Santiago Castro-Gómez

Today I will talk about an expert on my field area that I admire. His name is Santiago Castro-Gómez, is a Colombian philosopher. He is a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and director on Pensar Institute in Bogotá, Colombia.

Castro-Gómez studied Philosophy at Santo Tomás University in Bogotá, Colombia and, subsequently, he received M.A and Ph.D in Philosophy in Germany. In his career this author has written about many themes, for example, effects of racism, colonization in Colombia and Latin America and others. In Castro-Gómez's work we can watch alternatives develop to dominant approaches in Latin America philosophy.

However I am not a philosopher, his work moves in the border area to many disciplines, like history, sociology, cultural studies and my discipline, anthropology. I admire his ideas about distinction modernity/coloniality and the "hybris of zero point". I discovered very recently, consequently, I would read a lot to have a better idea about his work. I am in this challenge now!

Weaving the wool....

Today I will talk about this photo. In this you can see a woman weaving her loom with a colorful woolen. I took this picture in the 2007 at the community pewenche of El Barco, in the Alto Biobio municipality in Chile. While I was visiting El Barco due to field work with relocated pewenche, I met with the weaver while she was working. Although I had gone to talk about other things, I was very impressed with her work, and only talked about it. 

In the picture, you can see a weaving tradicional mapuche 'utral or witral' (loom). She was working with 'peinecillo' and 'llano' techniques. Despite working within industrial wool, the colorful and the 'ñimin' (design) are very original, so that is why this work I believe is very interesting. With this picture I remember my stay and my work in the Alto Biobio. I stayed for a year in this place and begun my career how anthropologist. For this reason, this picture has a emotional value for me.   

Conguillio, the heaven on the earth

The first time that I went to Conguillio I was three years old. I don't remember anything about this travel but my family always talked wonder things about this place. So much so that we went again when I was twelve years old. Only with the road, I was impressed with the beautiful landscape. 

The national park of Conguillio is located in the Araucanía, Chile. This is a protected area, but you can go to visit it for a day and, even, camp there. My family and I camped for fifteen days in 1994. We walked for nature trails and went to all tours with the park rangers. They showed us the many kinds of trees, the birds and its songs, and many others wonders of this place.

I returned to the park last year. Many things have changed, like had more people, had trash in the nature trails and poor place to camp. However, if you can go to Conguillio, you won't regret it.

My faithful companion

When I think about one piece of technology that is important for me, the first thing that comes to my mind is the computer.

Since I entered the university, even before, access and use of the computer has been a neccesity to carry out my work. Although, being honest, I have been using it since a long time ago to play videogame. The first computer that arrived at my house when I was ten years old. That was my first approach.

However, the main use that I give to the computer is work, such as writing reports or emails, reviewing cientific articles, I also see press and sports pages and sniff social networks, such as Facebook. Except on weekends, I use it daily.

Currently, the computer is my window to the world, to information and comunication with the others persons. I like the computer because of the great variety of things you can do with it. I can't imagine not having access to a computer. In fact, I think I would have to rethink almost everything if I didn't have one. I don't think it's possible to go back to the typewriter and paper letters!