MAESTRO HOSTOS TURNS 175: A CELEBRATION OF MANY STRANDS AND COLORS

Orlando Jose Hernandez

Escribo para ser útil; por lo tanto,

utilicen ustedes mis reflexiones, hacienda las objetos de las suyas.

I write to be useful; therefore

use my reflections, making them the object of yours.

Eugenio Maria de Hostos

It has been said char celebrations cell us more about the people who celebrate than about the subject they celebrate. The Hostos 175th Anniversary Celebration may not be an exception, and we welcome that.

Don Eugenio turned 175 this year and this celebration gives us a fine opportunity for us to study and disseminate Eugenio Maria de Hostos's work, co admire his accomplishment, and to promote a better understanding of his exemplary life. As we study this extraordinary figure, we should be aware that there are several strands in the larger-than-life picture of Hostos that we regard and revere: the scientist and the utopian, the intimate and the public man, the legendary and the historical figure, the analytical intellectual and the revolutionary activist. We should explore and bring all of these different strands to the table, so that our celebration can be as diverse as his vision, his thin king, and his endeavors.

In 1873, the 34-year old Hostos spoke in his lectures in Chile on "La educacion cientifica de la mujer" [The Scientific Education of Women], of basing civilization on three major factors: work, science and morality. The natural sciences informed his sense of morality; he was an early reader of Darwin's seminal book "The Origin of Species." While in Paris in 1868, trying to avoid the repression of the Spanish monarchical regime, the young Hostos read Giambatista Vico's "New Science" and contemplated writing a treatise on what he called "an arithmetic of history.” There is no indication as no whether he ever attempted it, but those were the signs of a highly inquisitive mind committed to intellectual inquiry. Throughout his life he also promoted "reflexive chinking,'' what we now call critical thinking. The analytical Hostos that stands as a major intellectual should also be an important part of our yearlong celebrations. He was a rationalist thinker who spoke of "la razón imaginarte" or "the imagining reason," a suggestive concept yet to be fully explored. In one of his journal entries in Madrid, during the late 1860s, he wrote:

"Si logro aprender, lograre ser". "If I can learn, I can become." Therefore, Hostos was the perpetual learner, an individual who defined hi1melfin terms of learning.

Hostos was also an activist who devoted countless hours and efforts to bringing about profound political and social change. While we have made quite a bit of progress, some of the big issues of his rimes were nor altogether different from ours: economic opportunity, access to education, gender and racial equality, political representation, the plight of the Native people, colonialism and the territorial expansion of the big powers or imperialism. Throughout his life, he was involved in addressing all of these. Journalism, education, and citizens' actions were the means used by this generous Caribbean man to pursue his ideals.

There is plenty to celebrate about Hostos. He was a 19th-cencury humanist and author who made significant contributions to education in the Dominican Republic and Chile. He saw the concept of rights-equal rights for everyone-as the basis for our social order. Consequently, he fought for human, civil, and national rights at a time when they had not yet been recognized as fundamental values of our civilization. Hostos was a committed abolitionist and a staunch advocate or the rights of women, of people of African descent, of Chinese people, of Native Americans, and of mestizos, all of which made him a champion of inclusiveness. Indeed, he seems to have been the most inclusive thinker in 19th-century Latin America.

Moreover, Hostos vigorously supported self-determination for colonial peoples particularly in Cuba and his native Puerto Rico. He opposed the expansionist, imperial ambitions of powerful countries, including the United States- a country he deeply admired. He wrote against "the European oligarchy of nations " that had divided Africa and Asia amongst them, and he denounced the United Scares' territorial grab against Mexico in 1847, its ill-fated attempt to annex Santo Domingo and Haiti in 1869-71, and its takeover of Puerto Rico in 1898. His unflinching commitment to democracy led him to promote citizen participation in public affairs in ways that we now call the civil society, a term coined by Antonio Gramsci several decades later. Hostos conceived of a non-partisan, participatory citizens' role as "el poder social" or "the social power." The League of Puerco Rican Patriots (1898) and the League of Citizens in Santo Domingo were examples of this type of visionary, non-partisan work.

Hostos's work on education is well known. The creation of escuelas normales (teacher schools) in Santo Domingo was not originally his idea. President Ulises Espaillat and the Liberals had singled it out as necessary for nation building. It was Hostos, though, who not only brought it to fruition in the 1880s, but who infused it with such a mystique that Normalismo, the educational movement char he promoted with the new graduates, became an important instrument for change. He also empowered Salome Urena by making her co-director of the women's school. Jn Chile, during the 1890s, as rector of the Instituto Amunátegui, he explored new pedagogy and singlehandedly wrote rexes in a slew of disciplines. His knowledge by then had become encyclopedic. In 1899 in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, he founded a school for children in which he used globes, manipulables, direct observations from nature, and advanced method s of teaching.

Hostos's thinking about civic education is a relevant and important part of his legacy, and includes his support for popular education and his creation of evening schools for workers in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This makes him a foreru nn er of Paulo Freire, the contemporary Brazilian educator who proposed a "pedagogy of the oppressed."

Latin American unity and an Antillean confederation of independent states were ideas dear to him as well. For these important contributions, the Eighth Pan American Conference in Lima, Peru in 1938 named Hostos “Eminent Citizen of America" on the wake of his centennial celebration.

Hostos earned his living earlier as a journalist and translator, and lacer on as an educator. His multifarious passion for knowledge led him to become a novelist, philosopher, sociologist, jurist, and ethicist. He had a gifted intellect and wrote extensively about issues and subjects of the most diverse nature. I n 1838, the government of Puerto Rico commissioned the young Dominican writer Juan Bosch

co compile Hostos's writings, and published his Obras cornpletas. These complete works, although incomplete, fill up twenty volumes. While translations of his writings into English are sparse, there is a growing interest in Hostos, which will likely produce more versions of his work.

The significant fact is that Hostos was an author. His work persists largely through his writings. We cannot celebrate his accomplishments and explore his ideas without reading his work. le is up to us, teachers, to make sure that our students have the opportunity to read Hostos- critically, as he would have liked. Early on, this faculty-le d initiative set the integration of Hostos's writings into our courses as one of its important goals. We are doing chis by providing resources for teaching and for sharing classroom experiences, along with whatever other options will enhance learning. We have called it " Teaching Hostos at Hostos."

During the 2014 spring semester, no less than 25 different courses had students reading, studying, and discussing works by Hostos. We hope the number will increase in Fall 2014.

For several months, a group of devoted Hostos Community College faculty from various disciplines and departments met as an advisory committee, to put together a celebration worthy of our mission. Prof. Ernest Ialongo is co-coordinator with me in this endeavor. From the outset, we were committed to the idea of a celebration that sought to engage both our academic community and the larger com­ munity, both by offering opportunities for students and faculty to participate and to play an active role, and by inviting community leaders and educational institutions to be part of it.

The result is HOSTOS 175, a year-long series of events and activities chat include a lecture series, forums, theater and musical performances, an essay contest, readings of his work, several publications, and an international scholar' conference that will take place in November of this year.

Hostos's ideas and legacy have clear implications for our chinking on contemporary issues among them: the universal recognition of rights-as Hostos would have seen it, based on science and on the fundamental equality of all people, of all ethnic origins and gender preferences; full acknowledgement of women's social and economic contributions, which should lead co equal pay for equal work; quality education, including pre-kindergarten, for everyone; a humane, restorative penal system- an issue that he discussed; Latin American and Caribbean integration­ which he strongly advocated; self-determination for his native Puerto Rico-for which he fought throughout his lifetime. If this reads like a progressive agenda, indeed Hostos was a progressive social thinker and educator. His legacy is about empowering and enfranchising people.

So let the Hostos 175th Anniversary Celebration peak for what Hostos Community College stands for. Let it speak eloquently, enthusiastically, and beautifully for who we arc. We invite everyone to be part of it.