Convivencia-Maura

[Xosé Manuel Alvariño]

Amen!

Abrazos d Xosé Manuel


In a message dated 2/26/2003 7:55:16 AM Eastern Standard Time, maurasantangeloaSTNY.RR.COM writes:

>
> > Xose',
> >
> > it must have not been much of a Convivencia if it inspired the kind of
> > ethnic cleansing which occurred with the Reconquista.  Some people
> > must have felt threatened and excluded.  I do think that the ideal is
> > convivencia, but it has to be inclusive.  All the different groups
> > have to agree to accept not just tolerate difference. Look at the
> > recent examples on ethnic cleansing in India during Partition and
> > Yugoslavia in more recent times.  In both cases there had been living
> > side by side for many centuries.  You could say that it happens
> > because people who want power will exploit these feelings of
> > exclusion, but you can get into an infinite regression about who
> > started what first...
> >
> > On a personal level I have one set of reactions when I live on this
> > side of the Atlantic  (this is the 'we have to accept that Europeans
> > are different'), a different one when I live on the other ("we have
> > been waiting for this moment for 500 years").  What I feel on the
> > other is the 'racial' fear I referred to before.  But I am aware that
> > my fear is the real problem.  It comes not in response to what is
> > going on at the moment but it comes encrusted with retold history of
> > previous events about which I have no direct experience.   It is in
> > fact a kind of insanity.  It is created and kept alive by holding on
> > to a sense of how things were, what 'my culture' is supposed to be and
> > should remain.  it comes from holding on to something which does not
> > really exist.  Luckily I don't seem to feel it in meeting a real
> > person, it comes only in the abstract sense of perceived threat and
> > the more conscious I am of it, the more it seems to lose its hold. In
> > fact just thinking about it to answer you has helped.  Some things do
> > not survive well in the light of day.  As a Buddhist
> teacher I know
> > says "that's why they call it practice"
> >
> > Peace
> >
> > Maura
> >