Intellectuals: Ten Points toward Integration
1. - What is an intellectual? An intellectual is someone whose work consists on integrating signs and symbols instead of manipulating physical objects. He or she uses the acquired knowledge to intervene in social matters.
Debates about whether an intellectual has social responsibilities are futile. An intellectual who does not intervene in social issues is not an intellectual; he or she is merely an specialist, an accountant calculating spreadsheets instead of reality. Einstein, who opened the doors to the atomic age, first asked for an atomic bomb to be used against fascism, then he asked for the atomic bomb not to be used in subsequent wars. He was an intellectual. He intervened in social fields that were not theoretically his specialty but they concerned him as a human being. That is an intellectual.
2. - Do intellectuals have social responsibilities?
Yes they do. We all have responsibilities as human beings. Nonetheless, that responsibility is directly proportional to our powers. Anyone has responsibilities for what they say. Anyone can curse, insult or aggravate. However, if someone has the possibility of multiplying his/her words on a 5,000-edition book, he/she has 5,000 more responsibilities. Whoever has access to an op-ed in a newspaper and multiplies his/her voice 360 thousand times has the same amount of responsibilities. Whoever has access to a TV network reaching millions of viewers has millions of responsibilities as well.
In that sense, it is it not only about responsibility but also as a social fact. Speech is what links societies or the opposite. However, in this case there are multiple responsibilities, as the reach of the responsibility grows, so does the reach of the intellectual powers.
3. - What has been the responsibility of intellectuals in Latin America? What must it be?
Latin America and the Caribbean, as we know them, is an intellectual creation. It was invented by a Spanish linguist named Lebrija, who proposed the Spanish kings to write a grammar, a manual of signs and symbols. It was a tool for the empire to dominate the territories about to be dominated. Using quills, papyrus, old bibles and other tools, the Spanish empire was able to create a culture running from Rio Grande to the Patagonia. An Pompeian task taking into consideration the limited resources. The printing press was only used in some provinces and not until a few decades before independence. But in reality, our culture exists and that is what allows us to call ourselves Latin Americans, from the Caribbean basin to the highlands of Peru and Bolivia. At the same time, we also received an immense number of cultures and languages. We can communicate with each other.
There are two factors in our culture: language and religion. Christianity here is a mix with indigenous icons and African deities smuggled into the continent, an extraordinary syncretism. We ought to preserve it and multiply it, creating a new political, economical, and social reality. I would say that that is the task of the intellectuals.
4. - How can we embark on this task?
First of all, we must deal with the main instrument: we have to defend the Spanish language and other languages in the region. One example is Puerto Rico, where speaking Spanish is a compromise and a defense of our language, making it richer, softer, more impressive and interesting.
We need to reestablish our links with Spain. We have a cultural heritage with them. We must establish that bond, just like Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darío did with the Spanish Modernism, and the other way around with the so-called Boom of the 60’s.
Likewise, we must take a look inside ourselves. A great example of the latter is the fact that Brazil has just enacted a law that considers Spanish a first language to be taught at public schools. The rest of the continent should follow suit. There is nothing sweeter than Brazilian Portuguese. Almost all Brazilians speak the so-called portuñol, which is nothing else than a perfectly understandable form of Spanish. However, us Spanish speakers cannot even muter a word in Portuguese. It is a shame. It is our duty to go beyond that border that separates our other Latin American half, Brazil. We should also keep the integrity of our indigenous languages, which in some countries are spoken by up to 70% of the population. There should be a bilingual and bicultural education that allows indigenous communities to develop their own languages and access Spanish or Portuguese information may they feel the need to do so.
5. - Latin American intellectuals must fight for an academic reform in all universities of the region. In Venezuela, for example, law school at the Central University does not have courses on hydrocarbons and mining law. Actually, oil and mining is absent from most courses at that university. We have to rethink our academic curricula in order to adapt them to our reality.
How many universities in our continent lack a Latin American History faculty!? And if they do, it is totally biased and outdated. But the worse part is that they are just not there.
All the education programs in each level have to include studies abut our realities, our cultures, our history, our economy, our society, our political reality. Along with that, we have to build an intercommunication system so that we can really set ourselves up as the nation we are. These programs must seek information so that there can be some kind of automatic validity from one border to another. There is no difference among us, but when we get to the academic sector, we find a wall higher than the Chinese one. That has to be one of the tasks we have to carry out in order to achieve an entire integration.
6- That task also includes the following: Shaping Latin American Studies Institutes. In the United States, there are about 300 Latin American Studies Institutes that scrutinize everything we do. How many similar institutes do we have in Latin America?
We have many fantasies, but we are very short of things like the House of the Americas in Cuba, the Institute of Caribbean History, and the “Jetulio Vargas” Foundation in Brazil. In Venezuela, the “Rómulo Gallegos” Institute was founded with big intentions, but there was some kind of volunteer strangling due to lack of money so that it could not be the great institution it was planed to be. There should be several Latin American Studies Institutes in every country. These institutes can help promote and study the Latin American and Caribbean nation. They can be centers for gathering, for exchanging experiences, for promotion, for publishing books, for making films. This task has to be carried out everywhere.
7- We need diplomatic agreements. We just have small agreements. We need a big agreement that really sets the free intercommunication of goods in Latin America, the free exchange of films, books, records, and work of arts as long as they do not belong to our heritage, which has been looted along the decades. Furthermore, this agreement should categorically solve - the problems of studies validity. All these elements should be categorize with diplomatic laws.
8- Intellectuals must be active members in institutions that can multiply and spread our reinforcement. We are talking about networks like the Defense Network for Humanity. Intellectuals live according to an isolation ritual since it is true that creation is a moment of solitude, and that sometimes leads us to think that there is no absence and that there are not other intellectuals.
9- There are also cultural newspapers that act as censorship agencies with hidden lists of intellectuals that they do not mention. So we have to be militants in this kind of organizations that head towards the social, political and cultural action. I would also dare to say that we have to be militants in the media.
Sometimes intellectuals undervalue the media, but it is our duty to be militants in the widely-known media of each time. When Dostoievsky and Honorato de Balzac wrote novels and for newspapers, they were regarded everything but writers, they were unanimously despised since they used such a common media. That media was the vehicle for the big masterpieces of the XIX Century because someone was determined to use it. As they open the door for us, we have to move the foot, then the knee, and come in. And we have to be in there until we are kicked out with proscription lists, which are praiseworthy. Intellectuals should not censor themselves; they should not be quiet when they are censored; they must be stronger than hatred and spread their messages through the most diverse ways. This stimulates creativity. There is nothing like being in an underground place where everything is censored in order to start inventing things.
10- Finally, I would say that a network like the Defense Network for Humanity should reconsidered the role of intellectuals. Intellectuals like to think they are people that know everything and want to spread their knowledge among the crowds. On the contrary, we see things from inside and we know that we do not know anything. We are intellectuals because we want to learn. Currently, a prodigious phenomenon restarts another revolutionary cycle within humanity in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is the boom of social movements. Society has started its engine without parties, leaders, and sometimes without programs. It is achieving results; it is demolishing the IMF policies; it is overthrowing governments, it is accepting its own social reforms; it is defending water.
Intellectuals have to approach that movement. We have to try to understand what is going on and how society gets organized. I have always said that World War IV began in Venezuela on February 27, 1989, when the people – without leaders, or programs – revolted against a IMF program nationwide. Another period started within the world affairs on that day.
We should try to spread these social movements; we should try to become their spokespeople and to reconstitute societies by making political parties and the State serve these movements and economy serve this social block. We also must try to understand, facilitate, intercommunicate, an act as a communication and legitimization for this movement.
We have a prodigious and beautiful task: attending the world’s birth. Latin America and the Caribbean are a reality shaped by culture. They should acquire a categorical, undeniable, palpable and unstoppable reality.
Luis Brito García, Venezuelan writer
