_Paulo Freire Remembered

I was in Puerto Rico when, in a sunny afternoon on May 2, 1997, I received the devastating news that Paulo Freire, my friend, collaborator, my teacher, and my mentor, had died. Immobilized by this immeasurable loss, I began to realize that a part of me had also died only to be slowly resurrected in the just as immeasurable hope that Paulo represented for those of us who are committed to imagine a world, in his own words, that is less ugly, more beautiful, less discriminatory, more democratic, less dehumanizing, and more humane.

Coincidentally, when I received the news of Paulo's death, I was correcting the proofs of our book Ideology Matters, which we had just finished a little more than a month ago during his last trip to New York and Boston. As we talked, dialogued, analyzed, and critiqued what we had written, it never crossed my mind that Ideology Matters would be his last book. In his last work, he once again, teaches us and the world—with his hallmark humility—what it means to be an intellectual who fights always against the temptation of becoming a populist intellectual. As always, he teaches us with his penetrating and unquiet mind the meaning of a profound commitment to fight social injustices in our struggle to recapture the loss of our dignity as human being. In Paulo's own words:

we need to say no to the neo-liberal fatalism that we are witnessing at the end of this century, informed by the ethics of the market, an ethics in which a minority makes most profits against the lives of the majority. In other words, those who cannot compete, die. This is a perverse ethics that, in fact, lacks ethics. I insist on saying that I continue to be human . . . I would then remain the last and only educator in the world to say no: I do not accept . . . history as determinism. I embrace history as possibility [where] we can de-mythify the evil in this perverse fatalism which characterizes the neo-liberal discourse in the end of this century.

Paulo did not realize his dream of entering the twenty-first century full of hope for a "world that is more round, less ugly, and more just." Although he may not be holding our hands as we cross the threshold of the twenty-first century, his words of wisdom, his penetrating and insightful ideas, his courage to denounce so as to announce, his courage to love and "to speak about love without fear of being called ascientific, if not anti-scientific," his humility and his humanity make him immortal—a forever-present force that keeps alive our understanding of history as possibility. Paulo understood the substantivity in the eloquence of Ant nio Machado's verses:

Caminante no hay camino

se hace el camino al andar . . .

I always accepted with humility Paulo's challenge through the cohesiveness and humility he exemplified. With much sadness, "magoa," but also with much affection and hope, I say, once more, thank you Paulo. For having being present in the world, for having taught us how to read the world, and for challenging us to humanize the world.

JAC Volume 17 Issue 3

Paulo Freire Remembered

Donaldo Macedo