Marco A. Gandásegui, hijo. From the University of Panama publication “Hacía La Luz.”
A valuable intellectual
by Miguel Antonio Bernal
In the limited and narrow space that geography and Panamanian society’’s dishonor offer to intellectual values, Marco A Gandásegui hijo knew, like few others, how to work rigorously within austere constraints to keep up a permanent commitment to research, production and social action.
Through tenacity, detachment and patient resistance, over the course of almost six decades, Marco was on the scene and dedicated to analyzing our reality. In his permanent adventure of thinking, to conquer the necessary knowledge as an instrument for change, he took no rest.
Journalism, sociology, academia, the constant publication of articles, brochures and books, and many conferences left him him no rest. Early on, our Panamanian Auguste Comte shared with us the importance of science for the study of our society. That opened the way for his students, colleagues and readers to apply scientific methods to the study of the various sectors of our society.
Gandásegui’s continuous social action is reflected in his first publication, “The Concentration of Economic Power in Panama,” in which applied for us the vast knowledge that his Chilean university education gave him at the dawn of the sixties.
The inclination towards the “imminent misunderstanding” that the adversaries of knowledge have always promoted in our environment did not stop him in his confidence in his abilities, which he knew how to document for all of us.
Marco contributed to building public opinion here and beyond our borders. His titanic work at the head of Tareas magazine and the Justo Arosemena Center for Latin American Studies (CELA), with the invaluable company of Valeria, also remain as material testimony of a leading intellectual’s value to our social history.
The teacher, rather The Master, has left in the midst of a singular moment of our times, when the orientations of an intellectual value like Gandásegui are most needed. The corridors, the conference rooms and the classrooms of the University of Panama, testify to their absence. Those of us who knew him and shared him will always be grateful for his constant desire to put ideas into circulation, to which he knew how to be faithful at all times. A heartfelt respectful ¡hasta luego!
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