Scientific Event: Geuzenpenning Granted to Padre Solalinde

The Geuzenpenning, with which we honor padre Solalinde today, is a distinction bestowed on ‘human rights defenders around the world’. In padre Alejandro Solalinde’s case, it is for vital support to migrants in Mexico who live, travel, and sojourn in precarious and vulnerable circumstances. He is on the side of what King Lear called ‘unaccommodated man’, men and women who are, in Shakespeare’s phrase, ‘in the poorest thing superfluous’. Or as another defender of the downtrodden half a century ago has put it, he takes up the cause of ‘the wretched of the earth’, ‘les damnés de la terre’ (‘los condenados de la tierra’). In Padre Solalinde’s justified complaint that “the powerful have no feeling for the people – they do not reckon where the people go, where they breathe, in what domains they roam”, we find echoes of Frantz Fanon’s haunting denunciation of how the colonizers look at the colonized, and the colony: ‘They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how.’

El padre Solalinde is a ‘misionario itinerante’, someone with a mission that indeed cannot be pinned down or restricted to one place, one area, one domain – because the refugees to which he provides assistance are necessarily itinerant as well. Not because they so choose, but because powers that be leave them no choice but to be ‘on the road’. Therefore it is fitting to honor Padre Solalinde today, as someone who is on the road with them, providing protection in word and in deed. And in this way ‘keeps the faith’, in a way that includes, yet goes beyond religion and human rights: by showing that we should not, and cannot, be indifferent.

We could say that padre Solalinde is honored for his ‘work’ – and undeniably he spares no effort or trouble in serving a worthy and important cause, putting himself in harm’s way in doing so. Yet I believe it would be even more appropriate to say that he is honored for his way of being, his way of life. In his case, this means above all “being with the people, identifying with the people” – as padre Solalinde characteristically said: ‘me saqué la lotería estando entre la gente’ – the real prize you can win in the lottery of human life, is living among the people. Being with the people, I think, is the essence of what padre Solalinde calls keeping the faith, in his view the most important challenge facing the catholic church today.

We could say that padre Solalinde receives the Geuzenpenning for ‘defending human rights’. And it is certainly true that he stands up for those who are outlawed: those who are stripped of elementary rights and who are denied the protection of the law, not for any crime they have committed, but – one might say – simply for being human, for having nowhere else to go. Yet we could here easily miss the crucial problematic aspect that ‘human rights’ also possess – the fact that they are out of reach whenever you most need them. “So near, and yet so far”, as the common expression goes. Philosopher Hannah Arendt, whose own life was on the line when she was persecuted as a jewess in nazified Europe, for this reason referred to human rights with the enigmatic formula ‘the right to have rights’: an apt phrase, as it reflects the bitter truth that those in real need of rights will not be served by law – they don’t have rights, but merely “the right to have them.” When one is really hungry, what one needs is bread – not merely the right to have it; to eat – not merely the right to eat. Thus human rights are real only when there are people willing to act in their name, to ‘practice as they preach’, as we say – or better: people who preach by practicing. By going out to provide shelter and protection to those who are ‘in the poorest thing superfluous’.

We could therefore also say, and we would be right, that padre Solalinde’s defense of human rights is pertinent and necessary, but ‘not enough.’ Human rights not only tend to be absent when needed – “far when near”. Even when they are present, they are ‘not enough’ - as philosopher, historian and lawyer Sam Moyn has remarked, in a recent book by that title. In a way, human rights are “second best”: important as they are, they stand in for something better but – as yet – impossible to reach, such as political or social self-determination. The defense of human rights is therefore more than the demand for rights; it is to bring complaint, to accuse, to testify, that there are people who have been robbed of the culture or circumstances in which they can collectively and individually control their own lives.

And then we may also say that padre Solalinde is more than a priest, a padre – or maybe better: he is a priest precisely by being more than a priest. Someone who is – by his own admission –‘not that religious’, ‘no tan religioso’, but I would venture that he is ‘not that religious’ by doing more than religion requires. He is one who speaks truth to power. Even better: someone who not only speaks truth to power, but also acts truth to power. Someone who in word and deed reminds others of what they in fact already know, but fail to acknowledge. And actually also someone who even without speaking or acting can make a difference, by simply ‘being there’ – one whose mere presence silently disqualifies the oppressive powers that be. In these capacities – speaking, acting, being present – he represents what Albert Camus referred to as “l’homme révolté”, “el hombre rebelde”: the person who says “no” – not a ‘no’ of rejection, but a ‘no’ of intervention and engagement; an ‘upright’ person who resists injustice and who emphatically marks his distance, his opposition even, to the powers that be.

Sam Moyn, whom I refered to just a minute ago, has characterized the appeal to human rights in the present era as ‘the last utopia’: when we no longer dream of revolution we envision an international law of human rights which we consider, in Moyn’s phrase, ‘the steward of utopian norms’. Human rights are, in a way, the last thing we believe in, when we have lost faith in revolution, and in similar transcendent ventures, and adventures. When you are engaged with and committed to human rights, as Padre Solalinde is in an extraordinary way, you could thus properly be called a ‘utopian’ – an honorary title!, if you realize that those serious about utopias are not only contributing to a better world in some imaginable future, but also, and maybe even more importantly, are dedicated to starting to work on this project right here and right now. Or in fact, have done so already yesterday, and the day before that. For utopians, there is never time to lose. A better world requires so much work, that we simply must believe in it and simply must start here and now. And not give up. This is the kind of utopia that Padre Solalinde makes me believe in.