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Testimony
My Homage to Porfirio Miranda
Nora Garro
Teacher-Researcher from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
Nature is full of marvels: the Andean condor, the monarch butterfly, the Canadian salmon, the fish of the sea, the oak tree, waterfalls, volcanoes, every star. Among humans we have the shining spirit of Porfirio Miranda.
I have been in close contact with his work as a teacher at the university. I met him when the Metropolitan Autonomous University was founded in 1974 where we were both professors. There, from my economy class, echoes of a passionate lecture were heard from the adjoining classroom. It was like hearing the murmur of a waterfall or the rumbling of a volcano. Once he hit his desk so hard, I assume to illustrate his ideas, that the windows flew open in my classroom. Not even they could stay indifferent! Neither could I! Ever since I have opened my mind and my heart to these ideas and emotions.
At that time I was in embroiled in a recent marriage, a new house, in my own world, in myself. Porfirio Miranda, in a respectful way, threw questions at me that went straight to my adventurous spirit: What is love? Why do you trust your partner? Why do you say what you say? Have you thought it out? I was challenged in front of an auditorium full of attentive students where not a pin drop was heard. I do not remember what I replied, most likely stuttering who knows what or instinctively bits of the truth, odd pieces of a puzzle. At that time I would like to have had a magic wand in order to create a woman for Porfirio. His search was clear, explicit, intelligent, enthousiastic and disturbing.
God gave him his wife, his love, his accomplice: Maria Adela. It made him whole. That is the best example I have: you can because you know you can, you love because you want to love. Question, search and find.
As time went by, I felt a wall growing up around me, like those mentioned by poets or when Garcia Marquez relates that one of the Buendias went to a meeting, took out a piece of chalk, drew a circle around himself and did not allow anyone to get near him. Porfirio railed against these weaknesses, these flights from dialogue and discussion, from winning or losing a challenge, from not yielding and asking for pardon. It is the call from the alter that we are ego, he says.
To mention some of his gifts: he invited us to hear Berlioz’s Requiem and he, conducting the choir, acquired the exact passion of the spirit before our very eyes; listening to the Humoresque of Dvorak he became as a fitting, kind, and knowing old actor , at peace with himself and with the whole world. To see his study: it appeared not of this epoch, it could have been of Kant’s or Hegel’s, books with yellowing pages, relics, but the man that worked there was up to date with the latest philosophical writings of the twentieth century. They say the book Les Miserables changed his life. For this reason, I read it and my life turned around. You know the candelabra scene where the great love of Valjan for Cossette emerges.
I asked him what kindness consisted of and then, after a moment of silence in which my anxiety, previous to my question, dissolved, he said: you already know. Well, these gifts come tumbling to mind when I polish the silver jug inherited from his parents and which was always on his humble table. Little by little his words become intelligible: People are the ends for themselves, not means to an end however altruistic.
I should like to know what impact he had on each person who considered themselves his pupil, on those who read his books or heard him say that everyone possesses infinite dignity. As for me, I must confess I find it difficult to follow the logic of a systematic way of thinking. Logic I have always considered a kind of tyranny under which I have seen the best of intentions whether primary, elemental or instinctive sunk under the devastating weight of their rigidity. For this reason he preferred the beauty of literature. Porfirio shows us that humanity has infinite dignity and that life is a process in which we can find it. This is bread for the hungry, the desperate, people without hope, the solution to the most difficult mathematical equation, the idea that makes us better people, the reference for our destiny, the seed of an inner peace and better communication. And it is not literature, nor is it good intentions. It is part of the truth, a strict form of logic. What a lesson!
Then, this manner of writing, polemic, challenging. Roaring like a lion but arguing like an angel. Reading his books gives me a mental and physical well-being. I want to shout: Porfirio! Porfirio! Because I forget that it is philosophy and it makes me an accomplice of his permanent fight against human stupidity. This man makes us enthusiastic, happy, and gives us good news from his incursions into rarely visited worlds.
Occasionally, we succumb to vacuity. I mean for example: nobody can teach me anything and nobody can make me do what I do not want to do; or I do not believe anything anyone tells me, I am a like a deity that no-one can hurt; or I look at the great woes of humanity, I do not interfere nor do I care. So, Porfirio tells us that morals are both imperative and binding. If someone argues and shows that something is true, even though it is intangible, we must have faith in what is discovered and proven: we have to say and do what has to be said and done. Truth and justice exist.
Porfirio is optimistic as to the future of humanity. Without a doubt, he came to this conclusion through rigorous and precise thinking. But also because he was a good man and knows the value of hope. So much so, that there is a sign on the door of his home which reads: In God I have put my hope.
One day, in my garden, I was able to hold a humming bird in my hands. Slowly fluttering, looking round, with no intention of flying away. I took it into my house to show to my family; it continued fluttering its wings but did not fly away. A long time went by and it was still looking around, it did not go away. This is similar to my friendship with Porfirio, subtle and eternal.
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