Librarian Kankuamo won national library award

Last July, the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Knowledge announced the winners of the 2023 National Stimulus 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 indigenous peoples that are around: the Kankuamo, Kogui, Wiwa and Arhuaco people. Here a territory is preserved where there are many dangers due to the 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 from the four ethnic groups come here, foreign people come from the municipality of Valledupar, and migrants come, for example, from Venezuela, so it is a library that mediates between various knowledge and that, even so, is clear that its greatest function is the preservation of the identity of the Kankuamo people. The library helps preserve, from its main strength which is orality, our own knowledge. The generational exchange that occurs between the elderly and the children allows the strengthening of identity, an identity that is enhanced by reading and which is not a fixed process, but rather 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 preserve the territory. This is how the library is closely linked to the territory, to what 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 ‘knowing for knowledge’s sake’, that is, to learning to being able to help others. So, that community spirit is reflected in my work. I represent a community and it sees in me someone who will help fulfill that collective purpose. It is strange 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, because of the support I have felt, he sees me as someone who is doing his job. When we started we had the advice of the grandparents, the mamos – the highest-ranking spiritual authority, prepared from the womb to guide their community -, the elders, who told us that to survive as a community we also had to learn from outside tools, in technological matters, for example, but we also had to preserve. So, I think the community ends up seeing you as that example to follow.

How did you end up at the Kankuaka Public Library?

My love for literature begins since I was little, but we started this project thanks to a stimulus we won in 2012. From there we started working with publications and, although the work had been done before, that’s where the library begins. I was a librarian and starting in 2012 I joined as coordinator of library services because from the beginning it was thought that it was not going to be a single library, but that—with learning—we were going to end up creating a network. In 2012 we started with the library and in the V Kankuamo People’s Congress, held in December 2013, it was mandated 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 began at a young age and in a strange way because the first thing I read, in addition to the literature that my dad bought me, such as 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 the kids think and create, I applied all of that 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 the story, but my approach was through knowledge itself. Furthermore, 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 ‘knowing for the sake of knowing’ with books.

What have you learned about 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 kept. 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 by 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 reservation planning area gathered together, and that is what we want to promote. I feel that the biggest learning has been that the library can energize. Public libraries are the largest and longest-standing cultural infrastructure in the country, which still has untapped potential, because the library ends up being the central axis where the community can arrive safely, democratically, perhaps even dreamily, and find a space exchange.

What does this Recognition of library work mean to you and the community?

I believe that the greatest recognition, first, will always be that of the community, but then that of the community, having the endorsement, trust and support of 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 to it is that it drives us and gives us the responsibility to accelerate the creation of that network of libraries and to promote other processes. We would love to see how our experience can help, not only the rest of the libraries here, but more libraries. We feel that this recognition also gives us the possibility of going 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 rather mediating with one’s own knowledge and knowledge.

By Julie Guardo / National Library of Colombia.

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