Carlos Pereda, the Uruguayan philosopher / Elena Poniatowska

He always saw a thin and complacent man who seemed to be happy among so many women in his house, the composer Marcela Rodríguez. He put up with all of us who attended El Hábito and applauded the witticisms of Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe, which continued beyond the stage. All the attendees were personalities accustomed to snatching the floor and arguing with a tequila in hand. Won’t Carlos Pereda get tired?I asked the son of The Cannibal; I explain: That is why he is a philosopher; Philosophers are taught to arm themselves with patience.

Carlos Pereda, married to the composer Marcela Rodríguez, was not only patient, but also very participatory and open-minded. His eyes never lost their shine, and his voice resigned itself to going philosophically among the voices of the always large female audience. Just by seeing him, he made me love Uruguay more, because I remembered the love and admiration that Guillermo Haro felt for Liber Seregni, whom he received in Tonantzintla. I also remembered Eduardo Galeano, who arrived at 430 Morena Street, my house, after it became the headquarters of the Siglo XXI publishing house, after the infamy committed against Arnaldo Orfila Reynal and his wife, Laurette Séjourné, during the six-year term of Diaz Ordaz.

Today, Carlos Pereda and his wife, as well as their children, Cata and Nicolás, always in New York, are my neighbors and I can walk to their house along the tree-lined median that runs along Miguel Ángel de Quevedo Avenue.

–Carlos, how did you get into the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)? When did you arrive from Uruguay?

–I came from Germany. I completed my doctorate at the University of Konstanz, in what was the Western Republic of Germany. I was looking at the possibilities of traveling to Latin America, because Uruguay was experiencing a horrible dictatorship; I attended a lecture by Ivan Ilych in Zurich and asked him to give me some directions. He answered: I’m going to give you that of a man who is always busy but who is going to give you good directions in Mexico. Luis Villoro. I’m also going to give you that of a Catalan philosopher who will invite you to lunch, but it’s not going to help you much.. Ramon Xirau

Pereda wrote to both of them and, as anticipated, Ana María and Ramón Xirau invited him to lunch; Luis Villoro offered him to teach at the Metropolitan University, which began in Iztapalapa.

–My son Emmanuel Haro is at the Faculty of Physics, in Iztapalapa.

–I was happy in Iztapalapa, except for one problem: taking more than two and a half hours to get to my college.

-Where you lived?

–Through Coyoacán, but, ah!, from here to Iztapalapa it is two or two and a half hours by pesero. As soon as I arrived in Mexico I became good friends with Carlos Pereyra.

–It was wonderful, great guy from Monsiváis. He married my cousin or my niece, Corina Iturbe.

–Yes, Pereyra was close to Carlos and he proposed to me: Why don’t you transfer to UNAM and then to the Institute of Philosophical Research?

“My arrival in Mexico was very easy and I felt very good, both in Iztapalapa and at UNAM; I felt at home. I never had a problem. When I arrived, the first National Congress of Philosophy was held in Morelia, and Carlos Pereyra told me: ‘Look, everything is already organized. Why don’t you talk to Sánchez Vázquez and explain to him that you just arrived and that he’s giving you a place?’ So I did, and Sánchez Vázquez told me: ‘With pleasure, you can participate in the Congress.’ “It was a warm cultural moment and very different from today.”

–Everyone knew each other and was walking in the same direction.

–In addition, Marxism was present, and being for or against Marxism occupied a very important place in the faculty and in the cultural life of Mexico.

–Adolfo Sánchez was a great Marxist.

–He was the great Marxist of modern Mexico.

–I went to interview him at his apartment in Polanco, and I must have thought it was a Firulais, because he did nothing but laugh.

–It was an environment of conflict at the same time, because even people who were ideologically opposed to each other, like Sánchez Vázquez or Fernando Salmerón, were friends in some sense.

–Sánchez Vázquez would have entered El Colegio Nacional and not Fernando Salmerón… It was also an injustice that Leopoldo Zea did not enter.

–The situation is a little different in Mexico, more complex and more full of hostilities. Well, I think that all the complexity carries with it some hostilities.

–Did you become friends with Leopoldo Zea?

–No, I did an interview with him, but I was never close to him; I was actually closer to Liliana Bimmer, who turned out to be Leopoldo Zea’s daughter-in-law. In reality, the one I knew the most from that time was, on the one hand, Luis Villoro and Alejandro Rossi and, on the other, Isa and Fran Salmerón. In college I treated Sánchez Vázquez, who was one of the old ones. Among the young people, I became a good friend of Carlos Pereyra, and I also had a good relationship with Bolívar Echeverría.

–Bolívar, who should never have died…

–Well, Carlos Pereyra shouldn’t have died before either. And Bolívar, who also died relatively young and, if I remember correctly, died of a heart attack.

–Yes, at that time Marta Lamas became good friends with Raquel Serur, his wife, who accompanied him in an open heart operation. Monsiváis adored Bolívar, and so did Marta Lamas. The four of them ate together on Sundays.

–The atmosphere at that time was little different from today, because at one pole there was Marxism and at the other the Latin Americanists.

–And the publication of Mexico and Mexicans. I remember that Jorge Portilla was very vehement and that I didn’t like Emilio Uranga… Everyone listened to Jorge Portilla, who gave lectures sitting on the carpet in Elena Garro’s house.

–I did not know a single one of the Hiperiones group and, strangely, in recent times it has been translated into English The phenomenology of relaxation, by Jorge Portilla. All of the Hiperión group had died when I arrived in Mexico, except Villoro and Leopoldo Zea, who no longer belonged to that group.

–Leopoldo dedicated himself to Mexico and Latin America. I met him in Chimalistac with his first wife, who he wrote in the newspaper with the synonym of Pastitos…

–The second part of the 20th century, the most important philosopher is Luis Villoro; He left a more enduring and somewhat strange work, because he begins and ends with an interest in the Mexican indigenous people and in the middle he dedicates himself to analytical philosophy…

–He had very different interests.

–He dedicated himself to paying tribute to the Zapatista movement. He went to live in Chiapas, and there he asked to be buried under a tree… He chose a tree, he said: Here I want to be buried with the Zapatistas, under this tree.

–The Zapatistas love him. Luis Villoro did a huge favor to the Subcommander Marcos paying him a tribute that no one has paid him.

–Yes, well and his latest book, The years to comeis a commitment to Zapatismo.

–Luis Villoro and Carlos Payán sat together on the plane to Chiapas for the congress called by the Subcommander Marcos, and all the Zapatistas loved him very much.

–At the UNAM Philosophical Research Institute I was lucky that our offices were facing each other. On Mondays he received all kinds of people, Zapatistas, students, colleagues and other types of people, as stated in the book written by his son, Juan Villoro, who also talks a lot about his mother, Estela Ruiz Milan.

–I met several women who fell madly in love with Luis Villoro. Juan wrote an article in which he referred to his father and women, a very cool text. I love Estela Ruiz Milan very much…

–Luis Villoro generated great enthusiasm in Mexico, he also established many ties and became friends with Spanish philosophers, relationships that we have all taken advantage of.