A hundred year-old man.

by Guillermo Alfonso Ortega - June 8, 2007

In the same way I remember: The importance of being named Ernest by Oscar Wilde, a book I never read but as a kid I saw it among the titles of my dearest father's library, I recall The Praise of Madness by Erasmus of Rotterdam like the book that a literature professor recommended to read but it took me fifty years to do so.

Erasmus's wisdom arrived at this Villa of Abrantes thanks to the kindness of a new friend, whose name I will omit because when I write names to be mentioned belong to persons already departed; this one will delay a lot around here yet. Books are pieces of condensed soul as a manifestation of the spirit, the Arts, the beauty on the equilibrium of shapes, colors or sounds.

Here times of dark influence of the electronic media are lived in all their ways except for the wonderful Internet world. Yes, at Internet one can say, write, sing, scream, come unfastened, and express all that is wanted to. No one is to control not a single millimeter of the freedom of going and coming, speaking and writing whatever is thought. Obviously, interests of those trying to interfere will always exist but they don't reaach that point because they are not able to. Internet is the opportunity that didn't exist sometime ago for anyone to be oneself, whether they like or not and it seems a lot don't.

I have gone during almost two weeks through a weird intellectual solitude - it may seem pretentious, but it is true and I apologize. As I have already expressed it, I have never been neither a Rightist nor a Leftist. I have always been what my mind told me to be as for there resides the only true capital one can ever possess, the rest are just suppositions. The mind of mine would never be at the service of anything neither of anybody for the most fundamental position it may have. Bodies can be rented, sold; not one's mind. Minds have to work at the highest r.p.m. when one believes in what is involved.

Wherever you look at, the media is there currently: the point of view of the owners of power, of the economic power that dominates and subdues politics whether at extra-geographical limits. There is the problem of the congress and I won't say a word about it because - speaking sincerely - it is so much embarrassment, dishonor for the Brazilian descendants of our respectable family neither they do know they are going through that unless for an anonymous existential apathy being manifested surreptitiously in the collective psyche of daily behavior.

The beautiful actress that happens to be a mulattress performing the character of a worker of sex, a sexual fighter, at the 9 p.m. soap opera is much more noble, sincere with herself and more correct than many elements that after being elected by popular ballot vote assume the paper of Parents of Homeland and this runs at the entire Latin America. In the case of Brazil, may I allow the native side of our family to approach that topic. I am in good faith a foreigner and the maximum thing I can do is to watch things quietly now, if I would have decided for the nationalization, well, it would be another matter but at this point of life, it is better to leave things the way they are.

This gentleman is older than sixty years, a retired pensioner of the Brazilian petroleum company that in the past took over the nickname of "Big Mamma" as for there were moments the salaries paid used to be inflationary but overprotective. All those that worked for that company when went into retirement, receive a remuneration that had nothing to do with the national economic reality at that moment and with the profile of people with little schooling that were trained to generally work in the refineries operational processes under, almost always, big accident risks and even death.

This retired gentleman of the oil company is a ferocious self-taught one, able to read three or four of the last best sellers simultaneously, besides those that he carries in his luxurious car to take advantage of the time when he stops at the traffic lights. It was him who lent me Erasmus's book and to whom I suggested to travel to Cuba, to Venezuela, since he often visited Europe. His instantaneous attitude against Cuba and Venezuela was of the most reactionary way I could ever imagine, it seemed a faithful copy of all that the Ultra-Rightist media discloses against the first one and more recently, against the second country, using those subdued instruments exactly as the ones that has and controls all over in Latin America among those the Venezuelan TV network that didn't have its concession renovated by the government of that country.

This other gentleman is to complete a hundred years of age and when being interviewed some days ago by a well-known Brazilian weekly publication whether he was afraid of death, he replied: No, I feel calm facing the unavoidable thing. I don't have a religion. For me, science explains everything. But the idea of death or the notion of a being that commands everything is a permanent mystery in man's thought, very inconvenienced with the perspective of one day to have to disappear forever. Oscar Niemeyer, the architect who projected Brasilia shows that nature has chosen him with the lucidity to reaching that frontier and with the power to judge with sobriety what most know but many don't understand.

Why will this man, philosophically lucid, worshipped and respected by his mastermind in the whole country and abroad that considers a pity to have people as middling as Bush, be able to call Hugo Chavez of a Warrior in Defense of Latin America?