The Guadalajara Reporter

Dealing with illiteracy in savvy, secretive ways as a ranch hand, gardener and mountainside handyman, despite the resulting wound to reasoning

The unrelenting nemesis of journalists and editors is a twined one: Space and time.

Time means deadlines, space dominated by journalism’s commercial engine, advertisements, determines how long a story can be. August 4, a discussion here about the cultural and emotional cost of illiteracy in modern societies, used the eye-opening German novel, and film, “The Reader” — and got its tail cropped by space considerations. This lead some readers to believe that in both novel and film forms, “The Reader” attempts to defend an illiterate woman who became a SS guard during World War II. If that were the case, “The Reader” wouldn’t have found a home here.

The issue of the illiteracy tends to revolve around not merely the two handicaps it represents, but the deeper cognitive amputation that results, and the emotional wrinkles it plants for life. Locally, there are many Mexicans whose childhoods called for full-time work beginning when they were five or six. And an another gee-I-didn’t-know-that side of things is represented by the female protagonist, Hanna Schmitz (acted superbly in the film by Kate Winslet), of “The Reader.” That absence of understanding is mostly global. Germany, unsurprisingly, has been noticeably silent — like other venues — regarding the interior lives of such people as an SS camp guard.  (Exception: Steven Spielberg’s marvelously conceived 1993 film, “Schindler’s List,” with Fiennes as a savage SS officer.)

I employ Mexicans who are illiterate, and on a ranch, work with others who can’t read or write. A female North American reader this week reported that her gardener, who has worked for her three years, recently showed her a piece of printed paper. He asked her to translate the words for him, since they were in English. She examined the paper and saw that the words were in Spanish. Being both thoughtful and wise, as well as bilingual, she roughly “translated” the words, without noting what language was used.

My wife and I have always used lists as organizing tools, both for organizing our work, and as memory checks for sorting out the saltos of details that fill our days.  Therefore, we are constantly handing and posting lists for our employees. I work with a man whom I’ve known since he was a kid who does not read nor write. I always read off the day’s tasks from a list I’ve made. And each time, when I’ve finished, and he’s repeated the list and asked questions that make everything clear, he asks for the list.  Even though he can’t read it, having that piece of paper with his apodo (nickname), Memo, at the top, and his day’s responsibilities enumerated below makes him equal to his educated fellow workers.

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