At the end of the productive congress it was suggested the following one take place in La Paz, Bolivia, in homage to the peace process and political discourse of its new government and its plans for a new constitution with respectably changing and unedited regulations.
So I met Mario Rodríguez Cobos, better known as SILO, native of Mendoza, Argentina, a philosopher, psychologist, thinker, leader of a cultural, political, social, spiritual and extraordinary movement. Initially taken for a fanatic of a religious sect, he was pursued and slandered for being proselytist of a group of anarchists protesting against the Onganía military regime.
He was a man of few, yet important, words; and his message was deep in meaning. I was left surprised by the transcendence of his texts, by the respect, individual and cooperative support and more than anything, by the communion and great joy of all his people.
People of all ages, but mostly youngsters, of all ideologies and religious faiths, of all languages, in the process of building the New Man, the one proclaimed by Jesus Christ, Giordano Bruno, Mahatma Gandhi, Luther King, Romand Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, Axel Munthe, Teresa de Calcuta, Luis Espinal, and today by Galeano, Frei Betto, Leonardo Boff, Miguel d´Escoto, Gregorio Iriarte, and the man who reached sublimity in life: SILO.
All of my existence has been a search for political ideas, liberal ethics of mankind within the framework of the values of freedom, democracy, peace, justice, service, charity, independence. I thought I had found them in Christianity, Marxism, Socialism, the Arts, in esthetics, in the depth of philosophy, in the cult around nature. I was enchanted at times, extremely frustrated at others, until I found my horizon in Quito, in Silo’s new humanism.
His thoughts held the answers to all my worries, they rectified the dogmatism I had learnt, and they enriched the superstructure of the MASS of which I was senator. In turn, I studied the fact that Andean thought coincided with the humanist doctrine created based on the noble Prigogine and on all of the aforementioned thinkers. Later I visited him in Punta de Vacas below Aconcagua several times and with each visit I left richer in values having heard his words. His death was an event of faith, joy and commitment.
I was asked about my identification as a Socialist Humanist. Here I have the explanation; from the brain to the heart I belong to the socialist movement ever enriched by humanism, as a citizen of the left, I condemn the system of a globalized market: creator of injustice, predator of spirituality, terminator of Nature in the time of post modernity; now I strongly believe in the values proclaimed by Mario Rodríguez Cobos.
May everyone hear his message and practice it in order to fill themselves with Peace, Force and Joy! This the hallelujah, splendid greeting, soul, ajayu with which all humanists find themselves.
SILO died recently, leaving behind a vast work to be built upon, he was cremated and his ashes were spread over the twenty parks of study and reflection throughout the world, with great cheer and joy.
He was planted in ours; Montecillo Park, in Tikipaya. Honour his existence and his word. The plenitude of his message has begun.
*translation Viviane Fathimani*
