A work in progress - Stephen
An Hour or So With a Mexican Scribe
From The Washington Post
Is this the way ahead?
Seemingly backwards?
The wonderful Schumacher used the phrase 'intermediate technology' to refine the distinction between tools which put the power into the producers of the tools and home made tools which perhaps don't offer the mechanical advantage necessary.
In the villages of old, imagined societies, not everyone did everything. You had a fletcher - putting the flights on arrows, a blacksmith - shoeing horses, a baker - baking the bread.
A local person was skilled and revered for their skill. That skill was passed down through families. It grew upon a natural aptitude as well as something in the blood.
So no one failed. The large boned blacksmith wasn't forced to use his large fingers to be clumsy with delicate feathers.
In today's societies we are somehow made addicted to self-sufficiency.
I recall an incident about 20 years ago when the sister of a friend of mine wanted her bicycle serviced and asked me to do this for her. I remember being very angry at her refusal to learn from me how to do it herself. I had become obsessed with the self-reliant, we must all do everything approach and this incident exposed my unease with it.
So the story of Mexican scribes using electric typewriters to compose bills, love letters or contracts seems refreshing.
In westernized Vancouver, obsessed with formal learning, of course this would combat the idea of an educated population.As Daniel Quinn points out in 'My Ishmael' and Ivan Illich says everywhere, a child knows everything they need by about 12 years old. The last six years just turn them into insatiable consumers. Consumers of goods and of 'training'.
*** *** ***
So the poor people who did not write would be sent to school in shame and pity.
Equality would be cited; you have to be equal Equally dependant on capitalist baubles and trinkets.
The electric typewriter scribes would be sent for 'upgrading', in shame and pity, to become obsessed with computers and be current or modern and keeping up with the times.
But why should everyone be able, read lonely and independent, enough to know how to do everything that the educational and capitalist society wants?
Could it be that capitalism needs everyone to do everything to sell more of everything?
The photographer used to be called in to take photographs, now everyone has to have a digital camera.
So instead of one camera per say 1000 people there are 500.
A true graphic designer or illustrator used to be a talented person who had a gift.
Now everyone with a computer and a silly amonut of money to buy Photoshop thinks they are talented instead of just tooled.
Every house in a street has its own lawnmower, electric drill and other assorted owned tools used so infrequently that sharing could reduce dependency by perhaps 100 to 1/
So the illiterate would swap their illiteracy for dependence on typewriter and computers.
The social interaction with the scribes would be gone.
The scribes would have no work.
But everyone would have imbibed the expectation to purchase expected tools and be so called self-sufficient.
Progress.
An Hour or So With a Mexican Scribe
From The Washington Post
Is this the way ahead?
Seemingly backwards?
The wonderful Schumacher used the phrase 'intermediate technology' to refine the distinction between tools which put the power into the producers of the tools and home made tools which perhaps don't offer the mechanical advantage necessary.
In the villages of old, imagined societies, not everyone did everything. You had a fletcher - putting the flights on arrows, a blacksmith - shoeing horses, a baker - baking the bread.
A local person was skilled and revered for their skill. That skill was passed down through families. It grew upon a natural aptitude as well as something in the blood.
So no one failed. The large boned blacksmith wasn't forced to use his large fingers to be clumsy with delicate feathers.
In today's societies we are somehow made addicted to self-sufficiency.
I recall an incident about 20 years ago when the sister of a friend of mine wanted her bicycle serviced and asked me to do this for her. I remember being very angry at her refusal to learn from me how to do it herself. I had become obsessed with the self-reliant, we must all do everything approach and this incident exposed my unease with it.
So the story of Mexican scribes using electric typewriters to compose bills, love letters or contracts seems refreshing.
In westernized Vancouver, obsessed with formal learning, of course this would combat the idea of an educated population.As Daniel Quinn points out in 'My Ishmael' and Ivan Illich says everywhere, a child knows everything they need by about 12 years old. The last six years just turn them into insatiable consumers. Consumers of goods and of 'training'.
*** *** ***
So the poor people who did not write would be sent to school in shame and pity.
Equality would be cited; you have to be equal Equally dependant on capitalist baubles and trinkets.
The electric typewriter scribes would be sent for 'upgrading', in shame and pity, to become obsessed with computers and be current or modern and keeping up with the times.
But why should everyone be able, read lonely and independent, enough to know how to do everything that the educational and capitalist society wants?
Could it be that capitalism needs everyone to do everything to sell more of everything?
The photographer used to be called in to take photographs, now everyone has to have a digital camera.
So instead of one camera per say 1000 people there are 500.
A true graphic designer or illustrator used to be a talented person who had a gift.
Now everyone with a computer and a silly amonut of money to buy Photoshop thinks they are talented instead of just tooled.
Every house in a street has its own lawnmower, electric drill and other assorted owned tools used so infrequently that sharing could reduce dependency by perhaps 100 to 1/
So the illiterate would swap their illiteracy for dependence on typewriter and computers.
The social interaction with the scribes would be gone.
The scribes would have no work.
But everyone would have imbibed the expectation to purchase expected tools and be so called self-sufficient.
Progress.
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 13, 2008; A08
MEXICO CITY The day was going badly for Alberto Jiménez Ramírez. Very badly.
The handyman had done his job. He'd hammered and patched and scraped.
But the paymaster at the Health Ministry was demanding half a dozen originals of each of Jiménez's two bills, and he did not have them. The figures he had scrawled on a scrap of paper weren't going to do it. The paymaster was clear: No typed originals, no money, no arguing.
Jiménez doesn't have a secretary. He doesn't have a computer. And that's why he found himself in Plaza Santo Domingo when the bells tolled noon one recent afternoon.
Plaza Santo Domingo smells musty and old. The wood beams that shade its arcade drip. The old counting house on the square -- built in 1682 -- sags. Mexicans love this place.
Jiménez picked his way through the crowded arcade, past the men hawking printed baptismal announcements and prayer cards, past the beggars and the taco vendors, past the scruffy, loose dogs. He stopped in front of a grinning man with a big belly named Enrique Jaimes.
Jaimes is an "evangelita." The word usually means little evangelist, or little nun. But here, it refers to the professional scribes who type love letters, job applications and almost anything imaginable for Mexicans illiterate and poor, for busy shop clerks and harried small-business people. In the past, scribe work was done by educated nuns, known as evangelitas. The name stuck even as the nuns gave way to laypeople longer ago than anyone can remember.
Jaimes took the crumpled bill from his new client and dragged a small, plastic stool up to his desk. Jiménez's face was twisted up into a frown, the stress of the morning showing. But Jaimes, radiating calm, patted the man on the back.
"This is going to work out fine," he said.
Twenty minutes later, Jaimes rose from his stool and waved over his son, Servando, 23. Son replaced father at the desk seamlessly, pecking at an old electric IBM typewriter as Jiménez slowly read numbers and job descriptions aloud.
The scribes of Plaza Santo Domingo once used manual typewriters. Their arcade was alive with clackety-clack clatter. But modernity comes even to the most ancient of professions, and they began switching to electric machines 10 or 15 years ago -- Jaimes can't remember exactly when. But he does remember the place becoming quieter.
Jaimes, 51, has been at this for 40 years, typing his first letters when he was just a boy; his father, who died a few years ago, typed here for half a century. Jaimes got manual typewriters as birthday presents when he was a child -- hulking Olivettis, Underwoods and Remingtons -- but he never learned to type with more than two fingers. He and his family never got rich, but they made a decent living.
"Dad couldn't afford to send us to school," Jaimes said to a friend who had stopped by to chat.
At 12:35 p.m., Servando was still typing. Jiménez was still reading numbers. Jaimes's attention wandered. He sized up each person who passed by, measuring them quickly, processing the pace of their gait, where their eyes settled, whether they were smiling or frowning. He was hunting for customers, but after all these years, he knew not to bother hawking just anybody.
"See this one coming?" he said. "He's looking around. His head isn't down. He might need something."
Jaimes straightened up.
"Hello, hello," he said as the man paused. "What can I offer you? We can do binding. I can write legal papers. Do you want to file a complaint against anyone?"
The man smiled, but shook his head, moving on. Jaimes just shrugged and slumped back against the wall.
Like many of the scribes, he has had to diversify to survive. Now, he binds documents at a small workshop behind the square and draws up legal papers, giving advice on matters of jurisprudence to clients who cannot afford lawyers.
At 1:15, Servando stood and gave way to his father after typing bills for Jiménez that totaled the equivalent of $1,700. Servando has learned a lot, but his dad is still the boss. And in this enterprise, the boss calculates the bill.
Jaimes settled onto the stool, wriggling to get comfortable. He sighed and extended his right finger, pausing above the keyboard as if for dramatic effect. Then he stabbed downward. One swift stroke and that was it.
"Let's see," he said. "That's 24 pages, so that'll be 90 pesos."
Jiménez handed over the equivalent of about $9. He zipped his documents into a blue, plastic folder and faded back into the crowd at 1:17.
One hour and 17 minutes had passed. The Jaimes family had taken care of one client and made $9, doubling what they'd made in the previous four hours. Today, Jaimes said, they would have a nice lunch.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 13, 2008; A08
MEXICO CITY The day was going badly for Alberto Jiménez Ramírez. Very badly.
The handyman had done his job. He'd hammered and patched and scraped.
But the paymaster at the Health Ministry was demanding half a dozen originals of each of Jiménez's two bills, and he did not have them. The figures he had scrawled on a scrap of paper weren't going to do it. The paymaster was clear: No typed originals, no money, no arguing.
Jiménez doesn't have a secretary. He doesn't have a computer. And that's why he found himself in Plaza Santo Domingo when the bells tolled noon one recent afternoon.
Plaza Santo Domingo smells musty and old. The wood beams that shade its arcade drip. The old counting house on the square -- built in 1682 -- sags. Mexicans love this place.
Jiménez picked his way through the crowded arcade, past the men hawking printed baptismal announcements and prayer cards, past the beggars and the taco vendors, past the scruffy, loose dogs. He stopped in front of a grinning man with a big belly named Enrique Jaimes.
Jaimes is an "evangelita." The word usually means little evangelist, or little nun. But here, it refers to the professional scribes who type love letters, job applications and almost anything imaginable for Mexicans illiterate and poor, for busy shop clerks and harried small-business people. In the past, scribe work was done by educated nuns, known as evangelitas. The name stuck even as the nuns gave way to laypeople longer ago than anyone can remember.
Jaimes took the crumpled bill from his new client and dragged a small, plastic stool up to his desk. Jiménez's face was twisted up into a frown, the stress of the morning showing. But Jaimes, radiating calm, patted the man on the back.
"This is going to work out fine," he said.
Twenty minutes later, Jaimes rose from his stool and waved over his son, Servando, 23. Son replaced father at the desk seamlessly, pecking at an old electric IBM typewriter as Jiménez slowly read numbers and job descriptions aloud.
The scribes of Plaza Santo Domingo once used manual typewriters. Their arcade was alive with clackety-clack clatter. But modernity comes even to the most ancient of professions, and they began switching to electric machines 10 or 15 years ago -- Jaimes can't remember exactly when. But he does remember the place becoming quieter.
Jaimes, 51, has been at this for 40 years, typing his first letters when he was just a boy; his father, who died a few years ago, typed here for half a century. Jaimes got manual typewriters as birthday presents when he was a child -- hulking Olivettis, Underwoods and Remingtons -- but he never learned to type with more than two fingers. He and his family never got rich, but they made a decent living.
"Dad couldn't afford to send us to school," Jaimes said to a friend who had stopped by to chat.
At 12:35 p.m., Servando was still typing. Jiménez was still reading numbers. Jaimes's attention wandered. He sized up each person who passed by, measuring them quickly, processing the pace of their gait, where their eyes settled, whether they were smiling or frowning. He was hunting for customers, but after all these years, he knew not to bother hawking just anybody.
"See this one coming?" he said. "He's looking around. His head isn't down. He might need something."
Jaimes straightened up.
"Hello, hello," he said as the man paused. "What can I offer you? We can do binding. I can write legal papers. Do you want to file a complaint against anyone?"
The man smiled, but shook his head, moving on. Jaimes just shrugged and slumped back against the wall.
Like many of the scribes, he has had to diversify to survive. Now, he binds documents at a small workshop behind the square and draws up legal papers, giving advice on matters of jurisprudence to clients who cannot afford lawyers.
At 1:15, Servando stood and gave way to his father after typing bills for Jiménez that totaled the equivalent of $1,700. Servando has learned a lot, but his dad is still the boss. And in this enterprise, the boss calculates the bill.
Jaimes settled onto the stool, wriggling to get comfortable. He sighed and extended his right finger, pausing above the keyboard as if for dramatic effect. Then he stabbed downward. One swift stroke and that was it.
"Let's see," he said. "That's 24 pages, so that'll be 90 pesos."
Jiménez handed over the equivalent of about $9. He zipped his documents into a blue, plastic folder and faded back into the crowd at 1:17.
One hour and 17 minutes had passed. The Jaimes family had taken care of one client and made $9, doubling what they'd made in the previous four hours. Today, Jaimes said, they would have a nice lunch.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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