With a degree in Hispanic Literature and Philosophy, Jose Manuel Cuellar Moreno spoke with El Economista about his latest compilation work ‘La exquisite ailment. Essays on Ramón López Velarde’ in which he brings together the critical view of the controversial and little explored Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga, who was in charge of studying the thought of the famous Zacatecan poet Ramón López Velarde, whom he addressed in his columns during his years as a journalist in the Mexico of the 20th century.
The poet Ramón López Velarde (1888-1921), originally from Jeréz, Zacatecas, composed the well-known poem ‘Suave Patria’ on the occasion of the first centenary of Mexico’s Independence in which he discovers Mexico and what is Mexican. Despite his short life (33 years), López Velarde has been considered the founder of contemporary Mexican poetry. His thoughts and poems were recorded as literary works in the books he published: “La sangre devota” and “Zozobra”. The early 20th century writer and lawyer collaborated on La Nación, El Nacional Bisemanal, Vida Moderna, El Maestro, México Moderno and Revista de Revistas.
Constructing this literary work was not an easy task, as Cuellar Moreno assures, since Uranga wrote more than 200 columns per year in which, in the words of the author who studied them, he found “little pearls of wisdom”, which he now delivers to readers in book format.
—Tell us about “The Exquisite Ailment. Essays on Ramón López Velarde”?
—The title already announces one of Ramón López Velarde’s concerns, which is precisely love but not just any love, a love that hurts, a love that hurts but that has to be a wound that remains open and fruitful. I bring up Ramón López Velarde because not long ago we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his death, he died in 1921 but there is also a very interesting crossover with another hyperbolic character, a demon-possessed character who is Emilio Uranga.
“Who is Emilio Uranga?”
—He is a philosopher who interests me, a philosopher whom I have studied and he is a deliberately forgotten philosopher. Perhaps many have not heard this name. He is recognized for having introduced French existentialism in Mexico in the mid-40s, we are talking about authors such as Jean-Paul Sartre, such as Merleau-Ponty, but he will also serve as a presidential advisor, he will be an advisor to López Mateos , Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, de López Portillo. There is a black legend around this courtly character. Some have even called him a kind of gray eminence, the truth is that when one reads him, one realizes that he was not a docile character, he was a rebellious character, he was a cynical character, he was a character that he loved to unmask and in this tone was that he unmasked Juan José Arreola, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz. He had no hesitation when it came to telling the truth and this is still appreciated but the truth is that it continues to hurt.
It has been a detective work around Emilio Uranga, I realized that in addition to being a philosopher, presidential adviser and political analyst he was an excellent literary critic and this facet is what I try to discover in this book. In the exquisite ailment I gathered everything that Emilio Uranga wrote about Ramón López Velarde over almost 30 years, from 1950 to 1976. It was an exhausting and strenuous task because we are talking about a character who wrote more than two hundred columns a year and inside these columns there were needles, little pearls of wisdom and I realized that a constant conversationalist throughout his life was the poet from Jeréz, who was not one reading among others, he was not only dedicated to commenting on the verses of Ramón López Velarde, but goes so far as to say that he is the poetic founder of Mexico. Just as we have a constitution that would be the legal birth certificate of contemporary Mexico, the constitution of 1917, we would have in the work of Ramón López Velarde the poetic certificate of the birth of contemporary Mexico.
López Velarde died in June 1921, in August that is, a few months later Emilio Uranga was born. We know that Emilio Uranga begins to read Ramón López Velarde like many other young people of his generation when he was in high school and is fascinated by these unusual verses due to this delicate and at the same time accurate use of adjectives. But we also realize that it was a time in the late forties where the Mexican revolution is changing, we are talking about the time of Miguel Alemán, about the industrialization of the Mexican revolution, when the Mexican revolution got off the horse, holstered the gun and yields its reins to the university students and it is at this moment of crisis or this turning point that the question arises: what can the Mexican revolution mean now? Does it exist? Does it not exist? Has it already died? he died?. It is in this time of renewal and crisis that Emilio Uranga turns his gaze to Ramón López Velarde, and realizes that Ramón López Velarde, together with Francisco I. Madero and Antonio Caso, had an intimate conception of the Mexican Revolution, a cordial conception because cordial comes from cor cordis (heart), then the Mexican revolution was more than a change of men in power, it was a change of heart, it was a change of mentality, it was a change of feelings, it was a transformation of consciences, a new human being is born, it is this new human being that still has to be shaped. Being Mexican is a chore, it is not something fixed, it is not something that we can find on the street, it is something that we must all build together. It is Mexico and what is Mexican is in the works and it is this conception of the Mexican revolution that draws Emilio Uranga’s attention, to the point of saying that there was no poetry prior to that of Ramón López Velarde.
—The works of both authors are still valid today?
—I believe that Ramón López Velarde and Emilio Uranga are completely valid, they have the keys to think about contemporary phenomena such as a lack of cohesion in Mexican society, as a tear in our fabric. They hold the key to cultivating this feeling of belonging to something bigger than ourselves, to our community. This sense of community that is very present in both of them. Words like ‘what is Mexican’ or ‘Mexicanity’ are misleading words, they seem anachronistic, it seems that they speak to us of a hermetic nationalism, a closed nationalism that evokes these flourishing times of the Institutional Party but it is not like that. For Emilio Uranga, what was Mexican was a starting point, a point of arrival, for Emilio Uranga a strict sense does not exist, what characterizes and best unites Mexicans, is not a language, it is not gender, it is not a color of skin, it is not the fact of living in one geographical region or another, what unites us all is the fact of being vulnerable bodies, bodies that do not know what awaits them around the corner, the fact of being at the mercy of the chance and at the mercy of luck. It is a humanism but not exactly reassuring, but rather it is a humanism that aims to shake us, that aims to make us aware, that above all we take charge of our existence, that we realize that what we want to be is a decision and is a daily effort. All this is a reading that Emilio Uranga does of Ramón López Velarde so that we must stop thinking of these two characters as nationalists as folklorists, as people who had their eyes fixed on their navel, as localists, no, their thinking is universal and it is humanist and it is a criticism of colonialism and it is a criticism of any narrow view.
—Do you consider that the work of Mexican philosophers has changed in recent times?
—Philosophy has changed in these times but I am optimistic and I believe that currently, Mexican philosophy is experiencing a kind of second wind and more and more of us Mexican researchers are realizing that we must recover this soil of our past, that we are not alone, that there are great challenges at all levels but luckily we have our spiritual teachers who have been neglected for many decades but who are there and we have to dust them off, that we have to discover who they were and we have to support each other in them completely.
—What message do you want to give with the publication of this book to everyone who reads it?
—For me this book is a wake-up call to our immediate past. Emilio Uranga can serve us as a Virgil that not only brings us closer to the thought of Ramón López Velarde but also takes us through the Mexican 20th century. Throughout these articles we see the polyhedral figure of Ramón López Velarde unfold but Emilio Uranga himself leads us from one theme to another, which were the backbone themes of the 20th century. We are before a privileged witness of the events, we are before someone who lived very close to the circles of power and with a very sharp and very critical eye. It is true that there is currently a kind of lack of memory, as we do not remember what happened, we cannot conceive of ourselves as heirs of projects and this is a crisis of memory and the book is a bit of that, it is an introduction to the thought and figure of Emilio Uranga, it is also an introduction to the work of Ramón López Velarde, of our sadly forgotten national poet as well. It is an invitation to delve into the philosophy and poetry of the 20th century, which was one of the richest in the world.
—During this time studying the life and work of Emilio Uranga, what do you highlight about this little-explored character of Mexican philosophy?
—I have been investigating Emilio Uranga for several years, in 2018 this book I wrote came out: The Unfinished Revolution; The philosophy of Emilio Uranga, hidden architect of the PRI, there I stop to analyze the role he played as adviser to López Mateos, specifically in the year 1960, which was a crucial and very interesting year in the history of Mexico because fifty years were celebrated of the Mexican Revolution but the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro was also taking place and this shakes the entire Latin American panorama. The Mexican Revolution is no longer the paradigm of a successful Latin American revolution and it is in this context that López Mateos releases his famous phrase, one of the most famous of the PRI. “My government within the constitution is from the extreme left” and there the person in charge of answering this riddle and filling these statements with content was precisely Emilio Uranga and he at that moment tells us that the Mexican Revolution is not that it has died, it is that The Mexican Revolution is not anchored in the past, it is not a fait accompli, but rather a kind of north or compass that should guide and modulate our actions. The Mexican Revolution, he says ‘is like a symphony’, it’s like Franz Schubert’s unfinished symphony, no one ever knows how it ended, when everyone listens to it they have to make an effort of the imagination to complete it, but what Emilio Uranga tells us he says about the Mexican Revolution he will say it in other places about human existence itself and it is here where it catches my attention and where I believe that Emilio Uranga has an enormous moral proposal that is very valid; Think of human existence as an unfinished process as an unfinished process and therefore a concept that concerns us all. Nothing is written in stone, nothing is determined forever.
—How did you get to Emilio Uranga and how long has it taken you to investigate him?
-I am a philosopher and my first approach was precisely through existentialism, he as one of the spokesmen of French existentialism in Mexico in the late forties but later I realized that he had an enormous career in political journalism. He is a denied character but that does not mean that he has been a marginal character. He became the vigilant conscience of the republic, his opinions came to carry a lot of weight and throughout his life he was in the vortex of the political and intellectual hurricane so to speak. He is not exactly a marginal character, he is a denied character.
We are talking about an investigation that has already lasted perhaps seven years. Investigating it has been a source of pleasant surprises and also of learning. When I talk about Emilio Uranga being a cynical character, I don’t mean it in a pejorative sense, it’s that he used cynicism as a sharp tool to hurt (sometimes he did, sometimes he hit the heartstrings), but the cynicism as a strategy for revealing the truth.
Cuellar Moreno is currently preparing the biography of the Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga that will be published soon and in which he will address in detail passages of his life and work.