She is Natalia. She has exactly the same name as my daughter. Even their age is close. I met her in Peru, a few months ago, in the Andes Mountains, where she lives with her family in an isolated village, far away from the modern world. Here she will learn to weave, she will learn the medicinal herbs and she will learn to coexist with nature. Meantime my daughter Natalia will live in a global world, mostly in modern places, learning foreign languages and developing her passions. Since I started The Atlas of Beauty I always had a dilemma. How should we support people from remote traditional communities? Their life is really hard, compared to ours. But is it okay for us to change it and bring our lifestyle to their communities, assuming that this will help them? Will their new life, besides being more comfortable, be truly better? If not, how can we support them without spoiling their culture? Are we, those in modern places, more aware of what they need? Definitely not. So who are we to decide for them? They never try to decide for us. If we try to teach them our modern values, aren’t we condescending? But if we ignore their struggles, aren’t we ignorant and selfish? It’s a complicated issue and we should maybe find a middle way, but that’s not easy. Who knows, maybe someday my Natalia and this sweet Natalia will have the chance to meet and sort this out. Maybe their generation will find a fair answer to my dilemma.
