To read or to eat? Is that the question?

It happened in 2003 in Salavina, a little village lost in the middle of the dry forests wich border the Dulce river, in southeastern Santiago del Estero (Argentinian province). I was there presenting an advance of my work with aboriginal libraries, in the Annual Congress of Quechua Language and Culture (Quechua is the old language of Incas, and Salavina is placed inside the region where the Quechua Argentinian dialect is still lively spoken). During my speech, someone among the audience raised the hand and, in a quite high voice, told me that my work was really nice, but that “poor indians didn´t need books, but food and this kind of things....”.
After some hours, and despite the “consolation” of several colleagues –who supported my ideas and my work with warm a very logical speeches- I was still stuck. Had I been so blind? Had my work been so useless, so utopian, so ridiculous, so stupid?
The question on discussion is: is reading a useful tool for the development of communities and peoples, or maybe it is just a luxury which could be relegated to a last place when compared with more urgent needs?
I built the answer (this answer that I was not able to give in Salavina) after a good number of months working inside the hard reality of rural, indigenous and disadvantaged urban communities.

The prioritary, urgent, physical necessities of an individual or a society can be satisifed through humanitarian aid... if a more convenient way is not previously found. Many hands would give this help willingly: NGOs, religious groups, (some) governments... The problem, as an old peasant of northern Cordoba (the province where I live) funnily tolds to me, is that “shoes and peas tin cans do not breed”. Indeed, once the tin can is empty and the shoes are worn out, we come back to the departure situation of crisis, waiting again for the aid resources. This chain of events usually lead to unfortunated and dangerous relationships: manipulations or social, political and religious control. Several examples in Argentina and other South American countries clearly demonstrate this point.
Primary needs of disadvantaged communities (food, house, health) must be covered in an balanced way, but this must necessarily be complemented with education and information (and this services could be implemented through the work of a public library). Education allows to build paths and roads to the future, to recover lost identities and dreams, to know rights and duties, to find solutions to problems, and to understand the power of the own hands and the own work. It allows to avoid today´s fall to be repeated tomorrow. It allows to build hopes and projects, and to break chains of humiliating dependence. It allows to give the fish to the hungry people today, but also to teach them to catch tomorrow´s fish. It allows to learn how to breed cattle, to manage seeds and plants, to take profit of natural and human resources, to create work and an infinite spectrum of other possibilities.
So, I believe that it does not exist such a disjunctive between books and food. We do not have to left apart the important matters because of the urgent things. We must keep in mind both of them, giving a just treatment to each one. Reading and writing skills –and the ways they open- are essential acquisitions for every human society. Without them, development is neglected, and even stopped.
But it seems that, as usual, the future and its chances are horizons that can be seen just by a few visionary minds. The rest –including a good number of librarians, and authorities, and governments, and powers, and...- remain solving immediate problems. They cannot see that, by doing this, they are closing loads of doors leading to a future growth.
And sometimes, as I have stated before, this kind of help ends in domination and harmful relationships. Just ask to the aboriginal communities in northeastern Argentina: they are paying with their votes the water they drink, and with their prayers and their faith the books their read. American and German evangelic books....