The Pohualizcalli’s Gaze. Inequalities, Culture, and Disability

On an average morning in Iztapalapa, a group of young people surround a table filled with cameras, lenses, and recorders. Some look through the viewfinder, others touch the textures of a target with their fingertips. Not everyone sees the images they capture, but everyone feels them. This is the “Photography for Blind People” workshop I taught a few months ago at Pohualizcalli, the House of Stories, a freely accessed and high-quality educational project that has been fighting cultural inequalities for five years.

This isn’t the only scene. During this time, alongside a team of more than forty teachers—including some who have already passed but who did their part—we have taught nearly five hundred workshops on everything related to film and photography, serving and training more than 23 thousand students, according to internal statistics from 2025. We have done so in decent classrooms, with specialized equipment and without discrimination based on age, origin, economic status, or disability, and in one of Mexico City’s most historically marginalized areas.

Jesús Villaseca with the photography initiation group
Picture: Antonio Flores Peña

CULTURE AS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE
The question cannot be avoided: what is culture and who can access it? From the perspective of those who experience and consume it, culture is limitless: it generates roots, pride, identity, and deeply connects us with our community (UNESCO, 2001). However, in practice, access to culture is marked by economic, geographic, and social barriers. It is not that the working classes lack artistic sensitivity, but rather that inequalities limit their exposure to diverse cultural expressions (García Canclini, 1990).

Descartes said: “I would give all I know for half of what I don’t know.” This phrase remains relevant and raises a profound concern: Who owns knowledge? Educational institutions, legislators, elites? Art, like knowledge, should be a common heritage, not a commodity subject to the logic of the market. However, in film and photography, access to renowned schools and specialized equipment remains a high-cost privilege, and social media is overflowing with educational offers that lack foundation or even ethics.

Video Editing Class
Picture: Antonio Flores Peña

POHUALIZCALLI: A MODEL AGAINST INEQUALITY
Faced with this situation, at Pohualizcalli we have demonstrated that quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive. Each teacher tends to very large groups of students, and contrary to the idea that large groups are anti-pedagogical, our results show the opposite: unleashed creativity, confidence in their abilities, job placement in the audiovisual industry, and, above all, a sense of community.

Thus, the Pohualizcalli experience confirms what pedagogical literature has pointed out: group size alone does not determine the quality of learning. As Biggs and Tang (2011) warn, the crucial factor is having an appropriate instructional design and strategy that promotes active participation, constant feedback, and clear objectives.

Similarly, Freire (1970) emphasizes that learning flourishes in dialogue and horizontality, and that community can become a driving force for developing critical awareness. Thus, far from being an obstacle, the diversity and breadth of our groups have been an opportunity to enhance the exchange and collective construction of knowledge.

In large groups, cooperative learning techniques can be applied, redistributing work and encouraging meaningful interaction among students. The impact is tangible, and we experience it every day at “Pohua”; young people who might have fallen into dynamics of violence or drug use find a place here to learn something they are passionate about. Older adults discover photography and film as a means to tell their memories. People with disabilities exercise their right to express themselves artistically on equal terms.

UN Migration exhibit on Pohualizcalli fence
Picture: Antonio Flores Peña

PHOTOGRAPHING WITH OTHER SENSES
Among the most significant experiences are our inclusion workshops. Professor Rosario Servín taught “Photography for People with Down Syndrome,” opening a space where the camera became a tool for self-esteem and socialization. For me, in the “Photography for Blind People” workshop, I confirmed the truth of the saying: “No one is as blind as those who refuse to see.”

In this course, students explored light through heat on their skin, identified frames with the orientation of sound, and learned to operate a camera guided by touch. Images are not only generated by sight: they are perceived with the remaining four senses, and these perceptions produce profound reactions that can be translated into visual language. In the end, it wasn’t just them who learned: I learned too to observe differently, to recognize values ​​that transcend economic or social aspirations.

María Elena Pacheco
Picture: Jesús Villaseca Chávez

CULTURE, COMMUNITY, AND RESISTANCE
Community projects like ours are not a luxury: they are a historical necessity. We are not isolated beings, and major cultural, social, and economic crises are not resolved individually, but collectively (Holloway, 2010). A culture of peace, inclusion, and respect for human rights is the most effective tool for balancing inequalities.

The greedy and exclusionary capitalist system tends to marginalize the weakest in its race for profit, impoverishing millions (Harvey, 2007). Considering this, promoting film and photography as tools for social change is not an accessory, but a form of cultural resistance.

Story Creation and Screenwriting Class
Picture: Antonio Flores Peña

BEYOND NUMBERS: TRANSFORMED LIVES
While attendance and workshop figures are significant, real pride lies in personal stories. The young man who found his first job on a film set thanks to what he learned in class. The woman who, after years of silence, told her life story in a short documentary. The blind students who, cameras in hand, demonstrated that seeing is also feeling, smelling, hearing, and touching.

FREE EDUCATION AND CULTURE, WITH DECENT FACILITIES AND ADEQUATE EQUIPMENT, ARE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS THAT WE MUST DEFEND COLLECTIVELY

At Pohualizcalli, we don’t evaluate using numerical grades. Our goal is to provide people with tools for life and work; to offer all possible knowledge with the conviction that knowledge grows when shared. Our community is empathetic, eager to learn, to propose, to accompany, to share not only techniques but also experiences and perspectives on life.

FIGHTING FOR WHAT IS OURS
Free education and culture, with decent facilities and adequate equipment, are constitutional rights that we must defend collectively. We cannot give in to the rapacious privatization that threatens to turn them into privileges. As the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) motto says: “Everything for everyone.” At Pohualizcalli, we remain committed to that struggle. We are a space where the camera not only captures images: it captures dreams, preserves memories, builds identities, and, above all, breaks barriers down.

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