El Salvador: Estoy en Camino

November 8th, 2014

I left my apartment around 3:30am and now I am in the Mexico City Airport awaiting my flight to El Salvador (via Panama). I was thinking about all that lies ahead for me this week and how excited I am to be able to be part of a program about liberation psychology and to be working with colleagues I admire. Selfishly, I am ready for something meaningful and to learn new things. So, I thought, I should do what I required of Intern Shareef and try to document this experience. If a 14 year old can do such a great job, surely I can force myself to keep track of the important events that occur too. Of course, he had an uncle who wouldn't let him go to sleep until he blogged. Still, even though he set the bar pretty high, I am going to try to blog each day this week because I think there will be so much to take in.

The program is part of our first attempts to develop professional relationships with colleagues in El Salvador:

http://www.liberationpsychologyintercambio.com/home.html

We are already working with passionate liberation psychologists who are helping us create this experience and we were able to meet new colleagues last May when we went to set up the program. This week there will be liberation psychologists from all over Latin America who are gathering to remember the martyrdom of Ignacio Martín-Baró, the founder of liberation psychology. Here is a brief introduction from a class I have taught on liberation psychology:

My hope this week and really this year, is to deepen my understanding of this Latin American originating approach to mental health.

A funny thing happened this month. I will have attended three conferences in a little over a month. All are important and reflect different parts of my identity as a professional: The AAMFT conference, the National Latina/o Psychological Association (NLPA) Conferencia and now I will attend un Congreso de psicología de la liberación. The first two conferences were profoundly different in style, format and content. I assume the difference was in large part due to the fact that the AAMFT conference was primarily planned by white people in Leadership and a Latino leadership planned the second conference. Both were highly influenced by the fact that they were organized by people who, for the most part, live in the United States. I have noticed a big difference in style, format and content in previous liberation psychology conferences and I am am interested to see how this year's conference will be.