The nonprofit, Centro Bartolomé de las Casas (CBC), set up two different sets of workshop series for us to facilitate. Each series consisted of five different workshops with participants that traveled from various parts of the country to learn more about the Pre-Texts methodology. The first set consisted entirely of CBC employees from different regional offices, including Tambobamba, Puno, and Cusco. The employees came from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds—there were linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and educators. The second group of participants were mostly educators, two of whom traveled from Cotobambas to take part in the workshops. Both sets of workshops were conducted in Spanish, with the help of two CBC employees who assisted with the occasional translation whenever we needed assistance to communicate with the participants. We repeated the Pre-Texts methodology for the entirety of the series, each session moving through a different text. For this experience we built upon our model employed in Lima at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), centering an overarching theme on texts covering topics of becoming, belonging, and identity. The collection of authors included Louise Erdrich, Ocean Vuong, bell hooks, Franz Kafka, and Sandra Cisneros. The participants initiated and conducted a vast array of styles of art, from stop-motion film creation to collective poem-making. At the close of the series the groups expressed their excitement at not only the experience of participating in Pre-Texts, yet simultaneously their interest in spreading the methodology within their respective organizations and home communities. This concludes our journey as interns with Pre-Texts in Peru, as the summer season comes to a close. We sign off following enriching experiences in Lima, Ayacucho, Andahuaylas, and Cusco; we can’t wait to see how Pre-Texts continues to grow in Peru!
Liliana Price and Amy Ojeaburu
Read the full report by Liliana and Amy here.
