- The Never-Told Story -
A
widespread prejudice, dating from I don't know when, is that an individual who goes
barefoot is necessarily a tramp, antisocial and homeless, sad and disappointed
of life ... ah, and possibly with some mental disorder! A so pathetic picture
that even looks like a cartoon ... and it is, indeed.
About the
precise origin of the cliché, it's something to be unraveled by Cultural
History, but pending the result, same image but putting it shoes, radically
changes its meaning even for the most uncompromising in terms of attire,
transforming itself into the most finished expression of a deep interrogation
about EXISTENCE. (In the mid-1960s, in Mexico City and some other not-so-provincial
towns, the so-called "existentialists" (beatniks) were fashionable: odd characters who
wore everything in black, glasses included - by the way, some go barefoot - and
met in certain cafés to discuss and listening jazz music, by that time, the sum
of sophistication.)
And this
aspect, the existential one, is decisive when adopting barefoot lifestyle, quite effective and
compellent way to avoid the influence - ideological, psychological and cultural
- of mass to find the own BEING, starting point of "being in the world and
society" that each must build for oneself.
Two or
three months ago, a lady asked me an interesting question on the street: that
if I went barefoot because of “detachment” (?). At first I didn’t understand
the meaning, answering that doing so, I felt more free and carefree, but as the
conversation progressed, it became clear that it meant detachment from material
goods, an objective of certain ascetic-religious conceptions.
But this
week, working on this article, motivated by a recent chat with a young man who
also cultivates this lifestyle, I “discovered” that it serves to achieve
something even more important: ideological detachment, an indispensable
condition for accessing an acceptably AUTHENTICAL notion of oneself. It isn't
the only way, of course, but it works very well.
And this is
where appear individualism, self-realization, being oneself, common concepts in
the 70s, but which were abandoned by that of (belonging to a) COMMUNITY, of
Jesuit inspiration, the ideological retrievers par excellence of Catholic
Church.
This was
seen when the Mexican government of the 1970-76 period redirected the youth
rebellion not only politic but existential towards Latin Americanism, a kind of
extended official nationalism, which released the fishing net a bit only to pick it up firmly
afterwards. (Still in 1985, during a meeting of activists of the local public
University, someone made a very lucid observation about the behavior and
appearance of the Rector and his electoral competitor four years ago, during
his student days: “both of them wore huaraches and carried morral, but it
wasn't because they were HIPPIES, but they felt inditos.")
Yes, that
is why in certain circumstances, going BAREFOOT FOR LIFE is a political act of
reaffirmation of one's own individuality, regardless of the affective or
economic situation that the person doing so is going through.
Fernando Acosta Reyes
(@ferstarey) is founder of the Investigative Society of the Strange
(SIDLE), professional musician and student of social behavior.Image: cultura.biografieonline.it
