Chapter 15

Crazy Becomes Normal—Argentina

Alfredo Olivera created and founded Radio La Colifata, the first radio program to use mental patients as broadcasters. The program, originating in Buenos Aires, has an estimated 12 million listeners. Countless more worldwide have heard La Colifata's message through the music, TV programs, and films it has inspired.

WHILE STUDYING FOR HIS DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY, ALFREDO Olivera worked Saturdays as a volunteer for Hospital Borda, a 148-year-old institution near Buenos Aires. El Borda is the largest of Argentina's oversaturated and poorly resourced hospitals, and its property includes an outdoor garden where Alfredo's arts and crafts program met. It occurred to him that the beauty of this weekly program was that it opened the doors to volunteers who came from the community and created meeting opportunities inside the psychiatric hospital—but it wasn't working as planned. The patients were mainly impoverished people who had been committed by relatives. Many had been institutionalized for more than ten years. They didn't know how to relate to the outside wo....