Let's head towards peace

I can’t keep quiet, I must not. I have seen many things in many places in the world. That’s why, says Federico Mayor Zaragoza, the moment has come to react, the moment where each human being takes the leading role that belongs to him. The moment to appear on the scene and everyone, heading towards peace, at last take the space that the people who held power occupied. Even the universal principles that guided people’s behavior have been thrown out and substituted by the markets’ behavior. That’s how we walk along without a compass and without paths, bursts out the writer in “The Power of Words”, the recently edited book that compiles the best of his ideas.

I have reached the conclusion that we only have one strength: language, he says in the introduction. That which transmits the immense, creative, inventive power of each unique human being. If we become free through education, if we are at last citizens and not subjects, if we build the democracy that represents the truth of the community’s voice then we will transmit our message from a culture of imposition, of violence, of the fittest to survive law into one of concord, of dialogue, of understanding, of peace and justice.

The thread of the choice of written peaces that have reflected his moods, his hypotheses, previsions, reflections, fears and dreams all along the years stands for hope because it supports his belied in the infinite capacity of the human specie.

This is a wise man with renowned universal prestige, Pharmacy doctor and Biochemistry professor in the University of Granada of which we was once Dean. Representative of the Spanish Parliament and Minister of Education and Science and, from 1987 to 1999, General Director of the UNESCO, he is President of the Peace Culture Foundation and he shares his experiences from that watchtower for them to serve as incentives in the struggle for globalizing liberty, democracy, justice and solidarity, along with all the people who raise against injustice, war, hunger and exclusion of any human being.

We cannot remain silent so that our children don’t feel ashamed of us and despise us because being able to do so much, we dared to so little. So that when our descendants look back they cannot complain against us, “We waited for your voice... but it never got here.”

He starts off on February 15, 2003 because that day represented for him the beginning of the community’s voice as a multitude in peaceful way expressed against the war. From his 70 lived years with vigor, with a wisdom born out of experience and reflection, Mayor Zaragoza tells leaders and the powerful over the land that the mobilization will have continuity – not only physical continuity, but rather virtual with the use of all the technological resources, the Internet and text messages through the cell phones included – and that it will not only be a high voice protesting, but also one that proposes not only against, but also in favor of humanity’s greatest objectives, so excluded and breached in a reiterated way. The economic, social, environmental, cultural and ethical issues will be approached by world citizens that will no longer quit, conscious of the fact that the era of submission has come to an end.

The era of indifference and silence has come to an end, he writes. The day of spirit’s rebellion, of having the future at hand, of placing youngsters in the center of all initiative and action has come. Because in the words of Gabriela Mistral, the name of youngsters is “Today” and our commitment cannot be postponed. Now is the time to use all the resources of the “global village” for people to go on the stage of the century of the people at last. In order that another world might be possible, the hands that have risen, instead of holding out, they must unite in a common effort, in a projection of the future because our life and that of the planet where we belong depends on it. We have remained silent, he regrets. From now on, we will speak summoning all human beings. Word’s strength! So that nobody remains silent. So that everyone knows they are necessary and that they feel summoned. Nobody who knows how to speak remains quiet, everyone who can join this voice! To carry out fraternity’s revolution, the only one that hasn’t had the clairvoyance to be undertaken, until the “global village” has made it possible, he writes.

We welcome those words here, in this Center of Collaborations for Solidarity, because we knew we were on our way, like Unamuno wrote in the Prologue to the Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, aware that in other thousands of places of the world people walked hungry for peace, nostalgic of eternity and ardent in the most noble of tasks, to make people happy. That is, to make them sovereign.

José Carlos Gª Fajardo

Este artículo fue publicado en el Centro de Colaboraciones Solidarias (CCS) en 2006