Mario Rodríguez Cobos

During the first decade of the 21st century he returned to speak at Punta de Vacas on several occasions with proposals of reconciliation, access to the profound and the sacred of human being, accepting invitations to speak about his Message and going to more humble places, like family homes, or small halls (salitas) in the same neighbourhood of Mendoza, and in greater Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Quito (Ecuador).

He also attended events organized in Lisbon, Rome, northern Italy and elsewhere.

Furthermore, as well as organising Halls of the Message and Parks of Study and Reflection around his works, Silo attended various opening ceremonies in places such as in La Reja (Buenos Aires), Las Manantiales (Santiago de Chile), Carcarañá (Rosario, Argentina), Toledo (Spain), Attigliano (Rome, Italy), etc.

Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos (6 January 1938 – 16 September 2010), also known by the mononym Silo, was an Argentine writer and founder of the Humanist Movement.

An active speaker, he wrote books, short stories, articles and studies related to politics, society, psychology, spirituality and other topics.

Although he described himself simply as a writer, many see him as a thinker and philosopher, based on the diversity of issues about which he has written.

Silo was born into a middle-class family of Spanish origin in Mendoza, Argentina.

His father was winemaker Rafael Rodriguez (from Granada) and his mother Maria Luisa Cobos, a Basque and a music teacher.

He was the youngest of three children, with two older siblings in Raquel and Guillermo.

He undertook primary and secondary education with the Maristas Brotherhood, achieving excellent grades, while practising gymnastics and specializing in the pommel horse and reaching high positions in the regional rankings.

In addition, he was involved in various youth organizations and lead a very active social and intellectual life.

He carried out special studies, in languages including French and Italian, and philosophy.

He also published articles in cultural magazines.

Silo studied law for three years at the National University of Córdoba, and later returned to his home town to continue his studies in this field at the National University of Cuyo.

At university he began to organize research groups on human beings and their existential and social problems.

Silo travelled around Argentina, South America and Europe and undertook various jobs.

By 1960 – following "a rearrangement of his inner truths" as a newspaper slogan of the time reported – he began to present his proposals, while still forming study groups in Argentina and Chile.

With members of these groups he organized a public talk, which was initially banned by the military government but later was permitted in the mountains, away from the centres of population.

The military dictatorships which subsequently beset the country were present throughout the life of Silo with successive arrests and detentions.

So, on 4 May 1969, Silo spoke to some two hundred people gathered in Punta de Vacas (Province of Mendoza), in the high Andes mountains near Mount Aconcagua, and gave his first public exposition of the ideas, that in time, would form the basis of the Humanist Movement.

In this talk, known as "The Healing of Suffering", he explained themes such as the overcoming of pain and suffering, the meaning of life, violence, desire and pleasure.

Silo married Ana Luisa Cremaschi, whom he knew from his youth, and had two sons, Alejandro and Federico, with whom he lived in his hometown.

In 1972 he published The Inner Look and the initial groups extended to other countries, partly because the military dictatorships provoked the exile of many of the participants.

In the early 70's, Silo created the current of thought now known as New Humanism or Universalist Humanism, and founded the Humanist Movement, an organized group that sought to translate this thought into practice.

It can be said that this thinking encompasses the whole of human existence, not only social but also personal.

Since the eighties, and under his orientation, the Humanist Movement began a period of expansion in the world with the creation of organisms and fronts of action: the Humanist Party with a presence in more than 30 countries, The Community for Human Development (a cultural association), Convergence of Cultures (a civil association), World Without Wars (an anti-armament association) and the World Centre of Humanist Studies.

During 1981 he was invited to express his proposals in various public rallies in European and Asian cities, visiting Madrid, Rome, Barcelona, and later Mumbai (India) and Colombo (Sri Lanka), before returning to Paris, and later San Francisco (California) and Mexico City.

He explained with particular force the position of nonviolence, manifested in the overcoming of suffering, the human treatment of others and the attitude of not searching for those to blame.

Aspects of these talks relevant to his thought were published in the bookSilo Speaks.

On 6 October 1993 in Moscow, Silo was awarded a doctorate honoris causa by the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.

In this ceremony, he supported his ideas on "conditions of dialogue," concluding his presentation with these words: "We will see no full dialogue on the fundamental questions of today’s civilization until we, as a society, begin to lose our belief in the innumerable illusions fed by the enticements of the current system. In the meantime, the dialogue will continue to be insubstantial and without any connection to the profound motivations of society. However, in some latitudes of the world something new has begun to move, something that, beginning in a dialogue of specialists, will slowly begin to move into the public arena."

In early 2002, Silo announced his retirement from the Humanist Movement, after being its driving force for 32 years.

He did it by moving the orientation of the Humanist Movement to an assembly composed of the general coordinators of the movement.

In mid-2002 he launched Silo's Message understood as a book, an experience and a path.

Among his more recent projects he gave impetus to the construction of complexes known as Parks of Study and Reflection in Argentina, Chile, Spain, USA, Italy, India and Egypt, among other geographical locations.

The money to build these parks was gathered from voluntary donations.

By August 2007 there were about 400 members in this assembly.

One of his last public addresses was made in Berlin at the Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, on 11 November 2009, during the passage through that city of the "World March for Peace and Nonviolence".

On this occasion Silo called for global nuclear disarmament as the main urgency of the moment.

His last years were spent in Chacras de Coria, a town on the outskirts of the city of Mendoza.