{"id":6071,"date":"2015-10-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/noticia\/memoria-barrial-y-cultura-comunitaria-en-la-quebrada-ortega\/"},"modified":"2015-10-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T00:00:00","slug":"memoria-barrial-y-cultura-comunitaria-en-la-quebrada-ortega","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/en\/noticia\/memoria-barrial-y-cultura-comunitaria-en-la-quebrada-ortega\/","title":{"rendered":"Neighborhood Memory and Community Culture in the Ortega Ravine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"quebrada_Ortega_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

July 25th<\/strong>. We move slowly along Mariscal Sucre Avenue in Anapau’s enormous Volvo 850 family car. The traffic is especially heavy at this hour in the south of the city. We will arrive more than half an hour late. In the Ortega ravine<\/strong>, a large group of neighborhood representatives from Quitumbe<\/strong> awaits us. Upon arrival, we apologize profusely for the delay. They very kindly do not take it into account. <\/p>\n

We have previously coordinated the meeting with Fabi\u00e1n Melo<\/strong> and Sandra L\u00f3pez<\/strong>, and its purpose is to share the work processes of the project
\n
\n Bellvitge live role-playing<\/i>
\n <\/strong>
\n<\/a> <\/i>on our part <\/i>and for them to explain to us what initiatives they wanted to promote in the Quitumbe neighborhood, in order to think together how they could be developed.<\/p>\n

Talking about Bellvitge live role-playing<\/i> in this context was relevant since one of the group’s concerns was precisely neighborhood memory<\/em>. Thus, after explaining what Bellvitge live role-playing<\/i> consists of and how we had addressed the issue of memory in this project, an interesting debate took place in which we analyzed and discussed some of the problems that would go through any future development of work on memory in Quitumbe and the Ortega ravine. <\/p>\n

Although the purpose of the meeting was not, of course, to start building a historiographical account of the neighborhood, some data inevitably appeared that needed to be taken into account: above all, it should be noted that the neighborhood is very young, with only 23 years of history.<\/p>\n

Soon a question arose that the collective considered necessary to consider: the way in which individual memory relates to collective memory. It was pointed out that the life stories of the residents coincided in a historical moment: when they buy the plot of land and become part of the Alianza Solidaridad cooperative<\/g>. The individual and collective experience of building the habitat, to a large extent literally through numerous mingas over the years, has somehow forged the ethos<\/g> of the residents\u2014what someone called a certain form of spirituality<\/g>\u2014. Cooperativism emerges in the story as a tool that allowed the residents to be agents of their own reality from a critical and even rebellious position against certain \u201cexternal\u201d factors. <\/p>\n

As we said in the previous chronicle, one of these factors that the residents faced was precisely the majority tendency to cover the ravines. The decision to recover the ravine as a natural space went against what common sense and the uses of that moment dictated and involved a genuine exercise in divergent thinking that made it possible to build a habitat that relates harmoniously to the territory instead of imposing itself on it. <\/p>\n

Something that seemed especially noteworthy to us is that all these processes can be understood in a pedagogical key, insofar as they brought about a large number of significant learning experiences for the community. Of all of them, perhaps the most important arises from the question of how we want to live<\/g>. This question is what drove the use of self-management tools and the creation of knowledge production spaces such as the mingas themselves. <\/p>\n

All this baggage is part of the heritage of the ravine, of its memory and its culture, and in some way ended up being linked during the conversation to the project of a Community Development Center. In the implementation of this center\u2014which for the moment is nothing more than an idea\u2014it was wanted to give a leading role to young people, as a generational relay of neighborhood movements in the ravine. In this direction, the Danzarte<\/g> collective, made up of young people from the neighborhood who practice traditional dances, was singled out as a leading agent. At this point we wanted to point out that we cannot limit our notion of culture only to the set of artistic disciplines more or less recognized as such, and that daily practices and ways of relating also constitute the cultural heritage of a community. In this sense, it was also warned of how information and communication technologies, used massively by young people, were putting at risk the social fabric and cultural practices of the ravine. Faced with this observation, we shared our doubts: on the one hand, it seemed inoperative to deny a series of technologies and practices that are already an inseparable part of the lifestyles of young people, and on the other, it seemed risky to omit the potential of said technologies as communication and organization tools. <\/p>\n

\"Young<\/a>
Young people from the Danzarte collective in moments prior to their performance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The creation of a Community Development Center gave rise, on the other hand, to thinking about public policies: The self-management tradition of the ravine seemed to conflict with state policies, which were seen as a form of control over communities; among other reasons because the state arrogated the production of Good Living: it is the state that gives<\/em> Good Living and who defines what is or is not Good Living.<\/p>\n

The Community Development Center was seen as a necessity in the process of habitat development and construction and learning of the cooperative, in which new spaces for dialogue and coexistence, popular education and situated communication projects such as a digital newspaper could be opened.<\/p>\n

At one point in the conversation, Fabi\u00e1n Melo spoke of the need for a \u00abcivilizational change\u00bb that would involve a break with established forms of relationship with the habitat. Here it seemed relevant to point out how the cooperative tradition of the ravine could be applied to forms of solidarity economy and responsible consumption beyond housing. <\/p>\n

Finally, there was talk of how the possible involvement of experts and professionals should take place in any collective creation project. Here, the memory of the role of architects in the design of the ravine’s homes served as an example to address the issue. This point was especially relevant given the involvement of the community mediation team of the
\n Museums of the City Foundation<\/strong>
\n<\/a> (FMC), and more specifically of Carlos Hidalgo<\/strong>, head of the participatory urban planning area, in this neighborhood initiative. <\/p>\n

Of course, there were also moments for recreation with the performance of the Danzarte collective and to regain strength with a forceful colada morada courtesy of the residents of Quitumbe.<\/p>\n

We hope to maintain contact with the colleagues from Quito to stay up to date on the evolution of the Ortega ravine. For the moment we know that the exhibition opens on October 21st<\/strong>  
\n Ravine Route<\/a> <\/strong>
\n<\/em>at the Yaku Park – Water Museum<\/strong> of Quito<\/strong>, which collects the research promoted by the FMC Mediation Department and which you can consult on the project blog: http:\/\/labquebradas.blogspot.com.es<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1267,"template":"","categories":[],"class_list":["post-6071","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticia\/6071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticia"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/noticia"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lafundicio.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}