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153 C H A P T E R F O U RT E E N F r o m t h e E c o n o m y t o F r i e n d s h i p : M y Ye a r s S t u d y i n g I v a n I l l i c h Eugene J. Burkart O ne summer morning in 1973 Ivan Illich was conducting his seminar “Limits to Growth” in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He sat on a wall surrounding the veranda of the Casa Blanca, an old hacienda on the grounds of his alternative learning arrangement, the Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC). I had positioned myself a little below and behind him on the stairs that led up to the veranda. As I sat there, not really following the conversation closely, I felt overcome by a turmoil of anger and contempt for this man. For several weeks since my arrival at CIDOC, I had been trying to size up this controversial figure. Along with many others, I found him to be brilliant; his intellect was dazzling and formidable, like none I had ever encountered; he was charismatic , too. There was a remarkable presence and aliveness about him. But he was not just a man of ideas. What he had done at CIDOC was very different from any educational institution I was familiar with. It had little administration, no salaried staff, and no credits or degrees issued. Yet about the place there was a palpable air of devotion to learning. Perhaps it was closer to the original idea of a university than more conventional counterparts. Well, this was all fine and good, but still I wondered, What was its relevance to the poor? Was Illich really concerned about them? What was he proposing to do for those living in desperate conditions, or for those suffering under oppressive military regimes in Latin America? Was CIDOC anything more than a privileged enclosure? After much thought and many conversations with other American students at CIDOC, I made up my mind. I came to the seminar that morning having concluded the night before that Illich was a phony, someone enmeshed in his own cleverness, a dangerous distraction from the pressing social concerns of the day. Yet I must have had some lingering doubts. How else to explain my presence on those steps and the intensity of my feelings? As I watched Illich, I felt my anger grow with each word he spoke. And then a strange thing happened: He suddenly turned toward me. To see where I sat he had to turn quite far, but I was not sure whether he saw me because I was on the periphery of his vision; and he did not know me. I wondered, Had he sensed my anger? He continued speaking, all the while looking intensely at me, as if he really wanted me to understand what he was saying. I returned his gaze and although I did not understand a word he said, I felt the confusion of my thoughts and feelings inexplicably lifted from me. In those few moments I had the experience of intimately seeing this person, Ivan Illich, for the first time; I then knew he was someone I could trust. But I would not have a direct conversation with him for many years to come. I went to CIDOC at the age of twenty-three. I was entering law school that fall, but I did not know where that would take me. Like many other American students at CIDOC, I came with grave concerns about my own country. This was a time of much social turmoil and unrest in the United States. The Vietnam War lingered on; the Watergate hearings had just begun. Throughout Latin America, military dictatorships were in power due to United States support. At home, protest was often met with official violence. Dissident groups—students, Blacks, farmworkers , prisoners, Native Americans—all had their casualties. Fresh in my mind were the events at Wounded Knee, Kent State, and Attica State Prison. It seemed to me at the time, as it did to many others, that violence was somehow inherent to American society. Prior to my arrival at CIDOC, I had worked for a year as a laborer in factories: first in a carpet mill and then later in an automobile assembly plant. I needed to earn money, but I also wanted to be closer to the world of...

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