SILO – a story of his life & work

SILO – a story of his life & work

By Trudi Richards

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Dry, rugged mountains, the color of rust; great rocks; a blue, vast sky - a massive scenery of stone and sparse vegetation, blasted by the sun in summer, obliterated by snow in winter. Here in the Argentine Cordillera de Los Andes, near the Chilean border, Mount Aconcagua rises. To this lord of mountains, this “Stone Sentinel” standing almost 7000 meters high, mountaineers make pilgrimage. The nearest highway climbs over the pass between Argentina and Chile. Directly south of the mountain, the road passes by Puente del Inca, a natural stone bridge arching high over the fierce torrent of the Cuevas River. A bizarre and decrepit spa hangs over the gorge, and summer tourists wade in the warm waters that flood its chambers, fantasizing that their feet may become petrified – for the water is rich in a mineral said to turn anything to stone in a matter of hours, and they have seen the petrified tennis shoes on display under the canvas awnings at the roadside. A few kilometers further down the road is Punta de Vacas, a cluster of nondescript houses, an army outpost, a starting point for the trek up the long valley of the Vacas River to Mount Aconcagua. Here, if you stay near the road and walk back a bit towards Puente del Inca, you will come upon a gigantic cylinder of polished steel, standing alone in a field of red stones. As you approach, you can make out the dates inscribed on it: 1969-1999. This is “el Monolito,”  placed here in 1999 as a monument to the birth, thirty years earlier, of an international phenomenon known today as the Humanist Movement. Arid mountainsides lift like enormous wings on every side...
 
It is May 4, 1969, a cold day brilliant with sun, and the steep slopes blaze with snow. A tall, spare young man in a white coverall stands in the empty expanse, orange banners flying above him in the wind. Around him, a crowd of listeners have gathered, sitting and standing on the stony ground. Their arrival here has been something of a triumph. Earlier this morning, on all roads leading to this desolate gorge, the authorities set up barriers, checkpoints guarded by machine guns, military vehicles and armed soldiers, and anyone wishing to pass has been required to produce the proper identification papers. This has irritated some members of the international press – but it is a matter of national security, terrorists are at large, and the public must be protected. Despite this difficulty some 200 people have arrived. They are here to listen to the poet-philosopher Silo, “el Maestro de Mendoza,” speak on the “Healing of Suffering.”
 
Here, under the white sun, this unknown, cocky youngster of thirty, this dangerous man who is leading the youth of Argentina astray, is speaking “to the rocks” because the authorities have banned all public gatherings in the cities. In Castellano, the Spanish of the Argentines, he is talking about the crisis in which humanity finds itself, an all-embracing, systemic crisis that is at once societal and deeply personal. He speaks with a curious alloy of austerity and compassion, his voice sometimes hard as steel, sometimes soft and deep.
 
“You are listening to a man who does not know the laws that rule the Universe, who is not privy to the laws of History, who is ignorant of the relationships that govern the peoples of the world. High in these mountains, far from the cities and their sick ambitions, this man addresses himself to your conscience. Over the cities, where each day is a struggle—a hope cut short by death—where love is followed by hate, where forgiveness is followed by revenge; over the cities of the people rich and poor; over the immense fields of humanity, a mantle of suffering and sorrow has fallen...” He speaks of violence and desire, going on to tell a story, the tale of long ago…
 
“There was once a traveler who had to undertake a long journey. He yoked his animal to a cart and began the journey to his faraway destination, a journey he had to complete within a certain length of time. He called the animal Necessity and the cart Desire; one wheel of the cart he called Pleasure, and the other he called Pain. Our traveler turned his cart sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, yet he never ceased moving toward his destiny. The faster the cart traveled, the faster turned the wheels of Pleasure and Pain, carrying as they did the cart of Desire and connected as they were by the same axle.
But the journey was very long, and after a time our traveler grew bored. So he decided to decorate his cart, and he began to adorn it with all manner of beautiful things. But the more he embellished the cart of Desire with these ornaments, the heavier became the load for Necessity to pull. On the curves and steep hills of the road, the poor animal grew too exhausted to pull the cart of Desire. And where the road was soft, the wheels of Pleasure and Suffering became mired in the earth.
One day, because the road was long and he was still very far from his destination, our traveler grew desperate. That night he decided to meditate on the problem, and in the midst of his meditation he heard the neighing of his old friend, Necessity. Comprehending the message, he arose very early the next morning and began to lighten the cart of its burden, stripping it of all its fine adornments. Then he set off once more toward his destination, with the animal Necessity pulling the cart at a brisk trot. Still, our traveler had already lost much time—time that was now irrecoverable. The next night he sat down again to meditate, and he realized, thanks to another message from his old friend, that now he had to undertake a task that was doubly difficult because it involved his letting go. At daybreak he sacrificed the cart of Desire. It is true that when he did so he lost the wheel of Pleasure, but then he also lost the wheel of Suffering. And so, abandoning the cart of Desire, he mounted the animal called Necessity and galloped on its back across the green fields until he reached his destiny.”
 
In words reminiscent of the Buddha, Silo speaks of mankind's ancient enemy, desire. He urges his listeners to elevate desire and surpass it, admitting that if you do so, “you will have to sacrifice the wheel of Pleasure—but you will also become free of the wheel of Suffering.”
 
He speaks of the worldwide pandemic of violence, and of its different forms: not only physical, but economic, racial and religious violence, as well as the violence of imposing ones own ideas others. How can we end this violence? His words are clear: “My brother, my sister, keep these simple commandments, as simple as these rocks, this snow, and this sun that blesses us. Carry peace within you, and carry it to others… Remember…that it is necessary to move forward, and it is necessary to learn to laugh, and it is necessary to learn to love. To you I cast this hope—this hope of joy, this hope of love—so that you elevate your heart and elevate your spirit, and so that you do not forget to elevate your body.”
 
There are questions, and a brief interchange. By noon, everything is over, and the crowd disperses. With a few friends, the speaker goes back to the city of Mendoza below, his home town, to drink coffee and chat. At the café they talk quietly, unobtrusively; you have to be careful in public here. It is a time of military rule, under the repressive dictatorship of Juan Carolos Ongania. People have not yet begun to disappear in large numbers - but you can be put in prison for saying the wrong thing.

This, of course, is nothing new. Argentine dictators have long been fond of keeping an iron grip on the populace. Even Juan Peron, the populist president who sent each and every Argentine family a roast turkey and pan dulce at Christmas during his reign in the 40’s and 50’s, would slap any of his beloved people into prison if they spoke out against the government. In 1969 the pleasant tide of Peronist prosperity still shallowly covers the land - but even in relative comfort, people do not sit easily under repression. In the city of Cordoba later this year, mounted police will retreat before protestors armed with rocks, and Ogania’s colleagues will force him to resign. A more ‘liberal’ military man will assume the presidency, to prepare yet another electoral farce in the unfolding pageant of democratic mimicry, until the country is gripped by the Dirty War of the 70’s, when tens of thousands of ordinary citizens simply “disappear,” accused of some link to the arch enemy, Terrorism…

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The gentle city of Mendoza is kept green by the irrigation system of the ancient Huarpe Indians who lived here at the time of Christ. Now, along its warm, shaded streets, tall trees sink their roots beside the deep stone-lined ditches, or acequias, that still carry water throughout the city. The Huarpes must have been capable people to construct such wonderful waterworks. By the mid-1500's, however, when the Incas arrived, some unfortunate change seems to have taken place, and the people who lived in the area alarmed them with their singular stupidity. Many of the locals were clearly idiots, and others sported great swollen growths at their throats. The Incas pronounced the territory bedeviled, and forbade their people to cross the line.
 
When Spanish explorers arrived shortly thereafter, they took a different approach. They easily conquered the local simpletons, and built a new city, which they called Mendoza (DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE THE NAME CAME FROM?). With irrigation, the soil proved perfect for the cultivation of grapes. The Spaniards built a long trade route to the coast, and began to export wine to Buenos Aires. There they traded the wine for dried fish, which they carried more than 1000 kilometers on wheeled carts back to Mendoza, bringing with it the blessing of iodine. In this way, the enjoyment of fish kept stupidity at bay for many years.
 
The British, however, brought an end to this felicity with their characteristic efficiency. Introducing cheap French wine to Buenos Aires, they let the trade route with Mendoza fall into disuse. Gradually the populace reverted to its former stupidity, and when Europeans came to Mendoza in the late 1700s, they found a city full of dolts with goiters. By now, however, humanity had learned to recognize the symptoms of iodine deficiency, and the problem was obvious. The Europeans brought in sea salt, which they taught the locals to use. Mendocino cuisine acquired its characteristic saltiness, and the plague of stupidity abated.
 
But the years of isolated dullness had set an indelible social pattern. Accustomed to struggling to master the rudiments of life, the Mendocinos had become innately suspicious of anything extra - of the arts, the exotic, the unusual - all that strayed from the safe and accepted path. That is why, even today, Mendocino society is characteristically conservative and stodgy, despite its heavily salted cuisine, its dusky and succulent wines, and its bacchanal harvest festival, the Vendimia, celebrated every summer, when gaudy floats cruise the streets carrying supple young women who hurl grapes and melons at the astonished tourists.
 
In 1938, this retrograde town, sitting like a dull child at the feet of its stern mountain guardian, became the birthplace of Mario Luis Rodriguez Cobos, who would later take the pen name of Silo.

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