1984 UPRM Student Experiences
In which Teófilo narrates some of his unique student experiences at the UPRM in 1984.
My student life continued in its routine through my first year of college into the second. I was doing well in languages and humanities. I was doing mediocre in my core mathematics and science classes. I got excellent marks on General Chemistry I and II, though. This success helped me bury my 11th grade's chemistry failures.
In the spring semester of 1984 I had the chance to read George Orwell's 1984. In my experience, nothing has matched reading 1984 in 1984 ever since. Orwell's novel opened to me a new universe of perception and discourse. As a class we wasted lots of time arguing about how Orwell's dystopia had come to permeate our society. We talked a lot about advertising and subliminal messaging. We discussed a surveillance state that paled when compared to today's. Sadly, we missed the full critique of socialism and communism Orwell enshrined in his book. He wrote 1984 to criticize Stalinism and other variants of Marxism-Leninism. I mean, that was his original intent. I would come to understand it better when I reread the novel later in the 1980s.
Politics
I didn't involve myself in politics while at the UPRM as many students did, but I did attend a pro-statehood rally once, held at the school once out of curiosity. I was (and remain) a supporter of Puerto Rico statehood. The New Progressive Party (NPP) Student Youth held the rally at the UPRM's Old Gymnasium. Puerto Rico's then governor Carlos Romero Barceló was the guest speaker.
I stationed myself by a guy who was holding a stick lifting a long banner of the kind we call cruzacalles (lit. "street crossers" because they're so long one can hang them across a street). Once the rally started and after some cheering, the guy holding the stick told me "here, take this." Befuddled, I did, and off he went. At that point I became a full rally participant despite my reticence at such things.
The rally was perfunctory and discussed nothing of value. Yet, it was there when I learned to distrust strongman politics. Don Carlos later became one openly. Strongmen believe they're God's gift to their people and that the people should support them. Rejectors of such claims were redefined as “evil” and threats to society.
In November 1984, when I voted in Puerto Rico for the first and last time, I voted for Hernán Padilla. He was the functioning Mayor of San Juan and an NPP member who had fallen out with Romero Barceló. He left the NPP and founded the Party for Puerto Rican Renewal. His symbol was a rainbow. Padilla lost the 1984. election. Yet, in his defeat Padilla syphoned enough votes from the NPP to ensure the victory of former governor Rafael Hernández Colón. Hernández Colón, a fellow Ponceño, led the Popular Democratic Party (PDP). The PDP defended Puerto Rico's "commonwealth" status, a convenient political lie for all who bought into it, but that have been promoted as a “political status solution” since 1952.
Since the 1984 election I've learned to never swear fealty to politicians exuding authoritarian airs. I’ve seen many since then. I vote for ideas and for the people who can make them reality. I’ll never vote for Caesar over and against the Republic.
First Encounter with the Gnostic Jabberwocky
One night I had nothing to do about campus and attended a talk by a self-described Rosicrucian. I was intrigued. I don’t recall the title of the talk but before long the speaker launched into a string of dubious claims and assertions. I remember two of them vividly.
He asserted that “Noah’s Ark” in Latin - arca noé according to him, which isn’t in reality - was a codeword for arcane, because when you add “arca” to “noé” you get “arcanoe.” One then dismisses the “e” with no attending reason other than the “e” gets in the way of the keyword’s “true meaning”. This was the speaker’s starry-eyed “revelation”: that Noah’s Ark carried mysterious, arcane knowledge from an extinct civilization into the age we live today. Only those who recognize the encoding are able and worthy to discover its dark mysteries.
The other was the claim, made many times by others during the 1970’s, that “Barnard’s Star,” a red-dwarf star located about six light years away from Earth, was in a collision course with our solar system. He expected the star to arrive very near our solar system by the year 2000. Then, detached souls “linked” to Earth and a planet orbiting Barnard’s Star would “exchange” these souls, thereby allowing reincarnation there as well as hear of the swapped souls. That way we got “new souls” with new insights on all sorts of new knowledge and they got ours.
I did a quick linear calculation about how fast Barnard’s Star had to travel from its location almost six light years away to our Solar System environs. I don’t recall the number, but it had to be traveling at a substantive fraction of the speed of light to get here in the sixteen years between 1984 and 2000. Though there are stars travelling at very high speeds in the universe these exhibit a relativistic “weirdness.” Barnard’s Star shows nothing like it and, as of 2023, it’s still almost six light years away. I vaguely remember the speaker then went into tangents about the mysteries of the Great Pyramid of Giza, ending by inviting the audience to become Rosicrucians. The further nonsense about souls stuck in orbit awaiting a transfer I also ditched.
The Rosicrucian mindset is the same as that of other groups of people seeking occult knowledge. They look for this knowledge instead of love. In their view the Gospel’s message is too simple, this love one another thing too lame. As a consequence, they teach that the Gospel’s message of love is for the carnal uninitiated. The Gospel’s truth, they teach, is ascertained by breaking its code. The knowledge they seek will make them godlike “ascended masters.” They represent the same trap the serpent set for Adam and Eve through its false promise: you shall be like gods yourselves, knowers of good and evil.
Besides the threat they represent to one’s spirit, these Gnostics of today represent a threat to one’s intellect and rational powers. I think this encounter taught me how to smell bullshit on sight, and to reduce my credulity to fantastic claims. I also was dismayed at how many students swallowed the speaker’s manure as if it had been candy. One acquaintance even chided me because I didn’t keep “an open mind.” If I had known to say “I keep an open mind but not opened so wide that my brains would ooze out” I would’ve said it. Alas, I kept quiet and thought “You’re stupid, friend.”
I also asked myself: how would that skeptical attitude affect my adherence to Catholic faith claims? At the time I had no answers. I remained linked to my charismatic experience and the faith it had reenkindled in me not that long before. I filed the question somewhere in my mind until I’d gathered more information.
I would face this Gnostic nonsensical “Jabberwocky” many times more in my lifetime. The key to these charlatans is that they repudiate scientific, “linear” thinking. The late Italian writer Umberto Eco captured their essence in his novel, Foucault’s Pendulum. I’ve read that novel twice in a space of 20 years, the second time because I thought I had amassed enough knowledge and experience to understand it. Alas, I hadn’t and didn’t.
Rosicrucians represent the GIGO principle of computer data ingestion as applied to human beings: “garbage in, garbage out.” The world is full of them, all contributing to the surrounding noise level and the garbage we consume every day with happy alacrity.
That time when the man from the Americas’ “one free territory” came to sing.
This was also the time when some group in the UPRM sponsored a concert by the Cuban Nueva Trova singer and songwriter, Pablo Milanés. Posters advertising the concert had been taped all over campus. One day I asked an acquaintance, the same one who once accused me of not keeping an open mind, what the hoopla was all about. She berated me for not knowing who Milanés was. “He’s a Nueva Trova singer, but he hails from the Americas’ one free territory - Cuba.” “Uh huh” - I thought. I thanked her.
I welcomed her description of Milanés as a Nueva Trova singer from el territorio libre de América” as Cuba was wont to announce herself to the world through its official media. I knew that Nueva Trova music was protest music, along the same lines of much of the music from mainland American during the 1960s. However, Milanés didn’t protest against the contradictions and the criminal nature of Castro’s regime. Rather, Milanés chose to sing about utopias while singers of the same school in the rest of the hemisphere pined for a “workers’ paradise” like that of Cuba in their songs.
This musical movement often was a theater of the absurd, I got to think.
I was unable to engage in this kind of doublethink. I couldn’t accept the misery spread by the Castro regime in Cuba as “paradise.” I didn’t attend vaunted concert guided by their absurd ideology. As for my acquaintance, I never asked her any other questions, again. I veered away from her, forever.
Nevertheless, I must admit that with the passing of years I’ve learned to appreciate Milanés’ music. Time has softened my cringing. Utopia has its own attractive attributes and Milanés captures our desires for Utopia very well. Like with John Lennon’s Imagine, I can “imagine” along with Milanés, knowing, though, that humankind will never save itself, ever. Utopia is nowhere, and will ever be.
That time when I went to a Jerusalem concert.
Jerusalem was a new concept in hard rock and heavy metal music: they were a Christian band. Hailing from Sweden, they landed one night at the Old Gym building, venue for these things. I went to the concert and it was…loud. However, they punched all the tickets in terms of style and music. The small audience of Protestants, some Catholics, and a lot of head-bangers indifferent to religion but lovers of heavy metal was enthusiastic.
However…the music and the style didn’t stick to me. I appreciate some heavy metal anthems but when it comes to Christian music I tend to the praiseful and meditative.
I still had a good time and there were no drugs or alcohol consumed in my near proximity. That was always a plus.
As with Milanés’ music, now that I listen to Jerusalem’s as I write these letters, I must say I like it! Good music, voices, and guitar rifts! And the message is good, too.
That Time I Met a Famous Writer
It was also about this time in the Fall of 1984 or perhaps early in 1985 when I met author Enrique Laguerre. As I told you before, he wrote La Llamarada as well as other novels like Solar Montoya and La Resaca. He had been ambulating the halls of the Physics Building when I saw him talking to another student. I recognized him from the picture in the back cover of La Llamarada. I passed them by on the hallway, did a double-take, and summed myself to the impromptu colloquium. If I’d had a camera I would’ve taken a selfie.
I asked Mr. Laguerre some questions I thought would demonstrate I’d read La Llamarada, but he responded to my inquiries with well-natured impatience. He accepted my dilettante attempts with aplomb and respect. I no longer recall what I asked him but during all this time I’ve carried the memory of my meeting with Enrique Laguerre, famous Puerto Rican author.