The title goes hand in hand with a famous expression by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy who said “portrait your village and you will be universal”, and so today I have to write about another trip to the interior of the country, specifically to the department of Guairá and its capital: Villarrica. There I had the opportunity to be part of the celebration of 50 years of Coopeduc, a prosperous cooperative founded by 136 teachers in 1972 and today has more than 80 thousand members. The celebration was attended by Lizza Bogado and Benjamín Fernández Bogado who spoke and sang about the triumph of solidarity in the pandemic.
But his show “counting and singing Paraguay” was not the only cultural event that I had to be. I participated last Friday in the presentation of a book entitled; “Villarrica la andariega and the characters of Guairá” by former parliamentarian Cesar Marcelino Garcete. The text summarizes the rich cultural history, which includes the 100 years of persecution that the city endured at that time due to the invasion of the bandeirantes and their seven moves during the Spanish colonial empire.
The city of great references of national culture such as Ramon Indalecio Cardozo and Delfín Chamorro is like a second home for me because I have family in this place that every time I visit their house they stand out for their hospitality and friendliness as its own population that has a open and curious spirit with whatever is from outside without showing at all an offensive attitude towards the figures and ideas that come out of its borders.
Every opportunity that comes my way to leave home to travel somewhere is a time to learn by using my senses to absorb information and knowledge about the destinations I have to visit.
A few days ago it was the south of Paraguay and now I had to go in the direction of another coordinate not outside the country, in the center of the Western region, to assimilate what is done and lived in this city founded in 1570 por Ruy Diaz de Melgarejo.
The portrait of our reality.
Drawing, photographing or portraying a particular place is one of the most demanding obligations for what could later be the criticism of the inhabitant of the space chosen to reproduce. More so if it is an important city not only for those who inhabit it but above all for the history of the country that welcomes it, which stands out not so much for its natural wealth or belongings. The writer popularly known as Taki Garcete is a history teacher, promoter of education and culture and, above all, a renowned athlete who won everything in basketball and soccer. An 80-year-old man who gave luster to his city and who has now decided to capture it in his first book.
We are from the same village that can be truly universal not only by appearing on screens but above all by being part of the story that its population makes, giving rational and adequate use of its social networks that must entangle but make common or communicate stories, and its description how Master Garcete and his work on his wandering city.
From where there are many things to tell, to know and to know more than what we take care of portraying among ourselves and that are not necessarily good news, which in turn do not make static or wandering information a happy experience but above all a sad and uncomfortable one. Today we globalize our personal life through social networks and what the international network has as a means to fulfill well the advice of the Russian writer for the world of which we are a part, although sometimes we do not realize that. It has been a very profitable journey.
