ONE: Mauro Rivera Dorador de la Familia

My connection and portal into la Familia, Mauro is a deep thinker and highly socially motivated.  Alongside studying medicine (but with the idea to graduate and move on into other areas rather than working as a doctor) Mauro has been actively involved in local activist groups engaging in issues around education, politics and environment, printing pamphlets, flyers and magazines to raise awareness and share alternative viewpoints.  

A fellow traveller spirit, you can feel Mauro is a special soul just by being in his very peaceful presence and also by noticing the admiration  his friends have for him as they say he is ‘unusual’ and ‘different’, meaning he is exceptionally generous and open. :-)

When I first arrived into la Serena Mauro was half way through a 24-hour shift at the hospital that he has every six days.  The doctors may sleep if there are no emergencies but the sleep is minimal - a pretty crazy shift pattern if you ask me... as I said to Mauro if I were the patient I reckon I'd rather wait a day or two than be treated by someone exhausted at the end of a 24 hour work-day.  Mauro is such a calm lad though that he seems to take it in his stride, along with the fact that he has no holiday now in his second to last year of studying and internship until April 2014. A hard-worker for sure it's amazing how chilled Mauro is! 

Mauro Rivera Dorador 

 A challenge overcome: lost the fear of the power of money

A dream for his future: to breathe in streets free from the control and domination of other humans

 A hope for the global community: to be free from the slavery of the over-exploiter

·      Love will be free or it will not be!

There were many happy moments shared with with Mauro over the weeks, some special ones being:

Sharing maté  (local herbal hot drink, drunk from a metal ‘bomba’ through a metal straw) and deep chat on the beach at la Serena on my second afternoon in town, after Mauro had finished his once-a-week 24 hour shift at the hospital (which meant that a lovely kind friend of his, Christian, had met me at the bus station and taken me for fresh sefood on the seafornt the previous evening)  Felt appropriate then to make a thank you present for Mauro and the household from shells found on the beach, by combining them with macramé and an old discarded horseshoe found in Diaguitas to become a a wind chime.  The horseshoe has proven it's lucky qualities twice already: 1st Oscar and I had been trying unsuccessfully to hitch a ride out of Diaguitas for quite a while, then within minutes of finding the horseshoe a car pulled over and picked us up! 2nd As Oscar and I left the beach at la Serena on my final afternoon Oscar realised he's lost the keys to his Aunt's house and went back to the spot we'd been sat to look for it but with no success, until we both went, and with the horseshoe I'd been weaving threads to in my bag, Oscar found the key half buried already by the sand! 

  
Chopping veg side-by-side at Playa Toto preparing my la Serena adaptation of Jo’s Guiness-bean-stew recipe to stew on our wood fire there to share with Daniela, Christian and a friend of his in the company of an affectionate sea-soggy doggy!

Admiring the wooden mosaic mural of the closed Museo Domo in Coiuqimbo and chatting on the steps afterwards about the levels of inclusion or not of the indigenous people of Chile.  In common with the majority of indigenous people worldwide, the varied tribes of Chile have been repressed and looked down on for generations.   I noticed a shift in intention about inclusion for indigenous people, for example in the scholarships for university offered to anyone of indigenous descent (Daniel and a couple of her mates are either applying for of have one of these 'becas'), or a poster highlighting indigenous rights (the fact that there even needs to be such  a poster points to the level of exclusion that indigenous people have been subjected to even very recently), but Mauro believes that there is still a far way to go before genuine inclusion and that current efforts are mere show.  Daniela tells me a law was passed about a year ago to outlaw discrimination of any kind, including towards homosexuals, but as with every law change it will probably take a few generations before this new thinking is truly embedded in the collective subconscious.

Let's hope that inclusion comes soon.