Tag: Ivan Illich

Street Art | In Praise of the Bicycle | Buenos Aires, 2015

Of alternate worlds that touch Commemorating the centenary of Ivan Illich's birth

By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

Between postwar Europe and the Latin America and Caribbean of the modern mirage, there were flows of life and thought that went back and forth between both shores of the Atlantic. What was once the frontier of conquest, colonization, and evangelization—with the Creole and mestizo creations that reinvented the West during the colonial period—became in modern times an ocean of whispers of new worlds, sailing against the current of progress and industrialization.

The 1960s saw the emergence in Cuernavaca, Mexico, of a river of thought flowing "north of the future," as Ivan Illich liked to describe the future arriving to us here and now, quoting the poem by Paul Celan, that Romanian-Jewish author who fascinated him so much:

In the rivers, to the north of the future,
I lay the net that you
hesitant loads
writing on stones,
shades.

In my hand autumn eats its leaf: we are friends.
We extract time from nuts and teach it to walk:
time returns to the nut.

It's Sunday in the mirror,
In sleep one sleeps,
The mouth speaks the truth.

My eye ascends to the sex of my beloved:
We looked at each other,
We say dark words to each other,
We love each other as poppies and memory love each other,
we fell asleep like wine in bowls,
like the sea in the bloody ray of the moon.

We stand embraced at the window, they can see us from the street:
It's time this was known.,
It is time for the stone to bloom,
that a heart beats in the restlessness.
It's time for it to be time.

It's time.

∂

Austrian researcher Isabella Bruckner, a young professor at the Benedictine Athenaeum of Saint Anselm in Rome, who is now moving to Freiburg im Breisgau, organized a European colloquium to delve into the theological legacy of Ivan Illich, tracing the genealogy of his deepest intuitions about the crisis of instrumental modernity, which arose from what he called the perversion of Christianity.

Together with Professor Martin Kirschner of the Catholic University of Eichstätt in Bavaria, I was invited to give a joint presentation comparing the political theology emerging in certain parts of Germany and Mexico, inspired by Illich's intuitions and ideas. The challenge was twofold: to find common ground and an appropriate language to account for experiences of proximity and conviviality in countries so disparate in their political cultures: the German people currently grappling with the European Union's complicity as an ally of Israel and the United States in their geopolitical war in the Middle East, and the Mexican people seduced by the siren song of the Fourth Transformation and the roar of the World Cup, which silences the tragedy of the disappeared and the corruption of the narco-government in a large part of the country's territory.

When I was invited to participate, I suggested to the organizer that she invite people who for years have been inspired by Illich's thought, particularly Javier Sicilia, Sylvia Marcos, Roberto Ochoa, and Rafael Mondragón, who are little known in European academia. So I undertook the task of presenting in my paper the central ideas of this critical dialogue on what Humberto Beck called the Cuernavaca School, with the Hebrew and Christian thinker of proximity and conviviality. I emphasized the new paths emerging in Mexico and other parts of the world. world below and of the peripheries From the centers of hegemonic power, where resistances flow as other ways of eating, healing and educating —as the late Gustavo Esteva said speaking of revolutionary verbs— to promote territorial, epistemic and spiritual autonomies that sustain communities and peoples who face the many-headed hydra that devours the world.

One of the Illichan themes that most impacted colleagues in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic was his critique of the pharmaceutical industry, promoted by Western democratic governments that imposed public health policies without considering the autonomy of individuals and communities in choosing the most appropriate ways to confront the pandemic. My German colleagues, Martin Kirschner and Markus Riedenauer, emphasized the continued relevance of this critique of the state's power to impose mandatory vaccination programs, disregarding the serious scientific objections to the indiscriminate use of vaccines and the effects they caused in the population.

Another recurring theme in the Rome debates was that of the territorial, epistemic, and cultural autonomies that arise from placing face-to-face proximity at the center of life, or, in Illich's words, the conviviality as a mode of existence and the place which is inhabited with the strength of the vernacular. Both in Europe and in Latin America and the Caribbean, these autonomies have been gaining ground in recent decades, with the conquest of bodies and territories by women, indigenous peoples and collectives queer/cuir /queir, among other resistance groups.

European colleagues were surprised by the diverse approaches to the ethical, political, and spiritual implications of the work of the migrant thinker Ivan Illich. From his diaspora from the clerical Church to his return to medieval classics like Hugh of Saint Victor—and through his time living with Puerto Rican communities in New York and later with peasant communities in Cuernavaca—Illich bore witness to these other worlds that intersect. Fabio Milana, editor, along with Giorgio Agamben, of Illich's work in Italian, presented a gem of archival research from the Illich family to recount Ivan's "vocation," as the young son of a Jewish mother and a Christian father, who cultivated from childhood and adolescence a passion for the thought that arose from Christianity as the event of the Incarnation of the Word of God. This core would later remain as an ember in the work of the migrant thinker to this day, in which we now recover Illich's pristine vision of a powerless church.

The proposal to continue exploring Illich's thought from its various perspectives, both European and Latin American, remains open. We hope to organize a meeting in Cuernavaca that will foster these dialogues and new ways of living together in the conviviality of those who resist the era of the system, reclaiming place and vernacular culture as cornerstones of another possible modernity.

∂

This week, cultural writing and painting workshops begin in Sots'leb, as part of the preparations for the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Chiapas Revolution, which will take place on Saturday, June 6th in Zinacantán.

I have been fortunate to contribute to the organization of these events, led by Antún Kojtom, a Tseltal painter from Tenejapa, and Xun Betán, a Tsotsil anthropologist and poet from Venustiano Carranza. These acts of collective memory seek to explore the enduring presence of the cultures of the Chiapas Highlands and their encounter with the Dominican friars in a dialogue that began five hundred years ago.

A mural on the esplanade outside the San Lorenzo Mártir temple in Zinacantán will depict scenes from the ancestral religion of the Tsotsil people, such as prayers on the hills led by the Jiloletic, The blessing of the grandmothers and the importance of traditional roles as a bond within the community are also depicted. As part of this ancestral history, the mural's center features a scene of an imagined encounter between a Tsotsil steward and Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, accompanied behind him by other friars who safeguarded the legacy of the Gospel linked to the defense of the people's rights, such as Friar Matías de Córdoba, who contributed to the independence of Chiapas, and, more recently, Friar Raúl Vera. jTatic Samuel Ruiz walking with the Mayan people. And at the far right of the mural, the master Antún created a beautiful scene of the dialogue between a Lacandon sage and Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada, both sitting under a ceiba tree listening to each other: the friar speaking with eloquence and respect, the Mayan sage pointing to the earth and touching his heart.

Those who can attend on Saturday, June 6th in Zinacantán will be able to participate in the unveiling of the mural, accompanied by Tsotsil poetry and traditional music, thus reaffirming the dialogue of knowledge that we seek to continue promoting between friars and Tsotsil communities, and strengthening the life of the people with the vital sap of their ancestral traditions and the prophetic force of the Gospel.

Rome, May 17, 2026

May 17, 2026
Carlos Mendoza | Malbork Castle, Pomerania, Poland | 2026

The other Europe Stories between Bavaria and the Baltic Sea coast

By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

I am in Europe for a few weeks, enjoying time to read and write, fundamental acts of culture, so sorely missed in Boston and now in Chiapas. I am able to enjoy this time thanks to the hospitality of a good colleague and friend, Professor Martin Kirschner, and this space of studium, which offers me the opportunity to give some classes and lectures at this university in the interior of Bavaria.

For years, my friend Piotr, originally from Silesia in southern Poland, had invited me to visit him and his family in Pomerania. I had no idea where this place was, with a name that reminded me of the novel The Lord of the Rings, until a few weeks ago when I was preparing my trip from Eichstätt.

A long weekend during the German stay provided the perfect opportunity to travel to the Baltic Sea coast, landing in Gdansk, a port that symbolizes the modern-day labor movement. Solidarność led by Lech Walesa, which initiated the collapse of the Iron Curtain, with the manipulation of the famous Wojtyla-Regan-Thatcher trinity, which took advantage of that historical juncture of the crack opened by the Polish working class to advance its geopolitical agenda.

Having just arrived in this coastal land, a stroll through the historic center was a must. Piotr took great care in recounting the history of the Teutonic Knights who ruled and administered these lands from the 13th century, as a precursor to the Prussian Empire which, later, in modern times, would command its armies to extend its power over all the Slavic nations, from Poland and the Czech Republic to Hungary. After the failure of their mission to guard the Holy Land, this militia of medieval and early modern Christendom transitioned to a far-reaching territorial power until the beginning of the 15th century, when it moved to Königsberg and then to Austria during the Prussian era. Europe's largest castle is located in Pomerania, in the city of Malbork, with its red bricks typical of Baltic Gothic architecture that, at sunset in spring, shine like fire on the banks of the Nogat River, a tributary of the Vistula, which runs from south to north through all of Poland, from Silesia to the Baltic.

For Poles today, those Gothic roots are part of their cultural identity, although they maintain a distance from neighboring and wealthy Germany, as well as from Imperial Russia, which is once again a real threat of war and invasion in the region.

I also sensed that fear of war in my conversations with colleagues in Eichstätt, both because of the Russian threat and Trump's unbridled power. The complicit silence of the European Union and NATO in supporting the US and Israeli arms industries during this time of genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, the invasion of Lebanon, and the war with Iran will soon bear bitter fruit for Europe. What worries those most aware of the current civilizational crisis is the dismantling of international law being carried out by that "handful of tyrants," as Pope Leo XIV called them, who control the world through global war.

Once in Pomerania, I had the opportunity to visit some inland villages which, according to my hosts Piotr and Aga, are in the poorest region of present-day Poland. Peasant farms are scattered across rolling hills, where grains, potatoes, and fodder for livestock are grown in spring and summer. There are also small towns with good roads and urban planning. A strong agricultural culture is evident, blended with a rural atmosphere, where the arts and sports are integral to the daily lives of families.

Aga is a painter who has opened her studio-gallery, Ligo, in the barn of the old farmhouse, where she presents exhibitions of her paintings once a year. These exhibitions primarily feature nudes and portraits with a somewhat Impressionist, colorful, and naive style. When we visited the beach in the famous resort town of Sopot, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, I could see how much the whole family, including her three intelligent and beautiful daughters, enjoyed the sea in springtime. I sensed there a kind of poetic recreation that springs from the Baltic soul.

During a conversation with friends of Piotr and Aga, particularly with a psychotherapist from Gdansk, the topic arose of the vulnerability of rural Polish youth to the uncertainty of work and war, which contributes to a growing social isolation, with the inability to form personal bonds beyond their virtual circle.

I perceived other faces of Europe in Pomerania, today marked by uncertainty and the still-present trauma of the war.

I've been discussing this other Europe with my friend Martin for at least five years, ever since he first invited me to Eichstätt in 2021 to talk about political theology for Europe in times of increasing polarization. In that discussion, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conversation revolved around how to improve the conditions for democratic life in this region of the world, with the unquestionable value, at that time, of international law and human rights as a universal framework for coexistence among nations. Five years later, politics seems to be playing out on an even more fundamental level: that of survival in a context of global war, facing lethal transnational networks.

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Next week I will participate, together with my German friend, in an international colloquium organized by my Austrian colleague Isabella Bruckner, at the Anselmian Athenaeum of the Benedictines in Rome, on the theological legacy of Ivan Illich, on the centenary of his birth.

As in many places around the world, people from academia and social movements are now rereading his work to find light in the darkness of this civilizational crisis that we are going through as humanity.

I became acquainted with Illich's work thanks to Javier Sicilia and Jean Robert, who, since 1996 in the Bajo el Volcán bookstore, were discussing my doctoral thesis Deus Liberans —where I traced a genealogy of modernity as a denial of the other, the Indian, following Las Casas and Dussel in discussion with Levinas and Ricoeur—both mentioned the urgency of returning to Illich because of his devastating critique of the era of systems. Since then, I have continued reading the Austrian thinker, participated in colloquia in Cuernavaca, and organized roundtables on his legacy, first at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and later at Boston College.

Illich is almost always read as a critical thinker of instrumental reason, but without considering his theological background. This was the astute approach of Gustavo Esteva, for whom Illich's contribution stood on its own as a philosophy of proximity and critique of systems, but without its connection to Christianity. Gustavo disagreed with this approach during our conversations in Santa Fe.

That is why the Rome colloquium seems so relevant to me today, because it is about seeking the source. theological From Illich's critique of modernity, to enrich the analysis arising from secularized thought. In this way, it will be possible, in my view, to contribute to making visible and promoting the spiritualities of resistance, those woven by the victims of the systems age as survivors of the logic of the machine and the algorithm. We will discuss experiences of conviviality in Germany during COVID-19, resistances of autonomy of bodies and territories in Mexico, as well as forms of proximity, the recovery of the vernacular, and the radical nature of care as clues to confronting the systemic violence that often overwhelms us.

In the next post I will tell you my impressions about that meeting that will take place on the Aventine Hill in Rome.

Koślinka and Eichstätt, May 8, 2026

May 8, 2026
Juan Chawuk | Cosmic Connection | San Cristóbal de Las Casas | 2000

(Trans)modernities of India

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

The line of cars waiting to reach Apaz stretches for several kilometers along the narrow dirt road that winds through the hills. The sounds of the festival can be heard from afar, even from Navenchauc, with its polluted lagoon, once surrounded by wooded slopes and now overrun with unfinished brick houses. The hamlet is a specter of grayish desolation, like something you might see in the poor suburbs of any modern city.

More than 140 people, mostly young, accompanied by their families and communities, patiently await the bishop and the friars for the celebration of the sacrament of Confirmation. A crowd of more than 500 people, adorned for the occasion, solemnly celebrates the liturgy of anointing with holy chrism, while the monumental choir sings invocations to the Holy Spirit in Tsotsil. Don Rodrigo delegates the three friars present to perform the rite of Confirmation with him, divided into four groups of confirmands. It consists of the laying on of hands, the anointing with holy chrism, and the slap on the face to call them to live with audacity.parrhesia, (in Greek) proper to following Christ in the midst of an increasingly violent world. We reverently pronounce the words in Tsotsil following the liturgical phrase: Ich'bo li skélobil li'e + ja' matanal yu'un Ch'ul Spirit: Ta j'ch'un | Li jun o'onale teyuk ta ajotol: Xchi'uk vo'ot (Receive this symbol, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit. I believe it | Peace be with you. And with you.).

The Mass continues, and after the consecration of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Jesus, three traditional musicians sing the ancestral chant, which the congregation mostly accompanies with ritual dance. Unfortunately, some members of the community no longer include these traditional symbols in their celebrations. The parish's large choir and media team participate in the festivities with their youthful talent, dressed in traditional attire and singing in Tsotsil, but also embracing the technology that has transformed their minds and ways of life. Modernity Indiana —to paraphrase the expression of chroniclers from colonial Mexico in a new context— of a generation deeply rooted in tradition, yet simultaneously passionate about new lifestyles mediated by algorithms and artificial intelligence. Thus, today's youth explore their evolving identities.

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What has caused these changes in the Highlands of Chiapas, which I first visited almost half a century ago, a region then plagued by extreme poverty and now experiencing an economic boom reflected in concrete houses and all-terrain vehicles? That modernity of the counter-productivity -analyzed in its historical genesis by Ivan Illich and conceived by Jean Robert as a perversion of place– it forcefully entered the territory of the Tsotsil nation.

In recent decades, the Zinacanteco economy has experienced exponential growth, thanks to the hard work of the Tsotsil people in flower cultivation and the excellence of their textiles. In particular, greenhouses have transformed the landscape of the stately hills into a mosaic of metal and plastic, with greenhouses protecting the crops of the flowers of Zinacantán. Roses, gladiolas, anthuriums, birds of paradise, hibiscus, bromeliads, desert roses and wallflowers are the most popular in the local market, from where they are exported to the neighboring states of Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, also to Mexico City.

Similar effects are visible in the surrounding areas. The houses of Tsotsil families in Chamula express this economic boom through a new indigenous architecture that blends traditional colors with forms kitsch, similar to that of Freddy Mamani, The Bolivian creator of the so-called “neo-Andean architecture.” These houses reflect the new economic status of their inhabitants, generated by local commerce, remittances from fellow countrymen, and, according to studies from 2001 to the present, some criminal enterprises, among which the most prominent is… human trafficking.

Something similar regarding housing is happening in Zinacantán, with new forms of housing, foreign to vernacular architecture, that are developing in imitation of other municipalities that have recently experienced economic prosperity. This phenomenon has produced a fissure in the kuxlejal, or the integral way of life, which the Zinacanteca communities developed for centuries, but which is now collapsing due to the degraded management of the forests.

At first glance, the deforestation of the hills, which has given way to greenhouses, is readily apparent. This phenomenon is already producing devastating effects on the rainfall cycle and the impoverishment of the soil. The use of toxic fertilizers and pesticides, This phenomenon, already analyzed by scientific studies, persists despite agroecology promotion campaigns carried out by civil society organizations and the Catholic Church through its ministries. guardians of Mother Earth. The relentless logic of the market is dragging flower producers into that environmental hell already seen in other parts of the world.

These are some of the modernities Indianas which appear as mirages to the Tsotsil people of today, where the illusion of economic prosperity is hiding the devastating effects on Mother Earth.

There are other modernities to explore, following, among others, the model proposed by the political ecology of Víctor Toledo and his scientific colleagues around the world, proposing the bioculturality as a new way of understanding our relationship with our common home as a human species to avoid the Great Catastrophe. Other models emphasize the importance of returning to cultivating and inhabiting from the vernacular, without abandoning modern science and technology, but orienting them towards the sustainability of peoples' ways of life.

Perhaps in that path of alternative, other, moving modernities - and that's why trans-modernities As proposed by Enrique Dussel, the new generations of Zinacantecans will be able to find their new identity to become part of the regional economy and universal culture, preserving and promoting their own ways of life, of communality and of ancient and new spirituality.

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What are the best ways to accompany communities in their struggle for life from the heart of their spirituality? With this question in mind, we are moving forward in the mutual accompaniment between the Dominican friars and the people of the Chiapas Highlands.

“Let the people who welcomed the friars celebrate their arrival,” Elena Poniatowska told me in an interview last December at her home in Chimalistac, Mexico City. And she was right about remembering a five-hundred-year historical process, with its highs and lows, where the evangelization of these lands of Chiapas was initially marked by a profound respect for the indigenous nations on the part of friars like Bartolomé de Las Casas, renowned as a defender of the indigenous peoples, and Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada, who, defiantly confronting the closed-mindedness of his brethren, ventured into the jungle to encounter the Zendales, Pochutlas, and Lacandones peoples of the 16th century. Unfortunately, with the passage of time, that impetus for peaceful evangelization turned into greed, with the accumulation of wealth in the estates and haciendas of Dominican priories that controlled and subjugated entire communities in the following centuries.

Therefore, the commemorative narrative of these five hundred years that we are preparing in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and in Zinacantán will revolve around the mutual accompaniment between the Dominican friars and the peoples of the Highlands of Chiapas: remembering the apostolic zeal of the first missionaries, while recognizing the ancestral legacy that persists in the spiritual life of the native peoples who have inhabited these lands since ancient times.

Guided by a young Tsotsil poet and a renowned Tseltal master painter, the youth of Zinacanteco will weave this collective memory from their present perspective. Tsotsil poetry and Tseltal painting will be at the heart of the cultural celebrations commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the Dominicans' arrival in Mexico, which we are preparing for this year in Chiapas. In this way, next June we can joyfully and gratefully celebrate this shared journey of half a millennium, with our gaze fixed on the legacy of our ancestors, both Maya and Christian, in the manner of the Dominican friars and the people of the Chiapas Highlands. We will soon share the 500 OP – Chiapas program that we are currently preparing to celebrate the life that flourishes in these lands.

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, January 31, 2026

Note: I hope we can continue the conversation with your comments.

January 31, 2026

English