The Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) had its 47th annual conference, holding it for the first time in Mexico, at the Hacienda Santa Clara near to San Miguel de Allende (nearer the larger cities of Guanajato and Queretaro). The theme was Inter-American Philosophy (which had also been their theme in 2016 when their conference was held in Portland, Oregon). The theme is also a recent addition to the SAAP, and is due (both times) to the extended efforts of this year’s conference organizer, Prof. Greg Pappas of U of Texas A&M. The phrase “Inter-American” emphasizes including indigenous philosophies of the Americas. Their university has an extensive program based at Hacienda Santa Clara, which is a center with beautiful historical buildings, an extensive art collection and gardens. It is also is environmentally friendly and has an extensive rainwater catchment system.
So much was going on at the conference that I am going to focus on the plenaries. This was a great opportunity for the membership of SAAP which is predominantly from the U.S. and Canada to hear from many Mexican professors and researchers. A theme, sometimes explicit, was how philosophy as a practice needed to reject academic ivory-towerism and instead be seen as an essential part of everyday life and practices. Also, philosophy curricula often focusing on colonial and Eurocentric philosophical topics and authors were replaced by a focus on the diverse peoples of the Americas.
Eduardo Echeverria spoke on his Society’s (Mexican Federation of Philosophy for Children) efforts to have philosophy for children taught in schools. Children can learn 100 thinking skills, including cognitive, procedural, and attitudinal skills, such as how to make decisions, concept construction (such as, freedom, fear, love, justice), epistemic humility. They also teach indigenous children their own culture’s classics, such as teaching Mayan children the Popul Vuh. The classes have a deliberate democratic framework and teach boys and girls that they each equally have exciting opportunities and futures.
Raul Trejo Villalobos (Autonomous University of Chiapas) spoke on the topic of academic philosophy in Mexico in the 20th century. In 1969 philosophers Augusto Salazar Bondy and Leopold Zea had asked, “Is there a philosophy in Our America?” (This reference to “Our America” connects to Cuban philosopher Jose Marti’s earlier essay on Our America meaning Latin America in contradistinction to Anglo America of the U.S.). Starting in 1910 UNAM taught philosophy, but most other philosophy departments in Mexico did not start until the 1950s and 1960s. As of 2010 there were still several parts of Mexico that did not have any Philosophy faculties. So, the Southern-most universities (in Tabasco, Campecho, Yucatan and Chiapas) all decided to teach Mexican and Ibero-American philosophy as well as Mayan and practical philosophy. They drew on the works of Enrique Dussel, Matthew Lipman, and following the ideas of UNESCO they decided to host a philosophy café, where they would discuss love, politics, abortion, tolerance, the sense of existence, maladies and the community, Indigenismo in Mexico, and the original philosophy of the pueblos. The point of the café gathering would be to discuss a particular idea.
Trejo Villalobos shared with us some recordings of participants of the philosophy cafes – people from all walks of life who shared the philosophies of their grandmothers, or their questions of conscience. The café meetings gave rise to the Indigenous Thinkers Project, which became a book available as a pdf in English, Spanish and Indigenous languages. Raul says it was interesting to note that café practitioners said they did not realize they were “indigenous” until they left their communities. When you are in the fields, or cooking, or among friends, there is usually no consciousness of being “indigenous.” They drew inspiration from Sor Juana de la Cruz, who they said held the view that one can philosophize without books, even while cooking. If that’s the case, then Raul said, we need a Philosophy Kitchen.
The next Plenary speaker was Rosaira Aida Hernandez Castillo. Her talk was entitled “Against Discursive Colonialism: Intercultural Dialogues as a Path to Decolonize Feminist Anthropology.” She has been championing indigenous rights in Chiapas, Guerrero, Guatemala and Honduras. She is author of 22 books. She told us the story of her development as a researcher and writer. She took inspiration from Chandra Mohanty who said thirty years ago in her writing “Under Western Eyes” that as a women of the Indian diaspora in Africa, she realized that women who wanted to “save” them were colonizing their lives. Hernandez Castillo then attended the National School of Anthropology in Mexico. She gave an autobiographical account of her growth as a scholar, including both what she learned and what she had to unlearn during her education. She was taught Marxist analyses of the criminalization of social forces. For example, Marxists pointed out that sexual violence was being used against women as a way to repress their organizing. In 1994 the Zapatistas came to power. She was impressed with their movement, because none of the other revolutionary movements before had Women’s Revolutionary law. The Zapatistas also saw no conflict between women’s rights and indigenous rights.
Regarding her education, she noted that Mexican anthropology idolizes and essentializes. She wanted to ask instead, knowledge for whom? For what? She wants to expose the myth of positive neutrality, and to discuss the needs of the social actor. She wants to produce knowledge WITH, not ABOUT, indigenous women. She realized that Marxist activist research often defines identities of the knowers and their limits, that is, it is a case of epistemological arrogance. Paolo Freire and liberation theology had inspired a generation of research projects. But, she wants to replace the idea that intellectuals could raise the awareness of the oppressed with feminist collaboration instead. This is a new kind of ethnography where the researcher is part of the dialogue. She does not want to “Orientalize” indigenous women and she does not want to reinforce the idea that they need saviors. There are a plurality of subordinations (such as race or class) so it is hard to see a “pure” collective interest (as the Marxists would want). She has been living and working in Chiapas for fifty years. She participates in the Continental Network of Indigenous Women of America, which consists of 52 organizations of indigenous women, started in 1993.
She notes that, usually indigenous women are invited to listen to scholars and to learn from them. They are not often invited to speak. So, they gather together, learning from each other as spiritual women living their cosmovision as political actors and human beings, resisting the homogenizing impulse of globalization. When they convene, their conference ritual is called “We are Medicine Women.” Some think that feminists are a separatist movement. But in fact, that focus on the Quatridad or Mesoamerican cross focuses on equilibrium and includes non-humans as well.
Hernandez Castillo is a legal anthropologist, and she works with forensics experts in reviewing files. It is hard to get permission to be able to interview indigenous women. So, she taught non-indigenous women who knew how to write how to write life stories. She then got them to interview indigenous women. Writing their stories gave them an impetus to learn literacy. Many of the women she worked with in prison were there as part of the “war on drugs.” Really, they were political prisoners, and racism played a role in many of their incarcerations. She reviewed their files, and nine of the 30 women she worked with were released from jail. She notes that people were dying of cholera in prison. Basically, it is the poor who are imprisoned and die there. She encourages women to do meditation with paintings, because, their pain comes out (therapeutically) through the process of painting.
Some of the women in prison encountered sexual and domestic violence. They were encouraged to construct new subjectivities by denaturalizing violence. The taught their daughters how not to reproduce this violence. The texts they are writing (their life stories) have emancipatory power. The so-called “Prison reform” funded by the US government brings the worst of prison practices to Mexico. It is a new form of Empire, she charges. She is concerned about the detention centers at U.S. borders and newly built prisons in Mexico. Her talk challenged us philosophers to listen to indigenous voices, and to pay attention in our political philosophizing to the dynamics of power and the voices of resistance.
Alberto Aveleyra, who works in sustainable tourism in San Miguel de Allende gave us a talk on the history of San Miguel de Allende. He began noting that Juan Benito Diaz de Gamarra (1745 – 1783) came to San Miguel, and interviewed elders, reporting to the King of Spain about his interviews. He said that the elders used peyote to see visions. Perhaps that’s an early sign that people would flock to this place to receive special visions, messages, and creative insights. Felipe Cossio de Pomar (1888-1981) was a Peruvian living in exile in Mexico, who came to San Miguel and founded the School of Fine Arts. He had close connections with De La Torre. He was able to restore the old buildings by giving summer art classes to Americans. His school had only American teachers (no Europeans), and his theme was to return to our own classics or ancients, such as the cultural-linguistic diversity of Mexico. Of the six ancient places where people developed civilization, two were in the Americas (Peru and Mesoamerica). His point is not just to idolize the past. He notes that Contemporary Mexico gives homage to the historical Indians, but keeps the current Indians in poverty. San Miguel is a place that attracts not only artists, but also activists who work together for charity as well as justice. (I suggest to you that you check out the website of San Miguel’s Center for Global Justice, a project of philosophy professors in solidarity with Mexican academics and activists. Also during the time of the San Miguel conference, the women of Ser Mujeur did a dance performance — “flash mob” as they call it — in front of the Parrochia to draw attention to the situation of violence against women, during Women’s Month, that is, March).
Aveleyra gave us an overview of the history, noting that the Olmecs at La Venta built mountain-like temples. Basically the pyramids are man-made mountains. Caves have energies of the underworld and bones of dead ones. One relief in a temple shows a man coming from the underworld with a rope. He is a spiritual “midwife.” Frayre de Sahagun was a philosopher and wise man who learned the Tlamatini language. The “man who speaks in flowers” (of Aztec philosophy) is holding (in one ancient relief) a bloodletting instrument. He suggests one can know through firsthand experience and use of psychedelics. He draws on the studies of Portilla who studied and wrote his Ph.D. on Nahua philosophy. He asserted, provocatively, that the statue of the Cosmic Mother (found in this area of San Miguel) is also (on a deeper level) Our Lady of Guadalupe.
While it was good to have Aveleyra’s overview of the history, cultural and philosophical significance of the area, there were also opportunities to explore San Miguel and find out more, seeing its cultural and historical monuments and experiencing a vibrant culture. For example, did you know that the church where Don Hidalgo began the first cry of the Mexican Revolution is near San Miguel? And that the “Allende” of San Miguel de Allende was also a key agent in the Revolution? These and other important aspects of the history are explained on the weekly Wednesday morning walking tour. On the Friday evening of the conference, we were all dropped off in the center of town where an important festival was underway. It was called The Festival of Our Lord of the Conquest. It remembers a statue with the same name, on display in the Parrochia. It is another one of those interesting experiences where indigenous religious practices and Christianity mix. For this festival which attracts many rural participants, Indigenous communities wear traditional attire often including many large feathers, and they dance particular dances that express their community’s identity and culture. For a further glimpse into Mexico’s many festivals, one could (and I did) go to the Mask Museum in San Miguel, where not only are the masks collected (which are works of art in themselves) but also the context in which the mask is used is documented (usually to enact some significant story at public gatherings – often with a mix of indigenous religions and Christianity as their context and source of symbolism).
San miguel
As the conference continued, there was President Greg/ “Goyo” Pappas’ keynote lecture, where he explained some of the rationale for the conference’s focus. He asserted that SAAP is advancing American philosophy in its present commitment to pluralism and dialogue with the South. Autobiographically, he noted that when he first came to SAAP it was a gathering of mostly white academics, as he himself was the only Latino, and Leonard Harris was the only African American. He thanked the various past Presidents of SAAP for keeping the doors open to diverse scholars. Drawing upon a Latin jazz term, he wanted to describe his own approach to philosophizing as “contrapunteo” which he described as a “rubbing” or juxtaposition of differing philosophies, creatively respecting the relative independence of multiple traditions, in the practice of pragmatism which was always about openness, interaction, learning, listening, and where “friction” is (hopefully) helpful. Noting with ironic humor that Breitbart News had said of his conference plans, that SAAP “outsourced” their conference to Mexico, he explained that the truer explanation for the society’s meeting in Mexico was so that radical democracy and “la vida” could “rub” together. After all, while European philosophy’s approach may be to insist that “reality is something to be known,” American philosophy asserts instead that humans are in this world, life is lived, place is important, and responsibility arises from concrete contexts.
Drawing on Gloria Anzaldua’s insight that we belong to a larger whole – the universe – and that we are not bounded by our skin, Pappas explained that he decided to embark upon an Inter-American Community of Inquiry Approach to Injustices. He wanted an alternative to people feeling trapped by their cultures and limited by inquiries methods restricted to the Academy. Instead he embraced the Community Participatory Research championed by Hernandez Castillo. He told us of his plans to study further the philosophies of Grace Lee Boggs in Detroit, Casa Pueblo in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico (influenced by the philosopher Eugenio María de Hostos), and the Zapatistas in southern Mexico. As he explained, all three of these philosophies (each embodied in a community) all wanted to redefine “revolution,” and they had each articulated their principles. To learn more about these practical adventures in radical participatory democracy was Pappas’ current goal.
The closing banquet had two highlights. One was that Judith Green won the Lifetime Achievement award, that was such a special moment, and very well deserved. How fitting that the theorist of “deep democracy” got the award just after Pappas’ description of important contemporary democratic movements. Then, there was an all-women mariachi band who played for us, called Mariachi Femenil Nuevo Tecalitlán. The entire conference had been punctuated by great artistic and musical experiences. Let’s hope that SAAP continues this tradition of exploring Inter-American philosophy.
