By the time I first heard of Manuel Ayau, whose nickname was “Muso”, I was a girl, a noisy and nosy one indeed. As noisy as any elementary school girl could be, and as nosy as any daughter of some very interested in politics parents could be.

Used to ask everything all the time, it took a short time for me to come to the idea that the so called Muso was a man who represented all that was considered evil by leftists and intellectuals (the world in which I was being raised). He was a wealthy entrepreneur. Besides, he dared to speak with passion about liberty! About liberty, that sacred concept that belonged to us only, advocates of Marxism or whatever related to it!

For liberty was, of course, a concept I’d heard of since I could remember. But I’d been taught to associate it with the French Revolution slogan: liberty only, and always, accompanied by equity and fraternity. So romantic it seemed, so desirable, so unquestionable. I never thought that that Muso people in my surroundings criticized so bitterly was by that time already carrying on with a few friends of his, a project that years later would become more than an alma mater to me: the Universidad Francisco Marroquín. In its classrooms, library and gardens I’d learn to love liberty only after truly studying and therefore understanding it. But still several years had to pass by for that to happen.

It was during those years that I started looking for answers, purpose and knowledge. My search led me to several realms, some simply silly, like the New Age sort of thing, but also to some others very damaging: socialism in its version of strident feminism specifically. You know, that type of feminism that nothing has to do with the Enlightenment women like Mary Wollstonecraft, but the present movement that claims to be feminist when it is nothing more than a manifestation of the Marxism statement of eternal clash between rich and poor, men and women, North and South, blacks and whites, Indians and non Indians, you name it.

The time to go to college arrived when I was involved in the precarious domains mentioned. Due to several circumstances I enrolled in what I despised as “UFM, the university where rich juniors attend”. Today I recall those days and I am thankful: how fortunate I was without knowing it! But it has to be said: by then I wanted so much to dislike Muso. I read his books and many, many more of those great teachers of the past and tried hard to refute them. But how can one smash common sense? It has to be said also that I could be an arrogant leftist, yes, but never lacked intellectual honesty nor respect for what it is bright and noble in human beings. It took some time, several years really, but the moment arrived when I realized that the individual who had made possible such a colossal change in me was an exceptional man.

One good day I met Muso. So this gentleman with a kind grandpa look and a peculiar tie was the greedy monster that had been built in my mind through my childhood and early youth by others’ spiritual shortness. For envy and hatred are the only things that explain how someone with a vision brought to reality as the UFM can be considered a profoundly selfish alien who cares for nothing but himself. How could be a public enemy a person who dedicated so many of his years, and still is channelling all his efforts, to the intellectual growth of others, the young especially?

A man who achieved to gather some of the greatest minds to educate young Guatemalans —Joseph Keckeissen, Armando de la Torre, Rigoberto Juárez-Paz, Francisco Pérez de Antón, Jesús Amurrio (+), Salvador Aguado Andreut (+), among others— should be treated for what he is: a hero. He actually is for we who owe him much more than a beautiful campus and a competitive education. For a conception of existence that celebrates truth and liberty, we are much indebted to him. For the example that his mere life constitutes for us young adults called to take charge of this Latin American countries of ours, we are deeply obliged to his legacy.

It isn’t true, then, what they say about Muso, if “they” are the children of resentment. Every time lesser, in number and conceptual strength they are I gladly report, at least here in Guatemala. But the war is far from being ended: Muso fought the first battles successfully and still is standing firm in the field. But he is not anymore alone with a few friends who joined him 36 years ago to carry on a project that is now my, our, intellectual home. Unyielding we are here, new generations, at the UFM.

For building it for me, for us, Muso, a million thanks.

Labels: Guatemala