Freire Inspired Programs in the United States and Puerto Rico: A Critical Evaluation

by Blanca Facundo

Paulo Freire is a widely known and respected advocate of "critical pedagogy". In 1984, Blanca Facundo wrote a critique of Freire's ideas and her own experiences using his methods. Facundo's critique is a strong dissenting view to the largely uncritical admiration for Freire's work.

• This document was produced with funds awarded to the Latino Institute by the Fund of the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education (U.S.D.E.), under grant number G-00800606. Any opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of FIPSE, USDE, or the Latino Institute. This document was originally published by Latino Institute, Washington, D.C., in 1984. It was compiled for the web in 1998 by Brian Martin in Australia.

Blanca can be contacted at bfacundo@worldnet.att.net.

Preface

This essay is an effort to conceptualize the problems faced when trying to use the ideas of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in the context of the society of the United States of America.

Its author, Blanca Facundo, was born in Puerto Rico of working-class parents who "progressed" as their society embraced dependent capitalist development between 1947-1964. "Educated" in the island's State university, Facundo began to search for herself an answer to her dissatisfaction with her society. In the process, she attempted to become a junior college teacher in the late 1960's, but found the state of the art in Puerto Rico wanting. It was at this point that she discovered the Spanish translations of Paulo Freire's works.

After thoroughly immersing herself in Freire's works, she moved to the United States and created a disparate network of projects which were attempting to apply Freire's theories. After a decade of such efforts, she now attempts in this essay to understand the meaning and objectives of the theory she embraced, as a means for evaluating the processes and outcomes of the programs in which she participated. Acting critically, she endeavors to reflect upon the actions of a distinct group of Freire followers in the United States.

This essay is a testimony, a testimony of being present at the beginning of the future.

Juan M. García-Passalacqua
Ana G. Méndez Educational Foundation
January 30, 1984

"It is intrinsic, then, to the critique practiced here to reject an account of history that is essentially pollyanna-like, and to help persons bear bad news concerning their most cherished projects, neither overestimating their own chances nor underestimating the prospects of their adversaries. The critique I practice is stripped of the myth of inevitable progress. It does not believe that the evil are destined to lose power, that the good are fated to win it, or that we will inevitably surpass our ancestors (...) the rules that I obey here call upon me to attend to specially and to bring out those sides of a matter that the participants themselves might prefer to avoid. The rule I follow says that, if there is something systematically silenced in an area of discussion, it is the analyst's responsibility to bring it into focus. In this analytic, then, it is a critical theorist's special task to speak the bad news." -- Alvin W. Gouldner, The Two Marxisms.

Introduction

Anything I may say here was better said by Alvin Gouldner in the above quote. However, I cannot consider this essay to be either a 'critique' of Freire's theory, or of Freire-inspired programs in the United States, in the manner in which Gouldner undertook a critique of Marxism. This is because I am writing about a theory I adopted with a great deal of enthusiasm in 1969 and with which I have tried to act, as an educator, since.

I have used Gouldner's approach to a theory. I am aware that I am writing about five elements: a theory, the theoretician, his practice and that of those of us who adopted the theory, including myself. All five elements are still evolving. 'Capturing' them with the written word is a task that to this day I don't know how I dared to attempt.

The why (as all whys) seems a simple matter: It had to be done by someone, it is provided-for in the theory itself, it is a requirement of a funding agency, and so on. The how-to (as all how-to's in our practice) is easier said than done. Thus I summarize the process at the end of the essay.

I consider this essay to be a very tentative first step toward our self-understanding. I pose many questions and leave them unanswered. I open up many themes that remain open at the end of the essay. This is a direct reflection of my practice as an educator: I believe that the most important questions are those that resist a simple, factual, individual answer.

It has been pointed out to me that the focus of this essay is the relationship between theory and practice and the role of evaluation in connecting/investigating that relationship. Perhaps it is. My intent has been to raise and discuss issues that, from my perspective, are key for an evaluation of Freire-inspired programs in the United States, but which are seldom examined by practitioners.

Bibliographical Notes

Many of the bibliographic sources used in this essay were not available in the English language. I have translated into English all quotes taken from these sources. I have also tried to use non-sexist language, but I have not changed the language used by other authors when quoting them.

The notes at the end of each section are used for several purposes. In some cases I expand upon the information provided in the essay; in others I reflect upon statements made in earlier years and which as of 1984, I find unclear and/or inaccurate. In some I offer information on how to get a hold of a resource that may be of special interest to the reader, but difficult to find in the United States.

Further dialogue on the contents of this essay is more than welcome.

Write to: PO Box 365082, San Juan, PR 00936-5082, USA.
Email: bfacundo@icepr.com

Acknowledgements

It is impossible to name all the persons who, over the years, have shared with me ideas, practices and concerns about the issues I raise in this essay. In more ways than one, I am grateful to everyone who, at one time or another, shared in the work of the IRCEL and Alternativas networks, and who helped to construct a document file on the use of Freire's ideas in the United States and Puerto Rico, between 1980-1983.

At the international level, I must acknowledge the assistance of Vanilda Pereira Paiva (Brazil), Linda Harasim (Canada) and Birgit Wingenroth (West Germany). They all provided me with copies of their recent research products on Paulo Freire, his work and his writings. In the United States and Puerto Rico the following helped out in a last-minute search for further documentation: Renate Taylor (Reston, Va.), América Facundo-Santiago (Dallas), Marilyn Frankenstein (Boston), and Samuel Silva-Gotay (San Juan). Readers of the manuscript who provided strong and valuable criticism include Eva Diaz, Juan M. García-Passalacqua and América Facundo-Rosado.

For special dialogues on difficult subjects I am glad to be able to name Dino Pacio Lindin and Bienvenida Rodríguez (New York City), Barry Alpher (New Jersey), Caridad Inda and Chris Zachariadis (Washington, D.C.), and Magaly Rodríguez Mossman in Minneapolis. For typing and editorial assistance with the final format of this essay I am indebted to Zayda Sánchez.

As a working single mother I cannot leave out the patience and support provided by my parents and my children in the difficult months during which I struggled to understand, to write and rewrite about issues that provoke tension, anxiety and confusion.

I accept full responsibility for any error or misinterpretation that the reader may find in this essay.Section 1

1. Who Is Paulo Freire?

There is no detailed biography of Paulo Freire. The most complete account has been written by Robert Mackie. [1] Mackie's book has helped clarify some aspects of Freire's life, as well as aspects in the development of his ideas. But this work is only the beginning. Bits and pieces of Freire's life can be obtained through the many personal anecdotes with which Freire illustrates his points of view in the seminars and conferences to which he is invited each year. Brief autobiographical notes appear in a booklet entitled Concientización, published in Colombia. [2] Let us briefly review what is known about Paulo Freire up to his first visit to the United States. [3]

Freire was born of a middle-class family in northeastern Brazil -- the city of Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco -- in 1921. His father was an officer in the military police of the state of Pernambuco. Freire describes his father as a Spiritist that was not religiously affiliated, and who taught him to respect the opinions of others by respecting the religion of Freire's mother, who was a Catholic. Paulo opted to adopt his mother's religion, a decision also respected by his father. As will be demonstrated further on, Catholicism has been a very strong force in the development of Freire's thought to this day.

Freire has stated that he was already literate when he entered primary school, and that he did his first school years in a private school. [4] The economic depression of 1929 struck the Freire family. Freire was ten years old when he knew hunger for the first time. Still, he "shared the hunger but not the class" with the oppressed: there was a German piano at home and a necktie was considered a part of a man's proper attire. At some point, Freire faced academic problems and had trouble in being admitted to secondary school: his father had died, and as stated by Freire, [5]

I could not understand the lessons of primary school. I got zero. I cried, I suffered. I was hungry and feeling guilty. [Because of his bad grades.]

By 1939, the economic situation of his family had improved, as Freire's elder brothers were working. Freire was 18 years old. "I began to eat more," says Freire, "and then I began to understand everything." [6] His academic record improved.

By 1941 a twenty year old Freire was a secondary schoolteacher of Portuguese and a university student at a law school. He had also initiated independent studies in philosophy and the psychology of language. Three years later, with "an irresistible vocation to become a father," he married Elsa Maia Costa Oliveira, a Catholic elementary schoolteacher and later on a school director. Elsa is still his wife and the couple has five children. Freire has stated that it was "precisely after my marriage when I started to have a systematic interest in educational problems." [7]

By his own account, he was a "mediocre" law student, perhaps because he was more interested in the philosophical and sociological foundations of education than in the law. Nonetheless, he obtained a degree in Law and tried to practice his profession. His first case, he says, had to do with an indebted young dentist. After a conversation with this person, Freire states that he left the profession. [8] Another source places Freire working "for some years as a labor union lawyer." [9]

There is no chronology of Freire's career development in Brazil. Dates for the positions he held are, for the most part, not available. Freire has written that he worked at SESI, an agency he describes as belonging to the welfare type. [10] Freire directed SESI's Department of Education and Culture. Later on he was a Superintendent at this agency (1946-54). Freire says that it is from this period on that he had the experiences that would result in his now famous literacy method. [11]

Early in the forties, he and Elsa became involved in the Catholic Action Movement. [12] In 1959, Freire submitted a doctoral dissertation to the University of Recife on the subject Educaçao e atualidade brasileira (which roughly translates into "Education and the Present Moment in Brazil"). [13] Mackie says that "not long after, the university appointed [Freire] to a chair in the history and philosophy of education." [14] In 1960 Freire founded Recife's Popular Culture Movement, which later on was transferred to the Cultural Extension Service of the University of Recife. [15] It seems safe to conclude that Freire's career development in Brazil was one of upward mobility, as an educated member of the middle class.

I think it would be helpful to turn our attention to the development of Brazil during the first four decades of Freire's life, prior to his exile in 1964. Miguel Arraes, who was Mayor of Recife and later on Governor of Pernambuco, and the person said to have been the first who sponsored Freire's experiments with his literacy method, [16] categorizes the modern economic development of Brazil into two major periods: (1) 1930-1945 and (2) 1945-1964. [17]

The first period (1930-1945), which encompasses ages 9-24 in the life of Freire, saw Brazil's incorporation into modern times. Foreign capital investments were in retreat due to the crisis of 1929 and, later on, to World War II. The developing national industrial bourgeoisie faced little foreign competition. An urban workforce had been growing, both in the industry and in the public and private service occupations during the first three decades of the century. A policy of conciliation between the national bourgeoisie and the workforce was deliberately adopted and implemented by a paternalistic government. The rural areas were relatively quiet. [18] Illiterates could not vote, and about 90% of the peasants was illiterate. Mass organizations and movements were limited to urban areas.

The second period, 1945-1964, was characterized by a massive penetration of foreign capital and the ultimate defeat of the national industrial bourgeoisie which emerged in Brazil during the former period. In Arraes' explanation, the core of the process was a struggle between imperialism and a national capitalism that over the fifties had a more or less liberal and populist outlook. [19] The overt political struggle took the form of broad political Fronts which included workers, industrialists, liberals and Communists. The banners were nationalism and the construction of an anti-imperialist (though capitalist) national economy. [20] The fifties were a period of rapid social, economic and political evolution. The mostly rural northeast evidenced a considerable unrest, an example of which was the formation of Peasant Leagues which demanded land for those who tilled it. [21] The Church became involved in the organization of rural syndicates. Political (electoral) victories blinded reformists to the reality of foreign penetration and control of the Brazilian economy. Amidst a vociferous nationalistic rhetoric, foreign capital was defeating the national industry. [22] Freire was in his mid-thirties.

It is important to understand that progressive forces in Brazil during the late fifties, including Paulo Freire, were not aiming at 'revolution,' [23] if this term is understood as armed struggle for structural transformation. The objective was democratic reform and capitalist national development. [24] The political programme to attain this objective was mostly formulated by the Instituto Social de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB). It seems that ISEB was a very important entity in Brazil's development during the fifties and early sixties. [25] Among the intellectuals who wrote for it, we can mention Helio Jaguaribe (founder), Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, Gilberto Freyre, Roland Corbisier and Alvaro Vieira Pinto. The impact of these and other Brazilian writers upon Paulo Freire, his ideas and methods, is discussed in careful detail by Vanilda Pereira Paiva. [26]

In Pereira Paiva's theory, the intellectual environment of Brazil between 1930 and 1960 changed in tune with the country's social and economic transformation: what originated in the thirties as theories to defend an authoritarian government based upon a selective voting system whereby voters would be the most educated and cultured citizens, was transformed by ISEB into a defense of formal liberal democracy, and into the acceptance of universal suffrage as the foundation of democracy. [27] Brazilian society was seen by ISEB as moving from the closed confines of the colonial legacy (an archaic or closed society) towards a "modern" society. It was felt that new ideas were needed to orient this transition and that those who represented promising new ideas should be in control of the State. In order to obtain democratic political control it was necessary to mobilize the civil society. Political control was to be obtained through the vote. Yet, the majority of the population was seen as "unprepared" for democracy. [28] Education was one possible solution to the dilemma.]

Pereira Paiva states that Freire's pedagogy was an instrument of this ideological process because (1) it helped to form and mobilize the civil society for the electoral conquest of the state machinery, and/or (2) it prepared the civil society to support the reforms proposed by the State itself. The method was intended by the government as a means to readjust "archaic" ideas and beliefs to make them compatible with urban, industrial life (assumed to be modern and rational), to promote a struggle against "magical consciousness," characteristic of an "archaic" society, and to open up a discussion of themes that could make it possible to develop "new" forms of consciousness, more adequate to the new era. [29]

The above was not dissonant with Freire's Catholicism, as during the fifties it became increasingly common in progressive Catholic circles to state that in order to humanize people it was first necessary to offer them human living conditions, including a minimum of material conditions that would be brought by economic development. [30]

The practical purposes of Freire's literacy method are seen by Pereira Paiva as evidenced in the use of the words voto-povo (vote the people) as key ('generating') words in many of Freire's literacy experiments. The use of those words, she affirms, was a concrete translation of the political ideals that were behind the elaboration of the method itself. The idea, again, was to prepare the Brazilian people for participation in the electoral process (democracy) on behalf of the ideology developed by ISEB during the fifties (developmental nationalism). [31] This becomes transparent, according to Pereira Paiva, in the doctoral dissertation which Freire submitted to the University of Recife in 1959. She asserts that Freire's Education as the Practice of Freedom is a reformulation of his 1959 doctoral dissertation, and was first published in 1965.

Brevity precludes us from entering into a detailed analysis of the changes Pereira Paiva observes between the 1959 and 1964 versions of Freire's thesis. [32] Yet, the reader of Education as the Practice of Freedom can examine the influence of ISEB and its ideology of developmental nationalism, by paying special attention to the footnotes which appear in the book.

There is another aspect of Freire's work in Brazil that must be mentioned. We refer to the fact that in 1963 the U.S. AID financed the use of Freire's literacy method in Brazil. Pereira Paiva explains the incidents that led to U.S. AID assistance as an effort by the United States to prevent northeast Brazil from being influenced by the Cuban Revolution. The Peasant Leagues and the popular movements in Brazil's northeast were coupled with the formation of broad Popular Fronts for electoral purposes. These Fronts included the Communists. Pereira Paiva establishes that in 1946, the Front of Recife was created, including Communists, Socialists, Leftist Catholics, and Leftist wings of the Brazilian Worker's Party and the Social Democratic Party. Since then the electoral impact of the Front started to grow due to an increased rural-urban migration: by 1964 the city of Recife accounted for 33% of the electorate in the entire State of Pernambuco. The Fronts' strategy was to elect their candidates as mayors of the states' capitals, and later on, as state governors. This strategy succeeded in the State of Pernambuco, where in 1962 the former Mayor of Recife, Miguel Arraes, was elected governor. [33] The United States government panicked. [34]

The Cuban Revolution had triumphed in 1959. In 1961 President Kennedy created the Alliance for Progress and created an U.S. AID office for Brazil, locating it precisely in Recife. An officer of the AID, quoted by Pereira Paiva, stated that the United States government saw Brazil's northeast as an international security problem. The economic assistance provided to Brazil was intended as a weapon against a threat that the United States government thought was not "unanimously perceived in Brazil." It was a matter of defeating "the Communist threat," which the United States government saw evidenced in the Peasant Leagues and the electoral victories of the Fronts. [35]

Educational reforms were present in the platform of all the political candidates brought into power by the Fronts, specifically, a literacy campaign. [36] The "radicalization" of the northeast coincided with the availability of what appeared to be a non-threatening, cost-effective method to teach literacy. Freire was offered financial assistance by AID to experiment with his method in a large scale campaign that would be conducted in the state of Río Grande del Norte (the next one in line planned by the Front for electing as governor a former mayor). Freire's Catholicism and apparent anti-Communism [37] seemed to guarantee that his method, as stated by a Brazilian rightist newspaper, would not only teach illiterates to read and write, but also "to love democracy." [38] AID's intention was to pacify the northeast.

It is said by Pereira Paiva that Freire's acceptance of AID's offer created tensions among the forces of the Left, because the campaign was seen as a threat to the above-mentioned electoral strategy planned by the Front for Rio Grande del Norte. Tensions were eased, says Pereira Paiva, when Freire obtained two important concessions: (1) there would be no interference from authorities with his program's contents, and (2) students would be incorporated at all program levels, including program direction. [39] Freire, says Pereira Paiva, truly believed that U.S. financing was due to the success of his literacy technique, and that it was convenient to accept assistance. [40]

The program announcement (January, 1963) was welcomed by everyone, asserts Pereira Paiva, including some rightist elements. Yet, soon after, the program was denounced by the Right as "Communist." [41] AID withdrew its support, officially arguing "an inadequacy of the method's didactic procedures" as its reasons, but, in fact, seeing the method as a factory of 'revolutionaries'. [42] It was far from that, in the opinion of Pereira Paiva. Yet, the anti-Communist paranoia of the United States, as well as of the rightist elements in Brazil after the coup of 1964, gave Freire's method precisely such an aura at the international level. [43]

When AID withdrew its financial support, the method was ready to be launched at the national level. It had attracted the attention of the constitutional President, Joao Goulart. Plans had been laid out (end of 1963-1964) for a National Literacy Campaign using Freire's method, which was considered by the government as an instrument capable of rapidly preparing illiterates to support its liberal reforms program by means of their votes. [44] Christian students, on the other hand, supported the method as "a means to transform the masses into a people" without being directive. The militants in the Left saw the method as a means to initiate the political organization of the popular classes, who would be motivated by the contents transmitted by the program. Such were, in Pereira Paiva's theory, the arguments and practices which claimed to be inspired in Freire's program. As it would happen a decade later in the United States, Freire's ideas in Brazil were given the most diverse meanings due to the ambiguity of his theoretical formulations. [45]

A crucial issue in Brazil and elsewhere is whether or not the method is directive and if so, to what extent. Pereira Paiva says that the Brazilian Left opposed the method because it was not directive, but nonetheless,used it for the political organization of the new literates. The progressive Christians were more interested in the transformation of the illiterate into a "person," leaving untouched any specific plans for a concrete political organization. The contents of the program seemed to be adequate both for the use of populist politicians and the more leftist northeastern Fronts. [46] At the end of Goulart's regime, to use the method meant to defend national reforms against imperialism. The method's objective was the "democratization" of Brazil, and this could be interpreted in many ways. [47]

The military coup brought the reform movement to an end. Freire was expelled from his university position, arrested and jailed by the military. This increased his popularity in leftist circles as a revolutionary hero. He was 43 years old.

Through negotiations Freire was allowed political asylum in the Bolivian embassy, after which he became a political exile. [48] He lived in the pre-Allende Chile developing his literacy method from 1964 to 1969. Then he accepted an invitation by Harvard University to become a visiting professor. Also, late in the sixties, he spent two summers in Ivan Illich's Center for Information and Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and published what is perhaps his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In 1971 he created the Institute for Cultural Action (IDAC) in Geneva, Switzerland, where he also lived and worked with the World Council of Churches. Freire's visit to Harvard led to his evaluation of U.S. society.

IDAC has produced a series of monographs, one of which summarizes the impact of Freire's direct encounter with the United States: "Freire's illusions about democracy gave way to a more rigorous analysis of the contradictions -- existing in each society -- between oppressor and oppressed." According to IDAC, this came about due to Freire's observation of two things that struck him: (1) "massive oppression in a place which he had previously thought as the center of material prosperity," and (2) "the degree of alienation and domestication which an entire series of social control institutions imposed on large sections of the American public, including the working class." [49] The United States was, indeed, an alien world when compared to Latin America.

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Notes to Section 1: Who is Paulo Freire?

1. Robert Mackie, ed., Literacy and Revolution. The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire (New York: Continuum, 1981). The book's back cover informs us that Mackie teaches at the University of Newcastle, Australia, on the subjects of radical education and Marxist social theory. Mackie's review of Freire's life is offered in the "Introduction" Mackie writes to the book, pp. 3-8.

2. Paulo Freire, Concientización (Bogotá: Association of Educational Publishers, 1972), pp. 15-18. The publisher is an association of Catholic organizations. The autobiographical notes published in this 107-page Spanish booklet were originally written in Chile, to answer the request of Mario Moreira Alves, a Brazilian journalist who was seeking personal testimonies of Christians persecuted by the military Junta that was responsible for the 1964 coup in Brazil. Moreira Alves' El Cristo del Pueblo ("The Christ of the People") (Chile: Ediciones Erchilla, 1970) is the book in which the testimonies were published. Freire's appears on pp. 247-50.

3. The biographical notes that follow were constructed through the use of the sources quoted in the first paragraph, in addition to bits of information obtained in books which review the history of Brazil in the 20th century.

4. Paulo Freire, "The Importance of the Act of Reading,"Journal of Education, 165:1 (1983), p. 8.

5. This and other quotes from Freire I transcribed from a group of seven cassette tapes which record the proceedings of the conference "Literacy, Empowerment and Social Change," held at the University of Vermont, Burlington, April 20-24, 1981. The cassettes are divided into two groups: "Blue Series" (4 cassettes) and "Green Series" (3 cassettes), all sequentially numbered by side. Each cassette has a 90-minute duration. They were sold by the University of Vermont one month after the conference. I will identify the quotes referring to this source as either "Green" or "Blue" series, and the cassette side number in which the quote appears.

6. Green Series, Side 4.

7. Freire, Concientización, p. 17.

8. Ibid.

9. César Jerez and Juan Hernández-Picó, "Cultural Action for Freedom," in Paulo Freire, USCC/LADOC Keyhole Series No. 1, Washington, D.C., n.d., p. 29. The authors do not offer their source for this statement, which directly contradicts Freire's own account of his law career.

10. Freire, Concientización, p. 17. Freire does not offer information on his work in SESI: only the positions he held there. Through secondary sources I have found that SESI was a private entity created by employers to assist workers, through combined funds: employers contributed some monies and a portion of the workers' pay was deducted for SESI's activities. In a telephone interview with a person that knows well Freire's life in Brazil, the person told me that it was his preference not to discuss SESI or Freire's work in it. This is an aspect that deserves further investigation if we are to understand Freire's occupational life prior to the development of his literacy method. Vanilda Pereira Paiva's Paulo Freire y el Nacionalismo Desarrollista ("Paulo Freire and Developmentalist Nationalism") (México: Extemporáneos, 1981), refers to Freire's work in SESI, again assuming that the readers know what it was. She asserts that in his 1959 doctoral dissertation Freire mentions SESI as an example of "an educational work for non-assistentialist participation (...) without judging the institution [SESI] or its structure." It is the opinion of Pereira Paiva that "Freire wanted to work against the assistentialist aspect of SESI, which was fomented by employers to help the industrial workers, making them participate as if it were a matter of the workers themselves." It seems that "workers' clubs" were organized in which workers could discuss the problems of their neighborhoods and city, to give workers "a socially responsible sense." (p. 99) The bottom line, it seems to me, is to find out if this was an employer's initiative, as some persons have told me. We just do not know.

11. Freire, Concientización, p. 17. He states that, at SESI, he reinitiated his dialogue with the people. If this is the origin to which Freire traces his method, conducting research on SESI, it seems to me, would be a theme deserving the attention of researchers who are interested in Freire. Such research is out of the scope of this essay.

12. The Catholic Action Movement (CAM) and its evolution is best explained by Emanuel de Kadt's Catholic Radicals in Brazil (London: Oxford University Press, 1970). Also, see Samuel Silva-Gotay's El Pensamiento Cristiano Revolucionario en América Latina y el Caribe ("Christian Revolutionary Thought in Latin America and the Caribbean"), 2d ed. (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Cordillera/Ediciones Sígueme, 1983). Silva-Gotay traces CAM to an encyclical of Pope Pious XI in 1931 which sought for a "third way," neither capitalist nor socialist, based upon the Christian social philosophy on capital and work, and based upon the concept of "charity." (p. 40) It advised Catholics to create corporate structures integrated by employers and workers. It gave a thrust to the aim of re-Christianization of society through the "humanization of capitalism," best exemplified in the writings of French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. CAM was far from being a 'radical' entity and Freire has explained his and Elsa's disillusionment with CAM (Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, p. 3).

13. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire y el Nacionalismo Desarrollista, p. 77, hereinafter referred to as Paulo Freire.

14. Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, p. 4. There is some confusion as to the progress of Freire's university studies. Mackie says that Freire went from high school to the University of Recife "where he studied to be a teacher of Portuguese," and makes no mention of Freire's law studies or of his graduation as a lawyer, to which Freire admits in Concientización. Freire places himself as a university law student at the age of 20 (1941) and, at the same time, as a teacher of Portuguese in a secondary school in which he worked to help his brothers support the family (Concientización, p. 12). It is not known when he returned to the university to pursue the doctoral studies which he completed shortly after 1959.

15. The Popular Culture Movement (PCM) was sponsored by the Mayor of Recife, Miguel Arraes. (See note 16 below.) The transfer of this activity to the University of Recife is explained by Emanuel de Kadt's Catholic Radicals, as follows: "From its inception in 1960 many of those who helped to direct its activities [those of PCM] were members of JUC [Catholic University Youth]. And although the leadership remained in the hands of Catholics, members of the Communist Party became increasingly influential among the rank and file as time went by. It was at least partly in reaction to this development that Paulo Freire transferred his (populist) método to the Cultural Extension Service of the University of Recife." (p. 104).

16. Mackie's Literacy and Revolution, states: "In 1962, Miguel Arraes... sponsored a programme to promote adult literacy in the municipality of Recife, and appointed Paulo Freire as its coordinator. It was in this context that the famous 'culture circles' were launched." (p. 4) Yet, de Kadt states that Recife's PCM started in 1960. (See note 15 above.)

17. Miguel Arraes, Brasil: Pueblo y Poder ("Brazil: The People and the Power") (Mexico: Ediciones Era, 1971), pp. 43-65. See also Clift Barnard's "Imperialism, Underdevelopment and Education," in Mackie's Literacy and Revolution, pp. 12-38. Arraes' book is one of the sources used by Barnard.

18. The rural areas did not show unrest until the fifties.

19. Arraes, in Pueblo y Poder, presents the events which led to the 1964 coup as a contest between segments of the ruling classes: the emerging Brazilian industrialists against the entrenched oligarchic bourgeoisie. The former were open to industrialization, the latter against. But the picture is not clear-cut, as both groups crossed lines among political parties (of which there were many). All generalizations should thus be taken very cautiously. Arraes was an actor in the events which led to the coup. He was elected first as Mayor of Recife and later as Governor of the State of Pernambuco by an alliance of "progressive" forces which included political groups ranging from liberals to Communists. Arraes considers "armed struggle" as the only option left in Brazil. Yet, I have been told that, as of this writing, he has returned to Brazil, that he lives there, and that he has even participated in an electoral campaign. This information I have not been able to confirm, but deserves to be examined in the light of Arraes' analysis and the radical positions expressed in his book.

20. Arraes, Pueblo y Poder, p. 118.

21. This unrest warrants caution when we try to understand what happened. The Peasant Leagues are an excellent example, as they have been interpreted in the most diverse ways. Arraes says: "In 1956 Francisco Juliao founded the first Peasant Leagues. Immediately afterwards, the Church launched a campaign for the organization of rural syndicates. Peasant's struggles started to have an effect in the life of some regions and the problem of agrarian reform, hidden till then because it was considered an extremely explosive issue, became an unavoidable theme." (Pueblo y Poder, p. 122.) Emanuel de Kadt's Catholic Radicals strongly criticizes Juliao, who de Kadt says "gained in stridency in the early 1960's" (p. 26) and whose motives are judged as a ploy "to advance his political career." (pp. 27-28) De Kadt believes that both the "leagues" and "syndicates" were "organizations stimulated from above and built from the top downwards," (p. 111) by which he means that these were not genuinely peasants' struggles, but organized by members of the progressive elite for a variety of purposes. The Church at first wanted to fight "Communism" but the movement of rural syndicalization got out of its hands and was taken up, against strong criticism from the Church hierarchy, by radical sectors of the Church. These radicals saw the syndicates as organizations for the revolutionary transformation of the country, through the long range (this is very important) process of conscientization. Catholic radicals were not for armed struggle (de Kadt, Catholic Radicals, pp. 112-13), at least not before the 1964 coup.

22. Arraes, in Pueblo y Poder, saw the events which led to the 1964 coup as an economic struggle within the elite. He believes that it came to a point in which the industrial Brazilian bourgeoisie did not realize that it had been conquered by imperialism during the fifties (p. 120).

23. Precisely because "the nationalist movement, formed by different parties and by men who originated in diverse social environments, brought together different interests. An industrialist, a worker, a liberal, and a Communist, all could very well be nationalists since they all opposed foreign control." (Arraes, Pueblo y Poder, p. 118.) On the stand of the Communist Party, Emanuel de Kadt's Catholic Radicals informs: "The Communists were wrong. Their conception of collaborating with 'all nationalists and democrats' in a united front, which would bring together the 'largest number of patriots, irrespective of their class position or party affiliation' certainly overestimated the 'patriotism' of the bourgeoisie as a whole, and their willingness to oppose 'imperialism.'" (p. 100) On the same subject, Arraes says that since 1954, the Communist Party adopted the line [described by de Kadt] (p. 130). All authors I have reviewed seem to agree that the popular or people's forces were very divided organizationally and programmatically, and that there was not a single group sufficiently organized to resist the bloodless coup of 1964. The feeling I get is that, for all the talk of revolution, not a single organization considered that structural reforms could be stopped by force.

24. Pereira Paiva's book (see note 10 above), although specifically devoted to examine the intellectual formation of Paulo Freire in Brazil until 1965, enters into the formation of the Brazilian intellectuals in the 1940's and 1950's, who impacted upon Freire's ideas and methods. In her opinion, the programme which emerged out of Brazil's intellectual life and economic transformation between 1930-1960 was that of developmental nationalism, a programme that was not revolutionary but reformist, and within the parameters of capitalist liberal democracy. I have accepted her conclusion.

25. See Paulo Freire's evaluation of ISEB in his Education as the Practice of Freedom (written in 1965) published in Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum, 1981): "ISEB thought of Brazil as its own reality, as a project. To think of Brazil as a Subject was to identify oneself with Brazil as it really was. The power of the ISEB thinking had its origins in this integration with the newly discovered and newly valued national reality. Two important consequences emerged: the creative power of intellectuals who placed themselves at the service of the national culture, and commitment to the destiny of the reality those intellectuals considered and assumed as their own. It was not by accident that ISEB, although it was not a university, spoke to and was heard by an entire university generation and, although it was not a worker's union, gave conferences in trade unions." (p. 40)

26. In Paulo Freire. See notes 24 and 10 above.

27. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, p. 54. It is interesting to note that Miguel Arraes, in Pueblo y Poder, says ISEB gave the definitive theoretical base to the ideology of the national bourgeoisie, which turned 'nationalism' into its weapon. Written before Pereira Paiva's book, Arraes describes the ideological transition of ISEB's intellectuals in very similar terms to those of Pereira Paiva. "The integralist movement, of openly fascist tendencies had tried to turn nationalism into a coherent doctrinal system; the group of intellectuals for the most part integralist in origin, that later on founded ISEB, finally gave it its definitive theoretical base." (p. 129)

28. Under the impact of, among others, José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas ("The Revolt of the Masses"), both in Europe and Latin America there was a concern among intellectuals that "the masses" had entered into the political arena, like it or not, and that "something had to be done about it." Here in Puerto Rico the concern was (and still is) present among the intellectual elite, as Pereira Paiva says it happened in Brazil. The very term "the masses," later on softened into "the people" depicts the "poor," "oppressed" or "exploited" (depending on your point of view) as ignorant, emotional, subject to manipulation-massification because they are not "educated." The drive is to "humanize" them; to turn them into "persons." In the United States it is expressed as "bringing them to the mainstream." The "masses" are not deemed capable of acting as responsible citizens unless they are "educated into" democracy. The whole thing, in my opinion, is nothing more than an elitist view held by well-to-do (including intellectuals) for whom "the masses" are felt as a threat. As a solution, the option is to manipulate them into a particular political program that can range from reforms to "revolution," depending on the preference of the elite members in charge of "humanizing" the "masses." In the particular case of Brazil it seems that there were so many different groups trying to reach the "masses" for so many different purposes, that when the coup came about to wipe them all out they were so fragmented that none could resist. The "masses," perhaps wisely, did not move a finger to stop what was being destroyed by the military.

29. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, p. 86. Freire's method, originally developed at a small scale in Recife, was moved to the national level one year before the coup, that is, in 1963. The process will be described further on along the essay. At this moment what seems important is to observe the ways in which the mentality of the "masses" is described, and what Freire's method was intended to change.

30. Catholicism in Brazil underwent important changes between the 1930s and the 1960s. The influence of Jacques Maritain diminished as the writings of Emmanuel Mounier became known. Mounier, also French, fought during the Second World War in the French resistance, together with Communists. He opened a door to a dialogue among Christians and Marxists for the reconstruction of a Europe without wars and without class exploitation. (Silva-Gotay, Pensamiento Cristiano Revolucionario, pp. 41-42). The transition from adopting Maritain to adopting Mounier's ideas took a long time, and is a complex subject that I cannot adequately summarize here. Yet, it is important to state that by the early sixties there was a search for a non-Communist Socialism, a democratic Socialism in which the person (thus the label "personalist") would be deemed of utmost importance. The strongest advocates for the new position were the Christian university students. The position included: overcoming underdevelopment; liquidation of capitalism and private property, to be substituted by "an effective instrument for the personalization of all Brazilians; nationalization of the basic sectors of production; a planned economy based upon the principles of Christian personalism; a pluralist democracy in which political parties would side with the interests of the least-favoured classes; a government that would not be subject to capitalist pressure groups and which would promote development to benefit the people, and non-alignment at the international level." (Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, p. 59) See Emanuel de Kadt's Catholic Radicals for more detailed information. Pereira Paiva considers that the radical Catholic university students may have had a strong impact on Freire, causing a lag between his theory and his practice that is still evident in Freire's Education as the Practice of Freedom, in which Freire quotes both Mounier and Maritain. I should add that when Freire quotes Mounier he follows the quote with an attack on "irrational sectarians, including some Christians, [who] either did not understand or did not want to understand the radical's search for integration with Brazilian problems." (Practice of Freedom, p. 12)

31. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, p. 127.

32. A summary of the changes observed by Pereira Paiva: a transition from "an originally authoritarian position... to the defense of bourgeois democracy, and then to a less clearly defined position in the direction of a defense of the popular classes." Pereira Paiva perceives "a serious contradiction" between Freire's theory and practice due to the fragility of the theoretical formulation of Freire given the societal conflicts in which the theory was immersed (pp. 221-22). It should be clearly understood that Pereira Paiva's analysis only includes the work and theory of Freire to 1965.

33. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, pp. 20-21.

34. On the reaction of the United States to these events, John Gunther in Inside South America (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) reports: "Brazil, it seemed, might be on the way of becoming another Cuba, and this, in the Washington view, might mean in turn that all the rest of South America could be influenced to follow suit." (p. 39) Gunther adds that "this was not quite the case." A strange and fascinating book, with no footnotes or bibliography for readers to judge the accuracy of the author's work, which offers an enormous amount of economic, diplomatic and congressional data (both about Brazil and the U.S.) on the entire period, is Jordan M. Young, ed., Brazil 1954-64: End of a Civilian Cycle, Interim History Series (New York: Facts on File, 1972).

35. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, p. 22.

36. Ibid., p. 21.

37. We have already mentioned Emanuel de Kadt's opinion on Freire's differences with Communists (see note 15 above). Pereira Paiva mentions -- but does not explain -- that there were "tensions between Freire and the communists during Arraes' electoral campaign for Governor of Pernambuco" and that this served as a guarantee against any suspicion that the Freire method might be subversive (p. 24). There is no additional information as to Freire's relationships with Communists.

38. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, p. 25.

39. Ibid., p. 24.

40. Ibid., p. 25.

41. Vanilda Pereira Paiva describes, but does not explain, this apparently sudden change of attitude towards the Freire method (p. 25). Emanuel de Kadt's account suggests that the turbulence of 1963 in which Catholic radicals entered into tactical alliances with Communists, while at the same time using the Freire method, and openly acting against the Catholic Church's hierarchy -- which was parading "the communist menace before the faithful" (p. 76) -- may have had something to do with the reaction against the Freire method. The issue is important and very obscure, in part because the 1964 coup captured and/or destroyed many documents of 1963, all considered "subversive:" "that so conveniently vague term with which to stigmatize any instrument of unwelcome change." (de Kadt, p. 151) In de Kadt's opinion, "Incitement to revolt was never Freire's direct objective as an educator, though democratization was; thus he rejected authoritarian methods in education, the social palliative of [welfareism], and the stifling of political expression through massificaçao [massification]." (p. 104)

42. Joseph Page, The Revolution That Never Was (New York, 1972), quoted among others by Pereira Paiva in Paulo Freire, as her source; p. 29.

43. The military coup made no distinctions when accusing people of subversion. See Hubert Herring, Evolución Historica de América Latina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria, 1972), Vol. 2, p. 1065; Mario Moreira Alves, El Cristo del Pueblo, pp. 293-95; and John Gunther's Inside South America, p. 44. Freire himself has stated: "What does leave me perplexed is to hear or read that I intended to 'Bolchevize the country' with my method. In fact, my actual crime was that I treated literacy as more than a mechanical problem, and linked it to conscientizaçao, which was 'dangerous.' It was that I viewed education as an effort to liberate men, not as yet another instrument to dominate them." (Education as the Practice of Freedom, p. 57 in his footnote 24.)

44. Pereira Paiva, Paulo Freire, pp. 25-26.

45. Ibid., pp. 26-27.

46. Ibid.

47. The proliferation of movements and entities defending reforms mentioned by Arraes (see notes 19, 21 and 23 above) in the face of a government that had been abandoned by the bourgeoisie and basing its support on a 'people' mobilized by different and fragmented groups, makes it easy to understand that this was probably the case.

48. Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, p. 5. No information is available as to the nature of these negotiations.

49. Pierre Dominicé and Rosika Darcy, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The Oppression of Pedagogy. Paulo Freire. Ivan Illich, IDAC Document #8 (Geneva, 1974), p. 25.

2. How Is Freire Seen in the United States

Paulo Freire has provoked and continues to provoke mixed reactions in the United States since his first visit in 1969-70. [1] At first, he was inextricably linked to a literacy method or technique, especially among academics engaged in adult education. Yet, as early as 1973, Freire was proclaimed to be "a revolutionary dilemma" for U.S. adult educators. [2] In 1975 it was back to literacy, through an article that proclaimed "literacy in 30 hours" as the results obtained with the Paulo Freire method. [3] The interest in Freire has oscillated between those who are more inclined to his literacy technique, and those who are moved by his educational philosophy and process.

In 1981, while Mackie edited a book devoted to examining the links between the pedagogy of Paulo Freire, literacy and revolution (in an excellent critical manner), a new book in the United States by Patricia Cross looking at Adults as Learners, [4] classified Freire as a developmental theoretician of adult education, and only referred to his work in Brazil and Chile prior to 1970 (a total number of five lines within a 287-page book). In the United States, Freire is read and interpreted in the most diverse circles in amazingly contradictory ways.

A common criticism made to Freire in the United States is that his writings are "obscure." For instance, a booklet produced by the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) states: "Paulo Freire is very much in vogue these days, but anyone who reads him will agree that he has a desiccated [sic], metaphysical way of wrapping up his ideas that is most disconcerting." [5] William Smith has stated that Freire's writings are "abstract and dense almost to the point of impenetrability." [6] There are, indeed, several problems in trying to understand Freire within the United States context.

Members of his team at IDAC have stated that, in order to be able to grasp the totality of Freire's intellectual development, you must be, or must have been, all of the following: Latin American, Catholic, Marxist and an Educator. [7] A lack of understanding of Freire's intellectual development is, in my opinion, a key issue. Freire's thought is still evolving. His works--and related bibliography--are usually published in the United States only long after being written, and his published books do not convey when and where Freire wrote each. There is a pattern in the development of Freire's work that can be traced if his books are read in the chronological order in which they were written and evaluated vis-a-vis Freire's practice at that particular time. But this chronological order and other essential bibliographical sources about Freire are, for the most part, unknown and not easily available to U.S. readers.

As of this writing, a new book which collects writings of and about Freire over the seventies has been published...in German! [8] It will not be available in Spanish until late 1984 and in English no one knows, as it has not been accepted for publication in the English language. Who knows what is in there? A second example is Pereira Paiva's book. I deem it essential to attempt an understanding of the intellectual formation of Paulo Freire before he became internationally famous. As of now, it is only available in Portuguese and Spanish. [9] Pereira Paiva's research product enables us to test the romantic notion of a 'revolutionary' Freire who was arrested and jailed in Brazil.

A third and last example is a doctoral dissertation written in Canada evaluating Freire's work in Guinea-Bissau, a theme I shall discuss later on. [10] At this moment, the important thing to share is that the dissertation brings to the fore significant elements that cannot be gleaned from Freire's book about his work in Guinea-Bissau. The dissertation is unpublished.

The fact that Freire's chronological intellectual development as per his books and related bibliography are not easily available in the United States is coupled with the fact that Paulo Freire is an eclectic who relies heavily in Catholic, existentialist, phenomenological and Marxist philosophy. [11] This is far from the usual bibliography students (even graduate students) are required to read in most U.S. colleges and universities. Let us see Freire's own view of the problem as he discussed it in 1981: [12]

In Germany, my work is found to be transparent, easy, due-- perhaps--to the Germans' long experience with dialectic thought. They want theory, not facts. In the U.S. people want facts, not theory. But facts do not stand by themselves without theory. My books are printed every year in Germany, and are used by many universities in their academic departments.

Workers also understand my work, as well as those who have some experience of oppression. But I acknowledge there might be a problem of cross-cultural translation with U.S. readers. [13]

Freire continues his analysis:

I try to think dialectically by trying to understand contradictions and how they work in reality, not as a given out there, but as something that is in a process of giving itself; something that is not static, that is becoming. How can I describe reality with a static language? My language has to be contradictory in order to grasp a contradictory reality.

But in the United States the habit is to think not dialectically but in a positivistic way. And then my language becomes "mysterious."

At a question as to why he uses such an "academic" language, he responds:

I did not write for the peasants but for those who can work with them. If a graduate student in education cannot read my books, then you cannot understand Sartre, Hegel, and not even Dewey. And your universities have to start all over again!

Freire has made strong criticism of the education provided by most U.S. universities, particularly in doctoral programs, describing them as "eating books" instead of reading them, which provokes "an indigestion of books." He despises the fact that professors feel it is within their right to prescribe exactly which pages of a book a student should read, as if this could give the student a comprehension of the author's thought. Reading a book, Freire has stated, is like re-writing it, nothing to be done in a hurried fashion only because a required long bibliography awaits to be read in a prescribed period. But there is more.

To understand my books you have to have experience with the people--not just with books! What I describe I did. [14]

The "obscurity" problem, stemming, in my opinion, from the elements already mentioned, is compounded when U.S. readers try to make sense of the many contradictions that can be identified in Freire's writings. When these are pointed out to Freire in face-to-face encounters, he responds very strongly: "I have the right to be contradictory!" And he does, indeed. Yet, within the U.S. environment this argument is not very helpful for persons who are attracted to Freire's theory and who are trying to make sense out of it as a basis to create and/or develop non-oppressive educational programs. For the land of all kind of manuals which explain "how-to" everything in a step-by-step fashion, Freire's refusal to give this type of information results in a considerable amount of frustration, if not anger.

Freire understands this very well and also the fact that he is not familiar with daily life in the United States. His attitude is, more or less: "You guys have to formulate your own theory, and develop your own solutions." But, sadly enough, in conferences where Freire is the "star" (a position that he has said he strongly resents), literacy workers, community organizers and adult educators try to squeeze out from him solutions to the problems they face at their local sites. Freire invariably responds with an anecdote about his work in Brazil, Chile or Guinea-Bissau. As to what the anecdote means within the U.S. context... Well, friend, that is your problem!

One of Freire's main tenets is that education is political. [15] This is accepted by some liberals and everyone to their political left. The problem is, what does that mean? Which politics are conducive to a non-oppressive (thus, liberating) educational program? Responses are as varied as the political preference of the person who asks the question, and the fact is that all can quote Freire out of context to prove their point because, as I have said Freire's thought has evolved along the years and it is still evolving. The results are heated debates (not dialogues) as to what Freire means, and little action or theory construction as to what must be done in the United States.

Freire attacks sectarianism from both Left and Right. This is often quoted by sectarians in the U.S. to accuse their ideological opponents of being sectarian. It becomes another game of words wherein Freire is quoted in support of almost any political preference. Freire argues for "revolution." At the same time, he declares himself a "pacifist" and has stated that, although he understands that revolutions are not made with flowers, he does not "like to think on violent transformation" adding that he "prefers to be called bourgeois."

"Fine revolutionary you are, Paulo. You cannot even kill a chicken"--this is a personal anecdote of a phrase his wife, Elsa, once told him and that Freire often quotes in seminars. Another phrase by Freire in this context: "I can't kill you, but if you hurt my wife, I could kill you--unless I have thirty minutes to think about it."' What kind of revolution then does Freire advocate? [16] In Puerto Rico we cannot help but remember books invariably written by U.S. social scientists admiring the "quiet, peaceful revolution" that Puerto Rico underwent during the fifties and sixties while our economy was being devastated by U.S. capital, making 60% of our families dependent on food-stamps. Those in the U.S. who consider Freire as a revolutionary in Brazil prior to the 1964 military coup, would do well to re-read his first book, and to compare this with their personal definitions of what constitutes a "revolutionary."

Freire has made an absolute division of the world into oppressed and oppressors. You must be one or the other. In recent years, in Freire's thought, the oppressed have become more clearly identified with groups that in the United States are called "the poor." In international terms, the oppressed are Third World countries, and inhabitants of the Third World who reside and are subjected to exploitation and racism in "advanced" industrial countries which constitute the First World. There are also "First Worlds" (the elite) in underdeveloped countries. For Freire, it is no longer a matter of geography.

The oppressed must fight for their liberation in order to become human, says Freire. And those in the middle classes and upper stratas of society who side with the oppressed must commit an individual class suicide. The image is similar to the Catholic version of Easter--to die and be reborn as humans in a kind of spiritual transformation.

Freire's politics have received the most diverse type of descriptions, some of which are: elitist (Manfred Stanley) [17]; revolutionary Socialist, as distinct from humanist Socialist or Marxist Socialist [18]; romantic (Griffith, [19] and, to some extent, Walker [20]), to name but a few.

These classifications and labels originate in the fact that, since his second book, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire has started to quote Marx in empathetic terms, as well as Che, Fidel Castro, and Mao-Tse-Tung. Quoting Marx does not make him a Marxist. Freire seems to be more inclined to the strongly Hegelian writings of the young Marx (which Marx himself never published). It is glaringly clear in Freire's books that, in his theory, [21]

there is no primacy of economic and historical materialism as the bases for revolution (...) Freire ignores the political economy of revolution in favor of an emphasis on the cultural dimension of revolution.

There cannot be a primacy of historical materialism in Freire, simply because he is a devoted Catholic ("the more I read Marx, the more I find Christ in every street," he says frequently). [22] Marx, especially the young Marx and his concept of alienation, is consonant with the progressive Christians who believe that humans cannot become truly human until the basic, human, material living conditions are available to them.

Freire has increasingly exhibited a tendency to romanticize and idealize revolutionary leaders in the Third World, taking their writings at face value and, I hate to say, most uncritically. He looks at these leaders to confirm his theory: the revolutionary is a man who acts out of love, a human being who sacrifices without personal self-interest; indeed, a Christ-like figure in authentic communion with the people. While he warns that revolutions can betray their ideals and become bureaucratic and manipulative--these he labels "inauthentic"--he does not offer a concrete example of where he has seen this occur, if anywhere. Interrogated in Vermont by Jonathan Kozol about Cuba, and the highly hierarchical participatory process Kozol has perceived during his visits to the island, Freire responded: [23]

I have not yet been in Cuba. I have friends there and friends who have been there. Cuba is not creating a paradise, because that is not the task for a revolution. A revolution makes history (...) For me the question is that the more Cuba becomes able to go towards an opening, the more Cuba will become authentically socialist. I do not think Cuba is preponderantly rigid. We also can discover in Cuba some signs of Stalinism (which is spread in the left all over the world). But Cuba cannot be compared. The Cuban people were able to get their history into their hands in 20 years. This could not exist if the people had been exclusively manipulated. How to explain the creativity, the presence of happiness in the streets (not just the people, the streets themselves!). I think Cuba is trying to go more and more beyond rigidity. I myself do not understand the why's of Ethiopia. I do understand Angola and Mozambique, bombarded by South Africa. I was there once and about 600 children died. They also have mediocres there, people that are not so capable. They [the mediocres] speak Spanish there and not Portuguese. This is wrong. But I never saw Cubans in ghettos separated from the Angolans.

But let us assume that they commit more mistakes than right things. The important thing is the attitudes with which they go--as friends; as comrades. (My emphasis.)

The above should be critically examined even by those of us who have been in Cuba. [24]

Freire shies away from the harsh, painful, violent acts committed by both sides in any revolutionary war, [25] and reserves his criticism for the violence of oppressors. The violence of the oppressed is justified because it is reactive, defensive and made "out of love." [26] This stems, I think, from Freire's dichotomizing of the entire world in two antagonistic sides: oppressors and oppressed, leaving no space for mediators or the interlocuteurs valables. This term emerged in the Algerian war of independence and referred to moderate nationalist representatives with whom compromise solutions might be negotiated between France and the struggling Algerians. Amazingly enough, Amílcar Cabral took up the term to describe the beginning of his struggle: "We (...) the engineers, doctors, bank clerks and so on, joined together to form a group of interlocuteurs valables." (See note 25)

Leszek Kolakowski, who was professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw and expelled in March 1968, both from the university and from the Communist Party for political reasons, and who now teaches at Oxford University, bitter due to Stalinism (this can be felt in his writings), has very interesting things to say on the practice of using sharp, self-exclusive dichotomies. [27] In his view, when you establish a single politically correct way of looking at things, that is the road to Stalinism and it only promotes "traitors" instead of "dissidents." Then all criticism is silenced and the only result is the creation of escapists. Becoming an escapist is the only solution when you are forced to choose between the options of being "a renegade or a loyal opportunist." The escapist renounces active participation in political life. Any political cause defeats itself when it becomes an end and not a means, because it liquidates the possibility of future allies by producing escapists.

Kolakowski further points to the value of inconsistency, [28] which he describes as a "refusal to choose once and for all between any values whatever which mutually exclude each other." [29] He makes it very clear that he is not advocating for a middle-of-the-road position. He is only stating that the various values are, notoriously throughout history, introduced into society by mutually antagonistic forces. Inconsistency, then: [30]

as an individual attitude is merely a consciously sustained reserve of uncertainty, a permanent feeling of possible personal error, or the possibility that one's antagonist may be right.

Kolakowski is not arguing for an absolute relativism. There are limits to inconsistency (what Kolakowski calls 'elementary situations'): [31]

Open aggression, genocide, torture, mistreatment of the defenseless--all these are elementary situations... here we suddenly confront a dual-valued world... Inconsistency has certain limits within which it is valid: the limits wherein reality is contradictory. But reality is contradictory up to a certain point.

Perhaps because of Freire's radical dichotomy and his refusal to face the agonizing decisions that must be made by revolutionaries in war, his own IDAC team wonders whether Freire's program of education for liberation may only be feasible in a 'post revolutionary' situation. [32] At this time, we deem it important to bring up the very American Saul Alinsky and some of his rules for the ethics of means and ends, in Rules for Radicals: [33]

• in war the end justifies almost any means (p. 29)
• generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics (p. 34)
• any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical (p. 35)
• you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments (p. 36).

Freire's writings (perhaps because of the reasons we have stated) are in strong disagreement with what Alinsky presents as [rather cynical, hard] rules. I think Alinsky describes the way of things as they are, and Freire describes them as he thinks they should be. In his admiration for revolutionary leaders, not once does Freire examine the extent to which the leaders he admires may have been guided by the above "rules."

In conversations with U.S. Alinsky-inspired community organizers, I have heard many times that Freire is "more revolutionary" than Alinsky was. This I attribute to the stated anti-Communism of Alinsky, vis-a-vis Freire's quotes from Marx, Che, Fidel, Amílcar Cabral and Mao-Tse-Tung's cultural revolution. But we have to see Freire's quotes and remarks within a context: a context which is certainly not Communist and that includes a philosophical stand that rejects historical materialism, and which I believe to be basically personalist. Besides, let us not forget that Freire has never been directly involved in a revolutionary struggle (armed warfare), Communist or not.

It is not our intention to dwell on a comparison between Freire and Alinsky. It is the subject of a doctoral dissertation now in progress at Rutgers University. But there is another distinction we would like to point out, and it is the way Freire and Alinsky categorize humans. For Freire, as we have seen, humanity is sharply dichotomized into "oppressors" and "oppressed." For Alinsky, it is divided into the "haves," the "have-nots," and the "have some, want more." [34]

Early in the seventies Griffith referred to Freire's reliance "upon emotionally laden and vaguely defined terms." [35] If you are in agreement with Freire's view of reality you will not see this vagueness. Freire talks most imprecisely about "the correct way," about "authentic leaders" and about "political clarity." The logical inference is that the truth is his and of those who share his beliefs.

This type of attitude can be expected in a person who is on the way to become a leader (or prominent member of a vanguard of the Leninist type), preparing for revolution. Is Freire at that stage? Alinsky reminds us that, in preparing for a confrontation, you have no option but to act as if you were 100% right and to declare that you are. You cannot afford to doubt in that type of situation, if you want victory. After victory, in Alinsky's words, you "clothe with moral garments" everything you did to grab power. As J. M. García-Passalacqua reminds us, "the winning terrorists of yesterday are the respected statesmen of today. [36] As for the future, it is for us to decide.

We have seen Freire's statements on revolution and violence. Where is he at? Timid remarks have been made since 1980 to the effect that "Freire's practice does not have the liberating potential it aspires to, rather there are dangers that its potential might be the reverse," [37] or more privately stated, "Freire may be taking us to a place where we do not want to go." The "place" is not even mentioned. A last example: [38]

I appreciate your concerns about Freire. I too am protective -- he's such a loveable guy -- but he's made his contribution -- and, in a way, we are all guilty of making him a guru... Paulo has been such a good friend and such an important influence -- for all of us!

Early in the seventies, William Griffith warned that a logical conclusion of Freire's theory was that, after the triumph of a 'revolution,' there would be no freedom to disagree with the new ruling group. [39] Those of us who were inspired by Freire were angered. Yet, having analyzed Freire's writings, talks and actions since the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I am more and more inclined to agree with Griffith.

At this point, some readers may be asking, "What does all of this has to do with the subject of this essay?" It has to do a lot. If we find that we are or were unclear about the meaning and objectives of the theory upon which our educational activities were or are being based, and have accepted it as inherently relevant to our work, what kind of clarity can we have when evaluating the process and outcomes of our programs? Particularly when we are supposed to be acting and critically reflecting upon our actions!

The fact is that "we" had very little information about the issues that are here discussed when we created "pedagogy-of-the-oppressed programs." We idealized Paulo Freire and his pedagogy as a "Third World" revolutionary approach that would (by definition) be relevant to minorities (the inner Third World) in the United States. And, even though many of us were, or had been, what IDAC says you should be to fully grasp Freire (Latin American, Catholics, Marxists and Educators), we were living in the United States. We crashed head-on into its complex realities.

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Notes to Section 2: How is Freire Seen in the United States?

1. In Literacy and Revolution, Mackie categorizes into four types all reactions to Freire's writings: (a) those imbued by the theology of liberation who "cast Freire's work within an idealist framework" (p. 8); (b) adult educators who "fail to understand Freire's politics" and "wrestle with ways to denude, domesticate, absorb and eventually nullify the challenge [Freire makes] to functionalism" (p. 9); (c) the literacist interpreters, "often hampered by an ethnocentric view of [Freire's] methodology in relation to English-speaking cultures" (p. 9); and (d) "those who take issue more or less directly with the political impetus of his pedagogy." Mackie concludes that there is a "kaleidoscope of misinformation, misrepresentation and downright nonsense concerning Freire" (p. 10).

2. Stanley M. Grabowski, ed., Paulo Freire: A Revolutionary Dilemma for the Adult Educator (Syracuse, New York: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult Education, 1972) .

3. Cynthia Brown, Literacy in Thirty Hours: Paulo Freire's Literacy Process in North East Brazil (London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1975).

4. Patricia Cross, Adults as Learners (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1982), pp. 231-32.

5. U.S. Catholic Conference, Paulo Freire, LADOC Keyhole Series No. 1, p. 3. No author given for the quote, which appears unsigned in the introduction.

6. William Smith, The Meaning of Conscientizaçao: The Goal of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy, Center for International Education (Amherst, Mass: Univ. of Mass., 1976), p. vi. This author also produced "The C-code Manual" to "operationalize" the concept of conscientization in a joint project conducted by the School of Education of the University of Massachusetts, the Agency for International Development (AID) and the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education. One of the goals of the project was to utilize "modified forms" of Freire's methodology to demonstrate that "such a method of literacy was more effective than the literacy system then being used" (p. 4). AID withdrew its support for Freire in 1963, but by 1972 it was proposing his method in "modified form" for Ecuador. I find this fascinating!

7. Dominicé and Darcy, IDAC Document #8, p. 31.

8. Paulo Freire, Der Lehrer Ist Politiker Und Künstler, Hamburg, October 1981.

9. The Portuguese version of Vanilda Pereira Paiva's book is entitled Paulo Freire E o Nacionalismo-Devenvolvimentista (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizaçao Brasileira, 1980).

10. Linda Harasim, "Literacy and National Reconstruction in Guinea-Bissau: A Critique of the Freirian Literacy Campaign" (Thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Toronto, 1983).

11. It is impossible to detail the impact of the many sources which nurtured Freire's eclecticism. See Mackie's "Contributions to the Thought of Paulo Freire," in Literacy and Revolution, pp. 93-119; also Harasim (note 10 above), pp. 347-65, sub sections entitled: "The Philosophical premises of Freire's pedagogy" (Christian Existentialism, Idealism) and "Freire and the PAIGC: Ideological Populism." A last source is Pereira Paiva's book, devoted in its entirety to describe and analyze the roots of Freire's thought until 1965 and his pedagogical ideas as the logical product of a particular period of Brazil's intellectual life.

12. Blue Series, Side 3. See note 5 in Section 1. All quotes from Freire in this and the next several paragraphs were transcribed from this tape.

13. It is interesting to note, on the basis of this quote, Pereira Paiva's assertion in Paulo Freire, p. 28, that in the German publication of Education as the Practice of Freedom, whole sections and expressions in the book that dealt with Brazilian nationalism were excluded. This, she says, while allowing the text to have a more universal meaning, makes it difficult for German readers to understand both the extent to which the book is grounded in Brazil 's intellectual life during 1950-60 and the book's ties with developmental nationalism.

14. We should bear in mind that the contents of most of Freire's books are not descriptions of what he did, but philosophical and theoretical considerations about what he did.

15. What is meant by Freire with this statement is that education has a political purpose. In Freire's views there are only two purposes: education is either for liberation or for domestication. But "political" here has more to do with the ideas behind any educational scheme; ideas that are transmitted (and can be challenged) both through the process and contents of education. It bears no relation to a specific political practice with which to organize and move to transform the political and economic structures of a given society in a specific context. Thus, the confusion. See note 25 in Section 6.

16. The quotes about violence and revolution are transcribed from the Blue Series cassettes, Side 5 (see note 5 in Section 1), and were statements made by Freire in 1981 in Vermont. Other quotes: "No sane person can love to kill," thus a revolutionary must estimate "the social cost, in lives, of any military operation." This was part of an anecdote about Amílcar Cabral's stand on the subject. We will later see that Cabral did not evade this issue of the need for violence. Freire added: "I would love it if every change could be done in meetings, and if those in power would stop oppressing. Unfortunately, that is not so. (...) Who are those who hate such a quantity of people by allowing them to die in hunger? This is violence and hate at a tremendous level!" On the murder of Chilean President Salvador Allende (1973), Freire said: "I was tremendously shocked. All of us were seeing a dream destroyed. The dream of transforming society in peace, freedom, democracy. It is a lie that there was no freedom in Chile. I had been there, absolutely free. (...) But I also believe that it is possible to begin to transform societies with less cost. We have to give the best of ourselves to do that because history is changing." On his return to Brazil: "There is a new international order, new historical conditions. In Brazil I am trying to do what I can within my situation." Freire said that he has joined the Brazilian Workers' Party.

17. Manfred Stanley, "Literacy: The Crisis of Conventional Wisdom," in Grabowski, Revolutionary Dilemma, pp. 36-54.

18. Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, p. 105.

19. William Griffith, "Paulo Freire: Utopian Perspective on Literacy Education for Revolution," in Grabowski's Revolutionary Dilemma, p. 77.

20. Jim Walker, "The End of Dialogue: Paulo Freire on Politics and Education," in Mackie's Literacy and Revolution, p. 112.

21. Robert Mackie, "Contributions to the Thought of Paulo Freire," in Literacy and Revolution, p. 105.

22. Samuel Silva Gotay in El Pensamiento Cristiano Revolucionario, endeavors to prove that it is possible to be both a Christian and a historical materialist. Samuel does not differentiate between Protestant and Catholic Christian revolutionaries. In addition, in an interview we held on January 31, 1984, he told me that his book presents the theory under which historical materialism and revolutionary Christianity can find a common theological ground. I would like to remind the reader of Camilo Torres, a Catholic priest who actually joined the Colombian guerrillas for armed warfare against the oppressive government and was killed by the army in the process. Even though he took up arms, he expressed: "I could truly collaborate with the Communists in Colombia because I believe that among them there are truly revolutionary elements and because, to the extent that they are scientific, they have points that coincide with the work I have proposed myself to do... we are friends of the Communists and will go with them to grab power, without discarding the possibility that afterwards there will be a discussion on philosophic questions. At this moment, practical matters are the important thing. (...) Communists should know that I will not join their ranks, that I am not nor will be a Communist, not as a Colombian, as a sociologist or as a priest." (Quoted by Silva Gotay, pp. 54-55). Camilo Torres is described by Silva Gotay as a "mystic devoted to revolution" (p. 55). Although I recommend Silva's book without reservation, I must say that it has not persuaded me that a Catholic can be a historical materialist. The theoretical juncture he presents, however, is fascinatingly coherent.

23. Blue Series, Side 5.

24. What does Freire mean by "the people" in his statement on Cuba, as recently as 1981? See my reflections in note 28, Section 1. Is "the people" in power in Cuba? Do we believe that "class struggle" has been eliminated by the Revolution?

25. See note 16 above. Alistair Horne in A Savage War of Peace. Algeria 1954-62 (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), states: "It was undeniably and horribly savage, bringing death to an estimated one million Muslim Algerians and the expulsion from their homes of approximately the same number of European settlers. If the one side practiced unspeakable mutilations, the other tortured and, once it took hold, there seemed no halting the pitiless spread of violence" (p. 14). Amílcar Cabral, admired by Freire, did not evade the issue. Referring to what Portugal had turned into 'strategic hamlets' in Guinea-Bissau, he stated: "These hamlets have been subjected to violent attacks by our troops and several of them have been destroyed." Amílcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts, translated and edited by Richard Handyside (New York: Monthly Review, 1969), p. 115. Amílcar was murdered in 1973. There is simply no way to avoid the presence of violence in a revolution, no matter how justified the violence may seem to be.

26. I do not think that combatants can successfully face the enemy with 'love.' They may be moved by love at another, more general level, of which I will speak further on. I agree that the violence of the oppressed is reactive, but I do not think it is loving.

27. Leszek Kolakowski, Marxism and Beyond (Great Britain: Paladin Books, 1971). He tells us: "The problem of a single alternative is one of the most important of our time. It most adequately expresses the experience of the Stalinist era and the main tendency of the political Left resulting from that experience. The whole complex of recent political and intellectual attempts at the ideological renaissance of the revolutionary Left... may be characterized as an attempt to break through the traditional Stalinist blackmail of a single alternative." (Kolakowski 's emphasis, p. 115.)

28. He says: "total consistency is tantamount in practice to fanaticism, while inconsistency is the source of tolerance." (Ibid., p. 230). Further on: "Inconsistency is simply a secret awareness of the contradictions of this world" (p. 231).

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., p. 237.

32. Dominicé and Darcy, IDAC Document #8, p. 31. See note 49, Section 1.

33. Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1972). The rules are spread throughout the Chapter "Of Means and Ends," pp. 24-47.

34. Alinsky's "have some, want more" leaves space for a materialist (self-interest) explanation on why the middle class (the have some-want more) may join the lot of the oppressed. We will see that he does not escape the idealist trap either. But at least, he does not fall into a sharp dichotomizing. His years as community organizer may have taught him that things are not always as clear-cut as we would like them to be. His classification appears in Rules, pp. 18-23.

35. William Griffith, "Utopian Perspective," p. 74.

36. Stated by Juan M. García-Passalacqua in "The Nature of Terrorism," The San Juan Star, Sept. 13, 1983, p. 25; and "FALN," The San Juan Star, July 9, 1983, p. 27. ;

37. Jim Walker, "The End of Dialogue," p. 150.

38. The last two examples are excerpts from personal letters sent by concerned practitioners to the author during 1983. Their names are not relevant for the purposes of this text.

39. See note 35 above. Griffith made a critique of Freire's "revolutionary program," pp. 74-77.

3. Who Are We?

It is necessary to qualify my use of the pronoun "we." It is not used as an academic plural nor does it refer to everyone who uses Freire's ideas. It refers to a group mainly of Latinos in the United States and Puerto Rico who early in the seventies (and late sixties) individually discovered the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and were attracted to its educational philosophy. With one exception (a project that did engage in literacy work as its basic program, though not as its only program), we were not so much attracted by Freire's literacy method, but by the educational practice of liberation and strugg