Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP
Practice Module on Mexican Subsistence Farmers

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created:August 4, 2002
Latest Update: August 9, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Mexican Subsistence Farmers Transform Discourse in Texcoco

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, August 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on a Los Angeles Times article by Richard Boudreau, Mexicans Ponder a Triumph, August 3, 2002 , At p. A !.

See also Introductory Chapter to Moral Textures.

• Reactions

  The photo on the front page captured my attention. Farmers, in a stadium. Mexicans. The one nearest us, an older man, gray hair, holding a child. Not obvious at first. You have to look for a moment to make it out. But the red color of a piece of its blanket draws the eye. Holding the child in his left arm, his right fist is raised in triumph, and you can almost feel the joy. Other fists are raised in the line of farmers to his right. Particularly the man next to him shows less joy, his back bowed just a little. But all their fists are raised in solidarity. I could look at this picture for hours and tell stories from it. Fiction, yes. But fiction inspired by the underlying story, by the victory of the farmers in preserving their land and preventing an unfair eminent domain seizure.

  This is a wonderful introduction to our discussions this semester on ethics and aesthetics, on transforming an unjust world to one that is moving in the direction of greater justice, and one in which the subjugated have more to say about that transformation. As Rosemary Radford Reuther says: First there was God, then the song. Then the text. (I'll find the quote; but for now, I'll paraphrase.) What I think she means by that is that first we are moved deeply towards a belief in something or someone, then we express that aesthetially, in song or poetry or painting or sculpture, and only then do we turn to discovering theology, theory, and rational explanations for our experiences.

  This photo of the farmers' triumph is for me the "song" of that transaction. And now I'll go on to teach that as interdependence, empowerment and transformation. jeanne

• Key Concepts

  • subjugation
  • oppression
  • dominance
  • aesthetics

  • Theory: Interdependence, Empowerment, Transformation,

    I'm going to use Maria Pia Lara's approach in Moral Textures to explain the theory that I connected with this photo and story of the farmers from Texcoco.

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