Lima, Peru

Our time in Lima was spent at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), where we worked with Professor Luís Martín Valdiviezo Arista, a member of the faculty of Philosophy.  We facilitated six workshops  at the university with students from a vast array of academic and cultural backgrounds. Within the workshops, our conversations ranged widely, guided by both the texts and the participants’ interests. On our first day of workshops, we discussed grief and loss—particularly in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we discussed our understandings of grief and created an ofrenda, we also exchanged stories that highlighted the stark differences between how the pandemic was experienced in Peru and the United States. In our next day of workshops, conversation turned to the role of gender in Peruvian society. Participants created works of origami and staged multidisciplinary performances that aimed to express how gender emerges through language, dress, and other facets of everyday life. Our final set of workshops sparked conversations about familial bonds, generational trauma, and migration. Many students at PUCP live far away from the university and were eager to share how their experiences coming of age have been shaped by their distance from home. As participants played charades with sections of the text, they made connections between their worlds and the textual world they embodied. In addition to facilitating Pre-Texts workshops, we also participated in a number of intercultural dialogues with PUCP students, where we exchanged questions and experiences concerning political action amongst young people, arts infrastructure in the academy, and student life at our respective universities. Each session at PUCP was characterized by a significant level of dialogue—about our texts, about our lives, and about our worlds.

Andahuaylas, Apurímac, Peru

The next stop on our journey in Peru took us inland to the Andes Mountains, stopping briefly in Ayacucho, before traveling on to Andahuaylas. There we partnered with Universidad Nacional Jose Maria Arguedas (UNAJMA), and facilitated a brief cultural exchange program with interested students. At UNAJMA we were welcomed as part of an international exchange program as the first group of students from the United States! Our programming included meeting with the Principal of the Professional School of Intercultural Education,  and participating in cultural exchange conversations and round tables; discussion themes ranged from getting to know each other to issues of the youth in the U.S. and Peru. Additionally, a presentation of the Pre-Texts methodology, a breakdown of Harvard student life, and a student community picnic among the ruins of Pachuca and Sondor were planned. The experience offered not only complete Spanish language immersion, but also an opportunity to get acquainted with Andahuaylas culture with our peers at UNAJMA as our guides. UNAJMA was a beyond welcoming host, indicating a desire for future partnership and further teaching of Pre-Texts workshops!

Learn more about Universidad Nacional Jose Maria Arguedas (UNAJMA) here!

Cusco, Peru

We had more time in Cusco than originally planned, but were able to participate in a lot of fulfilling workshops coordinated by a nonprofit organization with headquarters in the historical district of the city. 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!