The confidence of Pablo González Casanova in young and in the villages evokes a book

The intellectual and political Pablo González Casanova, who died in 2023 at age 101, maintained a fundamental feature: optimism, anchored in two social actors, peoples and young people. He considered them abstract entities in which you could trustsaid political scientist Miguel Armando López Leyva, editor of the book Pablo González Casanova in his centenary.

López Leyva referred to The day A fragment of the speech with which the sociologist and historian assumed in 1970 the rectory of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM): We have full confidence in university students and, more, we have full confidence in the future of the nation and humanity; that is, in the villages and in young people.

The doctor of Social Sciences added that the allusion to the peoples made by González Casanova later resulted in His concern for indigenous peoples.

The current Humanities Coordinator of the UNAM said the text Pablo González Casanova in his centenary It is the result of the commemorations for the century of life of the influential leftist in the left in 2022, when a cycle of round tables was organized on its academic and institutional career, as well as A very significant aspect that consisted of me: its human quality.

Reminder of your legacy

That meeting became the chapters of the volume, to which some other things were added, such as the two speeches that come at the end. When the lawyer also died, he became a reminder of his legacy; Even, on a part that is not fully reflected: your activist work.

López Leyva stressed that in the last part of his life, Pablo González He was very worried and involved with Zapatismo, who saw how the hope that societies would be reorganized, rethink, with a power that was not power.

He stressed that “Juan Villoro made a wonderful story about Don Pablo’s link with the Zapatistas. If one takes up the book that Villoro wrote about his father (The figure of the world), Click the image of two intellectuals and the idea of ​​society that they could see in that movement.

The book has two parts, but there are several facets within it. A first part in which aspects of his career are reflected. Testimonies about what he did or the political, predominantly political affinities that Don Pablo had. Juan Villoro Embona’s text in that. Luis Hernández Navarro is also a very good text that gives us anecdotes.

Armando López highlighted the fate of Having a person with those features, with that character of intellectual in a link with those who considered that he should have it. And if you add that it was an academic who generated pioneering knowledge in many fields, you have a complete character. It is important to remember it in this way. In his 100 years he allowed us to recognize it like this.

The volume includes texts about his academic work, such as the one that addresses his Latin American vision, then He hoped that we should turn to Latin America, and was very concerned about phenomena such as imperialism and colonialism. That is present in his work.

Precursor to the idea of ​​internal colonialism

The book Democracy in Mexico, In times when there was no democracy in this country, he was completely challengingand opened a gap in the contemporary discussion. Today there will be no serious, relevant, academic discussion, who does not have it as a reference.

It was a precursor, according to López Ley-VA, on issues such as “the idea of ​​internal colonialism, in Raúl Romero’s writing, a useful notion at a time and creation of Don Pablo González Casanova to try to express the way in which the colonial dynamics that we always think are from country to country can also be observed within the same nations and regions.

That important idea showed what I created tried to reflect: social, territorial, geographical inequalities; It was a way to appreciate that the political elites of each country assumed a legacy of colonialism that applied within certain spaces.

The university official stressed that González Casanova led or promoted a large number of projects, such as the Interdisciplinary Research Center in Science and Humanities (CEIICH), the Colleges of Sciences and Humanities and the Open University System, which, according to former Rector Enrique Graue, became much importance in the pandemic, since it allowed to keep the university in operation.

The CEIICH He explains his last great interest, in which he insisted a lot: interdiscipline, very reason, because the phenomena today cannot be explained without the convergence of many areas, and he had the vision of observing that if there was no one to do something that institutionally allowed that convergence, we would have a very poor vision of the university of the work of the work of the work of the university.