THE INSTITUTE
The road was all down hill. Mexico City to Cuernavaca, a 75 mile trip that in reality couldn’t have been all down hill. That’s what it felt like, though, as I drove the slow, winding curves. The small, black Peugot traversed curve after curve and switch back after switch back ever down the mountain toward the valley of the state of Morelos, where Cuernavaca, the capital, was located. Cuernavaca was a city of about 25,000 people at that time, known for its lush gardens of roses and bougainvilleas. Also located there was a Spanish language and culture program run by a famous Catholic priest to which Catholic missionaries and lay people were sent prior to the beginning of their work throughout Latin America. That Institute was our destination. As we approached Cuernavaca, the road began to stretch out into slow, lazy curves. It was a small, narrow, two-lane road back then in the summer of 1962.
"Slow down, will ya! We're really not in that much of a hurry to get there, and we’d rather live to tell about it."
Rick’s warning shook me back to reality. I guess I had really gotten into driving ever downward, letting the car speed up as I had followed the curves. As I drove, I had been excited about going to a new place, and also had been tuned into the conversation among my three passengers in the car. That summer, my 19th, I was part of a group of about thirty college students working in a small village, Zinapécuaro, in central Mexico. Our group was called the “International Student Worker Corps”. We wanted to identify with the poor through the dignity of hard, physical work, and thinking idealistically that we could do a small part to change the world for the better.
Rick, a twenty-five year old Pre-Med and sometimes engineering student at Stanford, was the leader of our group. Alan McDougall, a nearly middle-aged man beginning to gray, was the self-appointed intellectual of our group, although he often got so far off in his analysis of everything that he lost me completely. The third passenger sitting next to me in the little car was Joe Spagña, thirtyish, worldly, tough, and the one I admired the most. I had made him my personal guide and mentor from the time I had first met him in the Bay Area at the first meeting of the group I attended. They were busy talking about the importance of this journey we were taking to Cuernavaca that day. I was just happy to be along, and trying to keep up with their running commentary.
Alan always liked to be the center of attention. "All the lay workers, clerics and nuns now have to go through the language training and orientation at the Institute before they take their posts in any part of Latin America," he said.
"Wonder how Illich got the Catholic hierarchy to go along with this," Rick was a more practical man.
Alan explained: "More than anything, it is the quality of his Spanish language training, and the sheer strength of his intellect. I don't think he's got any real pull in Church politics. In fact, he's more a thorn in their side than anything else."
"I heard his students are forbidden from speaking any English at all for six weeks; they don’t get any American food during their whole stay, and everybody is subjected to a bout of dysentery in their first few days.", Rick said. “They’re thrown right into, like, intense cultural shock”.
"How does he get them all sick?" I interjected.
Looking at me through the rear view mirror, Rick replied. "Simple. He just makes everyone drink the tap water. It's really not that dangerous. They'll face the same conditions wherever they end up. Just an adjustment to a different environment."
"Yeah, kind of like a right of passage,” Joe turned to face me laughing. “This way, Ronnie, they get a small idea of what life is like for the poor.”
I remembered my own bout of dysentery two days after I had arrived in Zinapécuaro about a month ago. I didn’t like it much, especially the vomiting, but now it seemed as though it had happened a long time ago.
They were discussing Monsignor Ivan Illich's Language Training Institute in Cuernavaca, a part of his Intercultural Centre for Documentation. The Centre, known as IDOC, was a both a think tank and a means for Illich to pontificate about his ideas regarding major issues facing Latin America, Catholic theology, and anything else that might interest his restless mind. Educated at the Gregorian University in Rome, he had quickly moved up through the Church hierarchy to serve briefly as an Archbishop. However, Illich’s reputation was more that of a renegade Catholic priest and intellectual. Years before, he had been kicked out of Puerto Rico for alleged left wing political activity from his post as a Professor at the University of Puerto Rico. He was also a well-known author and theologian in Catholic circles. This was the first I had heard of him, but my three friends seemed to have known all about Monsignor Illich.
Although they might not have agreed with all he said, they thought of him with a certain amount of awe and respect. After all, the whole Catholic Church sent everyone who was to work in Latin America from other countries for orientation and training through this Institute we'd be arriving at shortly. I looked forward to this adventure, to learn more about how to accomplish our goal of positive social change, and how to be a more effective worker and member of the “movement” of that time.
* * *
"Why don’t you just go home?”
These were his first words to us. Monsignor Illich paused, looked us over one by one, took a drag from his cigarette and then casually flicked the ash off onto his ash tray. This was our introduction to him as we ate lunch with him at his Institute. He was a thin, wiry man of average height with his hair and beard now speckled with a little gray. His nose protruded like an eagle’s beak, and his dark eyes were intense and alive. The four of us and Illich sat at a round table beneath the branches of a small tree in the Institute's gardens. The grounds of the Institute were lush with bougainvilleas cascading over the stone walls. There were tropical plants and blooming roses interspersed in planting beds and containers in this expansive outdoor meal area. The sun was hot, and we sipped our soft drinks as we listened to him. I was pretty much in awe just being at the table. I felt ill at ease, and wondered what I was doing there among these intellectual big shots. So, I just listened and kept my thoughts to myself. Cigarette smoke swirled with the breeze above our table from the three of us who smoked. Illich went on:
“You shouldn’t even come here. You’re not going to do any good here. If you truly want to help the poor in Latin America, why don’t you stay home and fight your government? That's where the problem comes from. That’s the source of the oppression that forces these people into this grinding poverty, and keeps them poor."
Alan McDougall took a sip from his coffee cup, and looked up at Illich. "Don't you believe that people can accomplish good through witnessing and identifying with the poor, even though they're from a different country?", Alan asked. “After all, we’re all called to take up the cross, follow Christ.”
Illich looked at us and narrowed his dark, intense eyes. He withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and slowly exhaled. "First, you start your task with little training and insufficient knowledge of the language. Second, you have to realize that you represent nothing more than the American middle class and its values. So, there is no way for you to really meet with the underprivileged here, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on.
You’re all highly educated. The poor in Mexico never get beyond the sixth grade. You see, the problems of the poor here are political. Your presence here with your good will and your idea of identifying with the poor doesn’t change that. The country you come from and represent is draining this region of its resources. That’s how you’re maintaining your high standard of living.”
He paused, and then looked right at me with intense, dark eyes. “And then, think about immigration! Even Mexico’s best and most courageous human resources are being siphoned off. I’ve said many times that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and your coming here is another example.”
Now Rick moved forward in his chair to catch Illich’s attention, and said, "But, people can learn new things from one another. People from the outside can see things in a community that local people can’t. An outsider can bring a fresh perspective to seemingly impossible problems."
There was a thin smile on Illich’s thin face. "Look, you really should admit that you’re a lot smarter than that. Exercise your powers of intuition and analysis a bit. By definition, you cannot help ultimately being no more than vacationing salesmen for the middle-class ‘American Way of Life’, since that’s the only reality you know.”
Moving nervously in his chair, Alan tried again, "Look, don't you feel people can motivate and help one another to achieve change? Clearly, the poor here and in other Third World countries have to have hope and support from the outside."
Illich frowned slightly, looked at each of us one by one, and let out a long, slow breath. "Gentlemen. Perhaps you don’t want to understand what I’m saying. A group like yours couldn’t have come about unless a mood in the United States had supported it. Yes, you represent the belief that any true American must share God’s blessing with his poorer fellow men. The idea that every American has something to give, and thus can help Mexican peasants ‘develop’, become more modern, maybe, by spending a few months in their villages.”
Raising his voice as though he needed more emphasis, he said. “You should know that’s nothing but patronizing hogwash! The real task for Christians, for people of conscience, is to change the United States.”
He gestured sweeping his arm to the north. “You should go home. Use all of your energy and resources in the upcoming elections. That’s what’ll really help. You know who you should be talking to and working with? Work with and speak with people who you have something in common with and can reach – your own middle class. Obviously, you see how much people are suffering here. If you really want to do something about it, be honest and do some real work at home where it’s needed."
As Illich got into his diatribe, my first thoughts were desperate ones of trying to find ways to reject his views, to find ways to justify my presence in Mexico, as did my companions by their responses.
Like me, Joe Spagña, sitting at my side, had been quiet up to this point, smoking and keeping his eyes on Illich. Finally, he put his cigarette down, leaned toward Illich, and said, “Look, Monsignor Illich, what about this Institute? If volunteers or missionaries from other countries are part of the problem, then why do you maintain this huge place and do training for all of the missionaries who come into this region? How is that gonna help? Isn’t this just more of the status quo? How could it make any real social change?”
Illich moved back in his chair a bit, looking directly at Joe. “It is precisely our role to assure that those who the church sends here are excised of their culturally imperialist assumptions. They have to go through our process of ‘De-Yankification’, separating them from their middle class American values. Those who fail the rigors of this process aren’t permitted to work in Latin America. Remember, these people are all full-time workers with long term commitments. They’re not here just for a few summer months like you people.”
He looked beyond and behind us, toward the trees that surrounded the meal area. “And, besides, we at the Centre have a unique opportunity and responsibility to independently analyze Latin American issues and major Western socio-cultural problems ...”
While Illich kept talking, I kept thinking that Joe had a good point. Who was Illich to talk? Who had given him the right to be the only person, the only foreigner, who could legitimately work in Latin America? He'd made a real nice place for himself here. He had a huge Institute with a monopoly on training anyone sent to Latin America by the Catholic Church. A pretty nice set-up. If you are that secure, it is pretty easy to tell everyone else what to do and to go home. Why train everyone so well in Spanish, then? There must have been some idea that people could do some good here in Illich's mind.
Yet, I had to admit his words were deeply disturbing.
What right did I, as a young, privileged, white college student, have to come to this country and try to shake things up in any way? Going into another culture to propose any changes, even small ones, assumes you know better than they do. That you know something they don’t. Isn’t it even worse to come from a culture that is so dominant, powerful and oppressive, and then say you want to help out? To be part of a process of social change and liberation? Wasn’t I just fooling myself with naïve theories in order to take an exciting and adventurous trip to a foreign land? After all, isn’t it is a lot easier to get away from home where the problems are so much more difficult to face, so much less romantic and filled with so much more drudgery and familiarity? Go away to an exotic, far away place to escape the difficult problems so that you can pretend you are doing something positive and useful.
Illich had brought up questions that were to follow me for the rest of my life. Back then, I felt that I wanted to be a part of something, somehow by doing good in the world. I wanted to be on the side of positive social change, against oppression, in favor of achieving a just society.
So, how could I, as a member of the most privileged society, the most dominant “Race”, the most dominant gender, find some way to become a true and useful ally of the most oppressed and marginalized people?
Back then I didn’t know it, but I was about spend the rest of my life trying to figure this out.
This was to become the first of four summers I spent in rural Mexico struggling with these doubts. And then, it became a lifelong search that led me to work with migrant farm worker and Native-American communities.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
The road was all down hill. Mexico City to Cuernavaca, a 75 mile trip that in reality couldn’t have been all down hill. That’s what it felt like, though, as I drove the slow, winding curves. The small, black Peugot traversed curve after curve and switch back after switch back ever down the mountain toward the valley of the state of Morelos, where Cuernavaca, the capital, was located. Cuernavaca was a city of about 25,000 people at that time, known for its lush gardens of roses and bougainvilleas. Also located there was a Spanish language and culture program run by a famous Catholic priest to which Catholic missionaries and lay people were sent prior to the beginning of their work throughout Latin America. That Institute was our destination. As we approached Cuernavaca, the road began to stretch out into slow, lazy curves. It was a small, narrow, two-lane road back then in the summer of 1962.
"Slow down, will ya! We're really not in that much of a hurry to get there, and we’d rather live to tell about it."
Rick’s warning shook me back to reality. I guess I had really gotten into driving ever downward, letting the car speed up as I had followed the curves. As I drove, I had been excited about going to a new place, and also had been tuned into the conversation among my three passengers in the car. That summer, my 19th, I was part of a group of about thirty college students working in a small village, Zinapécuaro, in central Mexico. Our group was called the “International Student Worker Corps”. We wanted to identify with the poor through the dignity of hard, physical work, and thinking idealistically that we could do a small part to change the world for the better.
Rick, a twenty-five year old Pre-Med and sometimes engineering student at Stanford, was the leader of our group. Alan McDougall, a nearly middle-aged man beginning to gray, was the self-appointed intellectual of our group, although he often got so far off in his analysis of everything that he lost me completely. The third passenger sitting next to me in the little car was Joe Spagña, thirtyish, worldly, tough, and the one I admired the most. I had made him my personal guide and mentor from the time I had first met him in the Bay Area at the first meeting of the group I attended. They were busy talking about the importance of this journey we were taking to Cuernavaca that day. I was just happy to be along, and trying to keep up with their running commentary.
Alan always liked to be the center of attention. "All the lay workers, clerics and nuns now have to go through the language training and orientation at the Institute before they take their posts in any part of Latin America," he said.
"Wonder how Illich got the Catholic hierarchy to go along with this," Rick was a more practical man.
Alan explained: "More than anything, it is the quality of his Spanish language training, and the sheer strength of his intellect. I don't think he's got any real pull in Church politics. In fact, he's more a thorn in their side than anything else."
"I heard his students are forbidden from speaking any English at all for six weeks; they don’t get any American food during their whole stay, and everybody is subjected to a bout of dysentery in their first few days.", Rick said. “They’re thrown right into, like, intense cultural shock”.
"How does he get them all sick?" I interjected.
Looking at me through the rear view mirror, Rick replied. "Simple. He just makes everyone drink the tap water. It's really not that dangerous. They'll face the same conditions wherever they end up. Just an adjustment to a different environment."
"Yeah, kind of like a right of passage,” Joe turned to face me laughing. “This way, Ronnie, they get a small idea of what life is like for the poor.”
I remembered my own bout of dysentery two days after I had arrived in Zinapécuaro about a month ago. I didn’t like it much, especially the vomiting, but now it seemed as though it had happened a long time ago.
They were discussing Monsignor Ivan Illich's Language Training Institute in Cuernavaca, a part of his Intercultural Centre for Documentation. The Centre, known as IDOC, was a both a think tank and a means for Illich to pontificate about his ideas regarding major issues facing Latin America, Catholic theology, and anything else that might interest his restless mind. Educated at the Gregorian University in Rome, he had quickly moved up through the Church hierarchy to serve briefly as an Archbishop. However, Illich’s reputation was more that of a renegade Catholic priest and intellectual. Years before, he had been kicked out of Puerto Rico for alleged left wing political activity from his post as a Professor at the University of Puerto Rico. He was also a well-known author and theologian in Catholic circles. This was the first I had heard of him, but my three friends seemed to have known all about Monsignor Illich.
Although they might not have agreed with all he said, they thought of him with a certain amount of awe and respect. After all, the whole Catholic Church sent everyone who was to work in Latin America from other countries for orientation and training through this Institute we'd be arriving at shortly. I looked forward to this adventure, to learn more about how to accomplish our goal of positive social change, and how to be a more effective worker and member of the “movement” of that time.
* * *
"Why don’t you just go home?”
These were his first words to us. Monsignor Illich paused, looked us over one by one, took a drag from his cigarette and then casually flicked the ash off onto his ash tray. This was our introduction to him as we ate lunch with him at his Institute. He was a thin, wiry man of average height with his hair and beard now speckled with a little gray. His nose protruded like an eagle’s beak, and his dark eyes were intense and alive. The four of us and Illich sat at a round table beneath the branches of a small tree in the Institute's gardens. The grounds of the Institute were lush with bougainvilleas cascading over the stone walls. There were tropical plants and blooming roses interspersed in planting beds and containers in this expansive outdoor meal area. The sun was hot, and we sipped our soft drinks as we listened to him. I was pretty much in awe just being at the table. I felt ill at ease, and wondered what I was doing there among these intellectual big shots. So, I just listened and kept my thoughts to myself. Cigarette smoke swirled with the breeze above our table from the three of us who smoked. Illich went on:
“You shouldn’t even come here. You’re not going to do any good here. If you truly want to help the poor in Latin America, why don’t you stay home and fight your government? That's where the problem comes from. That’s the source of the oppression that forces these people into this grinding poverty, and keeps them poor."
Alan McDougall took a sip from his coffee cup, and looked up at Illich. "Don't you believe that people can accomplish good through witnessing and identifying with the poor, even though they're from a different country?", Alan asked. “After all, we’re all called to take up the cross, follow Christ.”
Illich looked at us and narrowed his dark, intense eyes. He withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and slowly exhaled. "First, you start your task with little training and insufficient knowledge of the language. Second, you have to realize that you represent nothing more than the American middle class and its values. So, there is no way for you to really meet with the underprivileged here, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on.
You’re all highly educated. The poor in Mexico never get beyond the sixth grade. You see, the problems of the poor here are political. Your presence here with your good will and your idea of identifying with the poor doesn’t change that. The country you come from and represent is draining this region of its resources. That’s how you’re maintaining your high standard of living.”
He paused, and then looked right at me with intense, dark eyes. “And then, think about immigration! Even Mexico’s best and most courageous human resources are being siphoned off. I’ve said many times that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and your coming here is another example.”
Now Rick moved forward in his chair to catch Illich’s attention, and said, "But, people can learn new things from one another. People from the outside can see things in a community that local people can’t. An outsider can bring a fresh perspective to seemingly impossible problems."
There was a thin smile on Illich’s thin face. "Look, you really should admit that you’re a lot smarter than that. Exercise your powers of intuition and analysis a bit. By definition, you cannot help ultimately being no more than vacationing salesmen for the middle-class ‘American Way of Life’, since that’s the only reality you know.”
Moving nervously in his chair, Alan tried again, "Look, don't you feel people can motivate and help one another to achieve change? Clearly, the poor here and in other Third World countries have to have hope and support from the outside."
Illich frowned slightly, looked at each of us one by one, and let out a long, slow breath. "Gentlemen. Perhaps you don’t want to understand what I’m saying. A group like yours couldn’t have come about unless a mood in the United States had supported it. Yes, you represent the belief that any true American must share God’s blessing with his poorer fellow men. The idea that every American has something to give, and thus can help Mexican peasants ‘develop’, become more modern, maybe, by spending a few months in their villages.”
Raising his voice as though he needed more emphasis, he said. “You should know that’s nothing but patronizing hogwash! The real task for Christians, for people of conscience, is to change the United States.”
He gestured sweeping his arm to the north. “You should go home. Use all of your energy and resources in the upcoming elections. That’s what’ll really help. You know who you should be talking to and working with? Work with and speak with people who you have something in common with and can reach – your own middle class. Obviously, you see how much people are suffering here. If you really want to do something about it, be honest and do some real work at home where it’s needed."
As Illich got into his diatribe, my first thoughts were desperate ones of trying to find ways to reject his views, to find ways to justify my presence in Mexico, as did my companions by their responses.
Like me, Joe Spagña, sitting at my side, had been quiet up to this point, smoking and keeping his eyes on Illich. Finally, he put his cigarette down, leaned toward Illich, and said, “Look, Monsignor Illich, what about this Institute? If volunteers or missionaries from other countries are part of the problem, then why do you maintain this huge place and do training for all of the missionaries who come into this region? How is that gonna help? Isn’t this just more of the status quo? How could it make any real social change?”
Illich moved back in his chair a bit, looking directly at Joe. “It is precisely our role to assure that those who the church sends here are excised of their culturally imperialist assumptions. They have to go through our process of ‘De-Yankification’, separating them from their middle class American values. Those who fail the rigors of this process aren’t permitted to work in Latin America. Remember, these people are all full-time workers with long term commitments. They’re not here just for a few summer months like you people.”
He looked beyond and behind us, toward the trees that surrounded the meal area. “And, besides, we at the Centre have a unique opportunity and responsibility to independently analyze Latin American issues and major Western socio-cultural problems ...”
While Illich kept talking, I kept thinking that Joe had a good point. Who was Illich to talk? Who had given him the right to be the only person, the only foreigner, who could legitimately work in Latin America? He'd made a real nice place for himself here. He had a huge Institute with a monopoly on training anyone sent to Latin America by the Catholic Church. A pretty nice set-up. If you are that secure, it is pretty easy to tell everyone else what to do and to go home. Why train everyone so well in Spanish, then? There must have been some idea that people could do some good here in Illich's mind.
Yet, I had to admit his words were deeply disturbing.
What right did I, as a young, privileged, white college student, have to come to this country and try to shake things up in any way? Going into another culture to propose any changes, even small ones, assumes you know better than they do. That you know something they don’t. Isn’t it even worse to come from a culture that is so dominant, powerful and oppressive, and then say you want to help out? To be part of a process of social change and liberation? Wasn’t I just fooling myself with naïve theories in order to take an exciting and adventurous trip to a foreign land? After all, isn’t it is a lot easier to get away from home where the problems are so much more difficult to face, so much less romantic and filled with so much more drudgery and familiarity? Go away to an exotic, far away place to escape the difficult problems so that you can pretend you are doing something positive and useful.
Illich had brought up questions that were to follow me for the rest of my life. Back then, I felt that I wanted to be a part of something, somehow by doing good in the world. I wanted to be on the side of positive social change, against oppression, in favor of achieving a just society.
So, how could I, as a member of the most privileged society, the most dominant “Race”, the most dominant gender, find some way to become a true and useful ally of the most oppressed and marginalized people?
Back then I didn’t know it, but I was about spend the rest of my life trying to figure this out.
This was to become the first of four summers I spent in rural Mexico struggling with these doubts. And then, it became a lifelong search that led me to work with migrant farm worker and Native-American communities.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****