Hola. This is Barbara with Tertulia, vol. 15. I hope those of you in the Northern hemisphere have had a healthy and peaceful summertime, and those of you in the Southern hemisphere are already looking forward to seeing the first spring blossoms. These are this week’s topics: the first one anecdotally deals with the routes of art trades between Latin America and Europe, another one presents the memoir of Spanish mountaineer Jorge Egocheaga, and the last one has a look at a universal phenomenon, aporofobia as the rejection of the poor.
Transatlantic routes of art
On August 13, 1521 the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán fell into Spanish power. Much has been written and discussed about how to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the end of a siege that has had a decisive influence on both Spain and Mexico. El PaÃs has gathered some opinions on the event and its impact on both the coloniser and the colonised. Those that try to reflect seriously try to go beyond a simple binary view of the good and the bad, but that’s not my topic today. I’d like to write about the violent beginnings of an art exchange that started with this event.
After the conquest, Hernán Cortéz started to send artifacts and food unknown to the Spanish, to his homeland to show off. A beautiful feather headdress that was attributed to Moctezuma was among these artefacts (called the «penacho de Moctezuma»). Moctezuma had ruled the empire from 1466 to 1520 and is said to have given his «penacho» to the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortes as a gift. On his return, legend has it, he sent the headdress to Emperor Charles V, who at the time ruled both Spain and Austria. After a long journey, the feather headdress is today displayed in the Weltmuseum Wien. The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico-City has a replica. By the way, it is not clear if Moctezuma ever owned or wore the headdress.
Like many other European museums, the Weltmuseum sees itself confronted with the return of unlawfully appropriated artifacts in order to decolonise its portfolio. Last November, First Lady Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller travelled to Vienna to recover the headdress for the Mexican people.
She came home with empty hands. For the time being, the fragile headdress will remain in Vienna. Experts fear that the piece of art would be damaged when transported. As far as I can tell, these experts were paid by the Austrian government. Maybe Mexican experts should weigh in and have a say on the risks of transportation, too. The story sounds a bit like a Caucasian chalk circle test.
Luckily, today’s art trades between Europe and Latin America look much better and fairer. There are still problems with equal access to markets and museums, but a lot has been achieved in this respect. Manuel Borja-Ville, director of the Museo Reina SofÃa in Madrid, gives an excellent account of recent developments.
«La vida no supone más que un tránsito...»
Life is but a transit. This is a quote from Jorge Egocheaga’s book Quizás vivir sea esto (Perhaps living is this), which I am reading right now. Jorge Egocheaga is a mountaineer from Oviedo/Asturias who climbed all 14 mountains that are more than 8,000 metres height above sea level. He is usually a shy guy and tries to avoid the commercial side of mountaineering as much as possible, but he decided to write down his memoirs about the 14 ascents to help a good cause. The revenues from the book go towards the creation of scholarships to support education for underprivileged children in the Makalu Valley in Nepal. I haven’t found a source that declares to which organisation the money goes, but I think it is this one: «SOS Himalaya por Iñaki». The foundation mentions that they work together with Jorge Egocheaga, who is a medical doctor. Iñaki Ochoa de Olza is one of the close friends Egocheaga lost to the mountains. He also lost his girl-friend Nancy and his wife Joëlle in the mountains. You can imagine, that this is a lot of stuff to reflect on and you can tell from the writing how much it costs him to open up and talk about his feelings, his passions, his many doubts, and his mental health. His writing can be very stiff and distant, then again it turns into an outburst of feelings and solemn declamations. To me, these changes in style indicate how much he suffers from finding the right words. These changes in style also make the reading very authentic and accessible. Egocheaga wants to help his readers understand him by suggesting pieces of music that may accompany the reading of each chapter/ascent.
He refused the award of «best athlete» (el mejor deportista) of Asturias, claiming that he was not an athlete and that what he did was a hobby. So, if you are interested in peak performance and how to prepare for it, this book might not be for you. If you are interested in the human experience that comes with this type of passion, I can highly recommend it:
Las montañas han sido mi pasión; en la actualidad suponen un único camino de liberación. Junto a ellas me he quedado solo pero, una vez más, en ese juego de contradicciones que supone mi existencia, ahora constituyen mi única compañÃa.
Translation: The mountains have been my passion; at present they are a unique path towards release. Near them, I have been alone, but once again, in the game of contradictions that is my existence, they are now my only company.
A conversation with Adela Cortina
The pandemic situation has led to the cancellation of many cultural events. This has been experienced has a form of limitation that prevents communication and the exchange of ideas. However, the transit from physical to digital settings has also created new audiences. I have found it very interesting to see how the cultural exchange between Latin America and Spain has intensified. I have no empirical data on this, but it was intriguing for me to see that people from Europe joined in to festivals in Latin America and vice versa. As I described in a previous newsletter, the digital Hay Festival has been one of the formats where I had the impression that this type of intercultural exchange happened a lot. So, it comes without big surprise that ethics professor Adela Cortina from Valencia has become more popular than ever in Latin America. I got to know her work thanks to my good friend Alberto Zuleta because she is a philosopher that has dedicated a lot of her research to the economy and its actors. Her interest in applied philosophy has made her an important contributor in many committees and the press.
As an introduction to her work, I have chosen a talk of hers from the Hay Festival Spain from 2020. Many questioners after her digitally transmitted talk are from Latin American countries and show their interest in Cortina’s philosophical concepts. In the video talk in conversation with Spanish journalist Iñaki Gabilondo she explains her concept of aporophobia. Aporofobia, according to Cortina, is the fear of poverty and of poor people. It reveals the disgust and hostility toward poor people who do not have resources. She herself created the term in her book Aporofobia: el rechazo al pobre (Aporophobia, the rejection of the poor, for the table of contents see here). In the meantime, it has been accepted as neologism by the Real Academica Española:
Listen how she explains the concept and how we can overcome this evolutionary bias and build a fairer, more ethical society. Don’t be afraid of philosophical jargon. Cortina explains the origins of the concept in a very understandable way. From a linguistic point of view, I especially cherished the part when she delves into the subtle differences between «odio» (hate) , «asco» (disgust) , «desprecio» (contempt) and «rechazo» (rejection).
I wish she were better known in the English- and German-speaking countries because of her applied approach, her ability to explain well, and her well-founded sense of justice. Maybe I should give it a start and create a German Wikipedia entry for her…
One more thing: Songs from and about the Mediterranean Sea
This week’s Babelia has a list of novels about the Mediterranean Sea. From Barcelona to Istanbul and from Algiers to Lesbos via Alexandria, authors such as Albert Camus, Françoise Sagan or Sappho have turned the ports of the into literary landmarks. Well, that reputation of the «mare nostrum» has turned into a myth when we see images of wildfires with residents and affected regions being left alone from the long-term consequences of climate change or refugees who are either turned away or die when trying to cross this shared space, not to forget the labelling of the Southern littoral states who suffered from the EURO crisis most by those from the North. Anyway, the myth of the Mediterranean Sea as a shared space with the sea as preferred mode of transportation is a nice one and we should fight to keep it alive.
Following Babelia’s path, I have created a Spotify playlist with songs that evoke the Mediterranean Sea as a space of shared culture. Give it a try:
Let me know if you miss some important songs or think some regions are not represented adequately. I confess, for a lack of knowledge, contributions from Northern Africa are missing. You can help me by adding more songs.
This is all for today. I’ll be back in two or three weeks with more cultural snippets.