Caracas, November 15, 2023 (Press Mincomunas) – As part of the program of the 19th edition of the International Book Fair (Filven) 2023, the People’s Minister for Communes and Social Movements, Jorge Arreaza, baptized this Wednesday the book “Geopolítica del Pensamiento Original” (Geopolitics of Original Thought), along with several authors of the texts on the pedagogical contributions of the master Simon Rodriguez, compiled in this work.
The book presentation, compiled by Arreaza and communicator Nerlini Carucí, took place in the Miguel Acosta Saignes hall of El Laguito, in the Military Circle of Caracas.
The minister defined the work as an ethical, pedagogical contribution from Simon Rodriguez to a decolonial approach to the concrete realities and identities of the global south. “The most significant thing is that the master Simon Rodriguez is so current today that each author gave it their look and as a kind of free drawing were able to capture research and ideas from the Robinsonian thought,” he stressed.
He pointed out that in Venezuela, Simon Rodriguez has a breadth that allows designing an original thought without excluding any other type of thought and analysis, “it allows us to always go to the origin, always walk through our primary identity, always go to the circumstance, which was a permanent call from Simon Rodriguez to be able, then, to analyze and propose transformations in the concrete.”
During his speech, the head of the communal office explained that the Liberator, Simon Bolivar, was liberating the nations with weapons and ideas. Then came Simon Rodriguez, with the same ideas in practice as in a second wave, to form those republicans for the new republics, to join the indigenous with the Afro-descendant, with the son of the Creole, and thus create that necessary mixture that identifies the woman and the man of our America.
Professor Iluska Salazar, who contributed to “Geopolítica del Pensamiento Original” (Geopolitics of Original Thought), pointed out that to open a book written by Simon Rodriguez is to find new, original things, which “we see expressed in our practice to transform. Rodriguez was a militant committed to the cause of Our America. He had a united praxis and thought, and he practiced what he thought, to such an extent that founded schools wherever he went to put into practice all that political and ideological thought”.
He affirmed that to mention Simon Rodriguez is to talk about the formation of Republicans. He saw that people’s education would allow us to assume the transformation process, which is still valid today: “A people’s education for all, aimed at useful things.”
The Chilean Paloma Griffero, also a participant of the baptized work, praised that the Bolivarian Revolution, which has among its roots the thought of Simon Rodriguez, “is indeed an example for all our countries, for the Great Homeland, for the strength with which they have maintained themselves, despite the oppression and the lies that have been spread all over the world (…) The revolutions we are giving speak of the Commune as the space of construction. There is no rigid definition, but there is a wandering, a becoming, that is, we invent or err”.
Another co-author, Professor Nestor Angulo, said Simon Rodriguez is a genuine thinker who could have a sharp observation but also a rebel who never adapted to what was established: “He always proposed to emancipate us, to liberate us, to be able to grow with our thought, to be able to build with our own hands and walk with our own feet.”
