Last July, the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Knowledge announced the winners of the 2023 National Incentive Program of the National Library of Colombia. With 10 years of experience in library work and a lifetime of love and passion for reading, Souldes Maestre, from the Kankuaka Public Library, was awarded the Recognition for library work and promotion and mediation of reading, writing and orality. In this interview he talks to us about the importance of the library and its relationship with the territory and the Kankuamo indigenous community.
The Kankuaka Public Library is located in the municipality of Valledupar, in the township of Atanquez, which is the capital of the Kankuamo Indigenous Reservation, on the southeastern slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which for us is ‘the heart of the world‘. The historical context of where we are located is very important because the library helps preserve the knowledge of the four surrounding indigenous peoples: the Kankuamo, Kogui, Wiwa and Arhuaco people. Here a territory is preserved where there are many dangers due to mining that is practiced very close to this ‘unique in the world‘ ecosystem, as Unesco declared a few years ago.
Souldes Maestre, told the National Library that the library is an example of interculturality. Users of the four ethnic groups arrive here, foreign people arrive, from the municipality of Valledupar, and migrants arrive, for example, from Venezuela, so it is a library that mediates between various types of knowledge and, even so, it is clear that its main function is the preservation of the identity of the Kankuamo people. The library helps to preserve, from its main strength that is orality, our own knowledge. The generational exchange that occurs between the elderly and the children allows the strengthening of the identity, an identity that is strengthened by reading and that is not a fixed process, but a changing one, which adapts to the way in which the children see the world, but without forgetting the customs that for thousands of years have helped us to preserve the territory. This is how the library is closely linked to the territory, to who we are and, therefore, to the function of preserving the sacred sites that exist in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
What is the relationship of the community with your work as a librarian?
First of all, we started the library as a result of the work that already existed. Many people began to discuss whether it was necessary to have one in the community. This concern for knowledge, which is a concern that is not like in the city —that one worries about knowing in order to have a degree or to perform better at work— is linked to ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge’, that is, to learn to be able to help the other. So that community spirit is reflected in my work. I represent a community and she sees in me someone who will help fulfill that collective purpose. It is rare to speak in the first person because the library is the result of this group. To the question of “how does the community see me?” I would say that, from the support I have felt, he sees me as someone who is doing his job. When we started we had the advice of grandparents, of the mamos —the highest-ranking spiritual authority, prepared from the womb to guide their community—, of the elders, who told us that in order to survive as a community we also had to learn from the tools from outside, on the technological issue, for example, but we also had to preserve. So, I think that the community ends up seeing you as that example to follow.
How did you get to the Kankuaka Public Library?
My love for literature begins when I was little, but we started this project thanks to a grant we received in 2012. From there we started working with publications and, although the work had already been done before, the library began there. I was a librarian and from 2012 I started as coordinator of library services because from the beginning it was thought that it was not going to be a single library, but rather -with learning- we were going to end up creating a network. In 2012 we started with the library and in the V Congress of the Kankuamo People, which took place in December 2013, it is in the mandates that we are going to build a library system. This is very interesting because it will not only have public libraries, but also community libraries and school libraries that will complement each other.
What does reading mean in your life?
My love for reading begins when I was little and in a strange way because the first thing I read, apart from the literature my dad bought me, like stories, was pedagogy. My dad was a teacher and had a very specialized library. All the concepts of pedagogy: PEyE —Educational policies and ethnicity—, learning terms, making children think and believe, I applied all of this later when we got to the library. My dad had, for example, many encyclopedias. I think it’s curious because generally people approach literature through the novel or through the short story, but my approach was through knowledge itself. Also, during the time of violence, I couldn’t go out to talk with my grandfather or anyone else, so I filled that Kankuamo spirit of ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’ with books.
What have you learned from the community in your work as a librarian?
By weaving daily with the community, one learns that the library is not only that space where knowledge is stored. I feel that the library also ends up being a place where other processes that come from the side can be built, created and energized. We work through commissions, and in the library it is very common to see a meeting of the ‘El Buen Vivir’ commission, to see the young people or the planning area of the reserve gathered together, and that is what we want to promote. I feel that the greatest learning has been that the library can energize. Public libraries are the largest and longest-lived cultural infrastructure in the country, which still has untapped potential, because the library ends up being the central axis where the community can reach out in a safe, democratic, perhaps even dreamy way, and find a space exchange.
What does this Recognition of library work mean to you and to the community?
I believe that the greatest recognition, first, will always be that of the community, but after that of the community, having the endorsement, trust and support from others. I feel like a young person, 10 years of work is nothing compared to other librarians. So, for us it’s like the greatest honor we’ve ever had. After the community, there is this recognition and the value we give it is that it drives us and gives us the responsibility of accelerating the creation of this network of libraries and promoting other processes. We would love to see how our experience can help, not only the other libraries here, but more libraries. We feel that this recognition also gives us the opportunity to go to other places, to other countries, to also begin to position ourselves, not only as a library, but as a library of an indigenous reservation, which is something that can also help create a way to enter in dialogue with the knowledge of the West, without it being something that is imposed, but mediating with their own knowledge and knowledge.
By Julie Guardo / National Library of Colombia.