Students sneak in one last cigarette as others chat and joke around before the bell signals them to start their day at Instituto Ramón Carande. Upon entering the institute one is greeted with signs that encourage sharing peace and camaradarie between themselves and the world. The halls are silent and empty, awaiting the presence of the 565 students that attend this school that Encarnación Quiroga, the school psychologist and academic coordiantor describes as existing in “the border between the city and las Tres Mil Viviendas”.
Many of the students at Instituto Ramón Carande come from Polígono Sur, known also as las Tres Mil Viviendas, a housing project conceived by the government of Sevilla in the sixties to provide housing to the marginalized, an attempt to avoid the creation of shanty towns. What has evolved from these intial efforts is a neighborhood surrounded by barriers. Train tracks border the south, a “wall of shame”lies to the east and the old River Guadaira lies to the west, creating a neighborhood described by Professor Ibán Díaz Parra as “vertical shanty towns.”
Physical barriers have geographically isolated the neighborhood while social barriers, created from delinquence, violence, drugs, and stigmas of Polígono Sur lead to problems of marginilization and social exclusion. Yessi, a sixteen year old student from Las Letanías at Ramón Carande explained that she thinks that the United States has less delinquence becuase the “police are stricter”, preventing what Almudena, a 15 year old student from Los Amarillos at Ramón Carande described as “shootings in the street at people who were not to be blamed.” When asked about problems with drugs in her neighborhood, Jessi simply replied with an emphatic “Ufff” before continuing with her description of her world. Though they hail from a marginalized neighborhood, where circumstances may prevent their success, Jessi and Almudena look to the future with hope. Jessi wants to work as an employee in a prison while Almudena wants to work in a daycare. Both dream of visiting New York, iconic for the possibility it represents.
Almudena and Yessi are like any other girl in secondary school. They enjoy hanging out with their friends, spending more time in their house as the weather cools, and at times like to sing flamenco.. Like true sevillanas, they had an opinion about la Feria and Semana Santa, Almudena assuring me that though “Semana Santa is sad, this is what makes it beautiful.” They speak with a true andaluz accent and speak with their hands at times more so than with words, but theses two girls, Almudena and Yessi, have to battle stigmas that might cloud their future plans. As described in an article from the Diario de Sevilla, “When the people of the neighborhood look for work, they never say they live in Polígono Sur.” Encarnación Quiroga gave another example of social exclusion due to these stigmas when she said that “some parents from la Oliva reject that their children go to school with students from las tres mil viviendas.” Aware of this, Quiroga helps to fight this stigma, saying she “works for coexistence”, helping students to adjust to their background in context of beliefs and opinions held by others. Quiroga facilitates an environment of coexistence with the other programs she coordinates such as orienting students to the university system, keeping track of their absences, identifying their areas of weakness from previous cycles of mandatory education and overseeing diversification groups or “remedial school”. Diversification groups, where Quiroga instills her ideals of coexistence, are composed of students, including Almudena and Yessi, who are “good kids that have a lot of motivation” who may have some learning disabilities caused by gaps in their education, perhaps a lack of appropriate primary schooling. Gaps grow in the educational system due to schooling in poor neighborhoods and lack of motivation to learn. Gaps that cause half the students to drop out before they have finished their ESO, contributing to the dismal statistics of Polígono Sur where the illiteracy rate is high: 14.8 percent son analfabetos, 10.8 percent no han terminado ESO and only a small portion, 0.7 percent have finished their baccalaureate.
Though the overall statistics do not show rapid improvemenet in housing developement, eradication of drugs, decreases in violence, unemployment or schooling rates, Instituto Ramón Carande offers hope. Though it resides in the “barrier between the city and las Tres Mil Viviendas” it serves as an oasis that fosters coexistence, peace, camaradarie and education.
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