastronomy; with its effects on display now more than ever before.

​Even before the flags of the newly independent republics could be unfurled outside our embassies in London, the British metropolis had already hosted several leading independence figures including Simon Bolivar (1810), Bernardo O’Higgins (1795), Jose de San Martin (1824), and Francisco de Miranda (1802). They would lead a long line of Latin Americans choosing to visit London and, oftentimes, to make it their home.

​Nowadays, Latinx culture flows throughout the city, manifesting itself in what we hear, taste, and smell. No London nightclub is complete without a nod to Reggaeton at some point in the night. Some even dedicate themselves exclusively to the genre, with Time Out publishing a list of its favourite London Reggaeton discotheques in 2019 to reflect a soaring demand for the tunes. Match these musical exports to the wide array of salsa, bachata, and tango clubs all around the city and its safe to say our culture has been welcomed with open arms.

​Once the music is over and the dancing has stopped, a mealtime trip to the high street will inevitably greet you with Argentine and Uruguayan steakhouses, Mexican eateries, Chilean and Peruvian Pisco bars, and marketplaces dotted with Venezuelan arepa stalls. Despite each of these cuisines being so remarkably different from the other, every one of them has met with a delighted (and satisfied) audience. 

​These are displays of our region’s phenomenal cultural and gastronomical assets, presented in all their glory by those Latinos who have chosen to bring a taste of home to the English capital. Had Bolívar and San Martin visited today, I am sure they would have felt right at home.

Maximilian Frederik van Oordt is a second-year International Relations student at King’s College London. interested in politics, history and law, he enjoys focusing on Latin American affairs, with a particular emphasis on these three areas.