Collective

La Vorágine

This video has timestamped descriptions to allow viewers to jump to particular topics and sections. Links will open the video in YouTube.
Who are you and how are you involved with La Vorágine? (0:18)
Why the name “La Vorágine” (The Whirlpool)? (1:06)
What relationship does 15M have with the birth of La Vorágine? (2:34)
Thinking of the legal structure, we’re in an “Associative bookstore, a place of discovery and various activities, a collective, a cultural association.” What legal structure have you chosen to register this as? What problems have you encountered in your process? (4:12)
What’s a “Cooperative of social initiative”? (9:51)
How many salaried workers are there? (12:52)
What does it mean to work in “La Vorágine”? (14:50)
Is there any danger of self-exploitation when someone volunteers in an activist capacity while working, or works while serving as a volunteer? (16:53)
La Vorágine is an (economically) non-profit process. As such, it’s impelled by the association La Vorágine Crítica (the critical whirlpool) to look for its collective human and economic sustainability, always with the criteria of independence and autonomy that let us act in liberty and with all the diverse plurality that we’re capable of articulating. We’re talking about a “collective,” a “space or zone of friction and contagion,” a “bookstore,” and a “process.” How do you weave together the internal operation of these three dimensions of action? (20:33)
How are decisions made in this collective? Is assembly procedure used? If so, how has that experience been? (22:23)
In your webpage, you write, “We wanted to challenge hegemonic thought and generalized indifference.” What hegemonic thought are you talking about? (26:30)
You believe in the “collective construction of alternatives.” What kind? (28:49)
You talk about the “rescue and reinterpretation of the common sphere, valuing the power of the collective in the face of individualism.” How does La Vorágine understand the common sphere, and do you distinguish it from “the public sphere” or “the collective sphere”? (31:13)
You work to “seed uncertainties to provoke ‘unlearning.’ ” How do you interpret “unlearning,” and what’s the ‘Critical Institute of Unlearning’ (ICD in its Spanish initials)? (34:41)
What is a “bookstore association”? (38:51)
You’re publishing a line of “Textos (In)surgentes,” ((In)Surgent Texts).  What are insurgent texts? What selection criteria do you use? What are your limits or hard rules? (39:59)
Among the processes that the river of La Vorágine runs through, you have various initiatives of your own: the La Vorágine Sonora radio (literally, the sonorous whirlpool), “a live radio that combines with the audio archives of La Vorágine a form of recuperating and rethinking what we’ve lived and projecting what we want to live;” the Little School of Unlearning; “Dignagente” (literally, worthy people); cultural agitation; the Neighborhood of Good Living, Feminist Saturdays, the Forgotten. Would you say that La Vorágine is, in some way, a project of informal education? (41:25)
What’s your opinion on the current formal environment of education, and how is La Vorágine related to this environment? (43:23)
In light of the climate of political discontent and insecurity, can you think of what keeps hope alive in La Vorágine? (47:06)
What does it mean to grow in the context of La Vorágine? (50:51)

La Vorágine (The Vortex) is a collective process with many derivations. Its principal parts consist of an associative bookstore and a Space for Critical Culture that have been active since April 2013. The collective started very small but has been steadily growing and in December 2018 we moved to a new branch with better conditions. The new space, some 150 meters squared, allows for a new Space for Culture and Activism, which gives space to dozens of initiatives and a bookstore with a high-quality background that is both specialized and generalist. All of this has been done with community at the forefront. The store has grown from having 700 initial titles to its current 6,500, as well as 140 activities and events that are organized every year, the gasoline that feeds our resistances.. all of this exists because of community. Come, get to know, participate, agitate, question… and, if you can, collaborate by making yourself an ally of La Vorágine. While the world system is what it is, there continues to not be enough money to abolish money and it is more necessary than ever to form robust communities that offer the care of words and language that resist the batterings of silence. Source

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